While Virginia Jacobs learned to sew in a junior high home economics class, it was her training at the University of Pennsylvania under architect Robert Venturi that influenced her approach to textiles. She exploded his postmodern style into dynamic and sculptural fabric constructions, incorporating color and pattern from a range of sources, including Eastern European folk dance and costume, Hungarian lace patterns, Chinese embroidery, and Kabuki theatrical costume from Japan. Venturi once wrote, “I am for messy vitality over obvious unity. […] More is not less.” Jacobs embraced this in her quilted structures created with painstaking care in their juxtapositions of pattern.

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