StoryBee Announcement

The nonprofit Quilt Alliance launched StoryBee, a new interview show created for its members. The twenty-minute web-based program will profile notable people who make, collect, sell, study, exhibit and/or preserve quilts. In keeping with the Quilt Alliance mission to document, preserve and share the history of quilts, StoryBee will record conversations with interesting people from all corners of the quilt world and bring these stories to our members.

The Quilt Alliance is proud to feature Victoria Findlay Wolfe in the debut episode of StoryBee. Victoria is a NYC based International Award Winning Quilter and teacher. She was raised on a farm in central Minnesota, and learned to sew and quilt when she was just four years old. Victoria graduated from the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Art in 1993, and a year later moved to New York City. Victoria has an upcoming exhibit at the Iowa Quilt Museum opening April 17th (through July 29): Playing with Purpose: Victoria Findlay Wolfe Retrospective.

Frances O’Roark Dowell, the host of StoryBee, is an author and quiltmaker and is best known for her “beloved books for tweens and teenagers” (New York Times Sunday Book Review). Since 2010 she has also hosted a popular podcast about her life as a quilter, The Off-Kilter Quilt, and in 2016 established a small publishing company to bring out a line of stories and novels especially for quiltmakers and quilt lovers. The quilting novel Birds in the Air was followed by the short story collection Margaret Goes Modern in 2017. Stars Upon Stars – a sequel to Birds in the Air – will be published in 2018. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband, two sons, and a dog named Travis.

Frances O’Roark Dowell

 

StoryBee, Episode 1 will be available to the public through the end of February, after which a member’s login will be required to access StoryBee videos.

Upcoming guests include: Alex Anderson, Carolyn Crump, Marin Hanson, Roderick Kiracofe, Carolyn Mazloomi, Luana Rubin, Denyse Schmidt, Julie Silber, Ricky Tims, and Nichole Wilde.

Quilt Alliance members pick the membership fee that suits their budget, starting as low as $25, with the option to receive thank you gifts at each level. New and current Quilt Alliance members are encouraged to begin or renew their memberships by February 28, after which fees will go up 20% (the first increase since 2004, when the QA membership program began).

One lucky QA member will win a special Valentine’s Bundle, sponsored by Victoria Findlay Wolfe Quilts, to be drawn on March 1. All current members as of February 28 will be eligible to win.

Valentines Bundle Giveaway for QA Members

Member support enables the small nonprofit, with one full time and two part-time staff members, to maintain and grow several important grassroots oral history projects. Projects include Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories (QSOS), archived in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, Go Tell It at the Quilt Show! a short-format video project presented on YouTube, and the Quilt Story Road Show education and outreach program.