Immediately after the exhibition closed in New York City, the quilts went to Holstein's hometown of Syracuse, to the Everson Museum of Art, closely followed by trips to the prestigious institutions of the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. As 1972 dawned, the Holstein/van der Hoof quilts were already fully booked for the year, including a trip to Paris that would eventually expand to a broader European tour (Lausanne, Switzerland; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Brussels, Belgium). The quilts would return to the U.S. for an October opening at the Smithsonian Institution's newly opened gallery for contemporary crafts, the Renwick.

The Smithsonian Institution’s traveling exhibition program (SITES) had contacted Holstein and van der Hoof about touring the quilts nationwide even while the quilts were still on the Whitney's gallery walls. The resultingly massive tour, called American Pieced Quilts and held between February, 1973 and June, 1974, brought two separate groups of Holstein/van der Hoof quilts to over 20 different museums and galleries. They went to large cities in the West (Phoenix) and the East (Atlanta), but mostly they made their way across the middle of the country, to urban hubs like St. Louis and Austin, but also to smaller cities, like Iowa City and Evansville, Indiana. Everywhere it went, enthusiastic visitors came to admire the quilts.