by Amy Milne | Apr 7, 2023 | News, QSOS
We Are Our Stories By Karen S. Musgrave We are our stories and this one is mine. How do I reach you and make you care about the stories behind quilts? By you I mean the public, researchers/academia, people I wanted to interview, workshop attendees, lecture attendees, readers of the articles I wrote and the manual that I edited for Quilters’ S.O.S. – Save Our Stories and the Alliance—so everyone. Even now after being away from interviewing for years, I want you to care. Though we have come a long way, women and quilts still face inequality. We can learn a lot about a quilt by looking at it, but that does not tell us the whole story. Listening to the quiltmaker does. A little bit about me. I made my first quilt, for a baby, in 1974 after seeing an article in a magazine. Quilts were not a part of my life growing up. It wasn’t until I started doing genealogy that I learned that there were quiltmakers in my family. I, like many people interviewed, came to quiltmaking through sewing my own clothes. I didn’t know the “rules,” so the quilt was made with my drawings, rendered with fabric crayons using polyester/cotton blend fabric. From there, like many others, I created traditional quilts before moving on to create my own designs. I came to Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories (Q.S.O.S.) via Boxes Under the Bed™, the Alliance’s first project that dealt with quilt ephemera in 1996. I volunteered to go to the Boxes training as my guild’s representative. The guild’s board decided to hold an essay contest to determine who would attend. I spent weeks on my essay to end up being the only one to write one. I attended both training sessions that were offered at the International Quilt Festival in Houston. And while I felt it was important work, it did not excite me. I never imagined that attending the first Q.S.O.S. training would change my life in the ways that it did. After attending the training, I volunteered to put together a manual and worked for a year with the project’s volunteer task force members—Bernie Herman, Patricia Keller, Marcie Cohen Ferris and Pat Crews – and the manual was born. Q.S.O.S. started by interviewing prize winners and people with quilts at the International Quilt Festival in Houston. Therese May’s interview from 2000 has stayed with me through all these years. It is not one that I conducted but was fortunate to sit in on. Therese’s honesty and openness left me in tears. It was the first time I cried during an interview, and it would not be my last. I think one of the most powerful questions ever asked is, “Have you used quilts to get through a difficult time?” Shortly after Therese’s interview, I was sent to the exhibition floor to interview Marion Mackey and to discover the story behind her quilt depicting baseball player Mark McGwire setting a home-run record. I was trying to remember everything I could about baseball. But it turned out the quilt had nothing to do with baseball. Her husband needed a liver transplant. He almost died twice while waiting. They were hoping and praying for a donor. Well, McGwire breaks the home-run record while they are watching it on TV, and then the phone rings and they get a liver. She started crying and I started crying. They travel with the quilt and talk to children’s groups about the importance of being an organ donor. This was another defining moment for me about why oral histories are so important. Quilt Festival made conducting interviews easy, but I felt the interviews did not reflect the diversity of quiltmakers and their stories that were out in the world beyond Quilt Festival. So, my personal mission began. In the end, I conducted nearly 300 interviews, transcribed nearly 75 (not all mine) and read every interview posted online. For 10 years, I never went anywhere without my trusty $35 tape recorder and paperwork. The interviews cover all sorts of territory, and often dispel common myths. There are traditional quiltmakers who think that art quiltmakers don’t do handwork. There is a notion that hand quilting is dying out—I don’t think that is the case. There’s the notion that you cannot be artful with a long arm machine. Reading the interviews and seeing the quilts helps set the record straight and eliminates these misunderstandings. Here are a few things that I learned. Regardless of the skill level, creating something means that a part of us will still be around after we are gone. Quilts heal. Quilts can cause change. Quilts can create awareness. Quilts can be a source of much needed income. Some people are more open to sharing than others. Some people regret how much they shared. Interviewing Latina quiltmakers and their children, especially those in northern California, gave these makers a way to share their stories about the impact in their lives from the income they made from selling their quilts. I will be eternally grateful to the Salser Foundation for supporting me and Molly Johnson Martinez who was the organizing force behind the group. Los hilos de la vida (The Threads of Life),a mostly Latina cooperative quilt group, was quietly making pictorial quilts for years before I arrived. Their quilts depict scenes of family life, border crossings, life in Mexico, dreams, and reverence for the natural and spiritual worlds. Vibrant with color, the quilts make an immediate impression on the viewer as they unselfconsciously capture the pure essence of the women’s stories. Even more impressive, the women had little or no previous experience creating art or quilts. Angeles Segura’s quilt shows her asleep on her GED diploma surrounded by the things she loves—her books and her guitar. The mother of four, she worked in the vineyards while studying for her diploma. Some of the most compelling quilts are those that depict scenes about crossing the border into the United States. Carmela Valdivia has created many border crossing quilts, which always have the figure of death somewhere in them. After returning from California, my mission became to help the group gain more recognition. I immediately made the first of many attempts to get the attention of the National Museum of Mexican Art (NMMA) in Chicago. Success was achieved when two of the group’s quilts hung in the museum’s exhibition Declaration of Immigration. I also curated an exhibition at the Pacific International Quilt Festival XVII, in Santa Clara, California. Unfortunately, funding ended for the program that supported the group which means the interviews I was able to conduct now provide a glimpse of something that no longer exists. My involvement with Hilos led me to start a quilting group at the NMMA. Again, the participants had never made quilts before, and many had never used a sewing machine. However, unlike the women of Hilos, many of the women had immigrated to the United States when they were young, and all had legally immigrated. The quilts are no less powerful. Maria Tortolero’s detailed quilt is split in two—one side depicts her life in Mexico and the other side her life in Chicago. Maria Herrera’s quilt honors her father and the stories of his immigration adventures and traveling around the United States to find work. “My quilt is …based on my dad/s journey from Mexico to the United States…I started recording my dad’s stories because I wanted my son to grow up hearing my dad’s stories…the stories I grew up hearing…I know that when my dad seed this quilt and a bit of his life in this quilt…he is going to start crying…My dad’s journey is being told through this quilt.” By the way, he did cry. The group at NMMA also created quilts that dealt with the torture, rape and murder of young women and children in Juarez, Mexico. The difficult subject matter produced incredibly thought-provoking quilts. Christina Carlos’ message, “al fub…en paz/ Finally at Peace,” is typical in that it expresses young girls no longer suffering and in a better place. I think Luz Maria Carillo expresses something universal when she said, “Each one of us leaves a piece of our hearts in each quilt that we make.” A handful of people that I interviewed (who did not know me) asked about me personally. One of them was the writer Spike Gillespie, who had begun writing about quilts at the time of her interview. After our conversation, she invited me to write essays for her book Quilts Around the World about my involvement with Q.S.O.S., Latina quiltmakers and my work with connecting American quilts with quilts or patchwork in the countries of Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. My connections to the Alliance through one of the founders and then president, Shelly Zegart, provided me with the connection to take an exhibition of quilts from Gee’s Bend, Alabama to Georgia, Armenia, and Kazakhstan. These quilt exhibitions provided a link in a global movement to revive interest in traditional culture and crafts. They illustrate the shared common threads in our arts and cultures—highlighting what makes us unique and embracing our commonalities. Interviews with some of the members of the Georgian Quilt Group can be found in the Q.S.O.S. project. My writing for Spike’s book led to an invitation to author my book – Quilts in the Attic – Uncovering the Hidden Stories of the Quilts We Love. I was also interested in gathering interviews of how quiltmaking can make a difference for incarcerated people. I found a quilting program in a Minnesota detention center for men. After months of answering questions and even signing papers stating I did not expect to be rescued if taken hostage, the warden decided without any explanation to pass on the project. I was devastated. Fortunately, in 2009, I was able to interview women who had participated in a quilt project featured in an exhibit called “Sacred Threads” in Columbus, Ohio. The Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW) is just outside of Columbus in Marion, Ohio. Driving down the long road to the prison passing fields filled with wildflowers, it was such a shock to see buildings surrounded by a tall wire fence with razor wire on top. The warden required the women to state the reason that they were incarcerated at the beginning of each interview. It was explained to me that this requirement was to get the women to realize they were accountable and become more comfortable talking to strangers about why they were there. I made it clear before the tape recorder was turned on that I did not care why they were there. I cared about their experience making a quilt. None of them had made one before. The assistant to the warden was also present in the room during the interviews. She worked quietly a few tables away and I made sure to sit so that the women would have their back to her. I continued my relationship with these women after their interviews and with a few even until today. Rhonda Edwards was the most intense interview and one that I wished we had videotaped. Her quilt shows her split in two- her life before and her life after. Rhonda is a talented artist, so her quilt is full of her drawings. It also expresses her journey from a violent person to one who has found God, from a person who was deeply grieving her father’s death to someone who feels joy. Rhonda sent her quilt to her mom. The women were not allowed to have the quilts in their possession. Rosa Angulo’s quilt is called “Hope.” Her artist statement says so much about her quilt, “I want to give my first quilt the name of hope–Because I’m trying to express it somehow. My life in this place is the patches and the stitches are the different stages I’ve been going through. The ribbons are the razor wire that surrounds this prison. And the eagle is me, who with the help I’ve been getting from recovery and religious services, and some of the staff members, I feel I will have the tools to fly when my time gets here. Like it says in Isaiah 40:31 ‘They that hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles’ wings; they will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.’“ And she added as a personal note: “I am 48 years old and the mother of three beautiful daughters and the grandmother of an eight-year-old girl. I work as a porter in my cottage, and love to do community service through the Stitching Post (a place to gain skills and employment sewing items for nonprofit organizations, many dealing with children). I’ve never made a quilt before, but I really enjoyed working on this one.” Rosa was deported to Mexico upon her release. She had sent her quilt to her eldest daughter. I never heard from Rosa after her release. I do hope that the skills she learned while at ORW continue to help her and that her desire to make more quilts continues. Once the interviews were posted and several articles about them were written, I received threats from some of the women’s victims’ families. Nothing came of them, and I certainly understand their anger and pain, yet I still feel the interviews should be included in the Q.S.O.S. collection.. I was not as successful in getting Native American quiltmakers into the project. It was only by chance that I interviewed Lois Beardslee. We met while I was working in northern Michigan. Her interview was conducted in her bedroom while sitting on her quilt. “I started piecing our old clothing and old blue jeans, everything…old handkerchiefs, old pillowcases, everything…this is {a piece from] my wedding dress…It was my son who one day took the sleeves off, and my husband said, “’Oh, no.’ I told him, ‘See, it is not about the dress. It is about the being married to you and growing old with you.’…It is a great quilt because it is our lives all wrapped up into one package.” Interviews with people included in exhibitions truly capture a moment in time and continue the historical use of quilts to communicate social or political messages. The exhibition-based projects include interviewing people who made quilts to celebrate the election of Barack Obama as president and the Ancestor Project that took place at the American Indian Center in Chicago where women from the senior lunch program stayed to appliqué designs of ancestral portraits, animal spirits and plants. Other exhibition-based projects include the Alzheimer’s Forgetting Piece by Piece and Priority Alzheimer’s Quilt projects led by Ami Simms, that helped raise awareness of Alzheimer’s and funds for research, and Healing Quilts in Medicine project to name a few. There are so many times that I wish I could have left the recorder going because far too often that is when amazing things were shared. They weren’t always about the quilt or quilts in general, but they provided intimate details or funny stories that I wish everyone knew. Interviewees were given the transcription of their interview to review before it was published online and archived. One interviewer called me quite upset stating that she did not talk the way the transcription portrayed her. She “most certainly did not have a potty mouth.” I tried explaining that transcribers do not add or subtract from the interviews. Still not satisfied, I played the tape for her. In another interview, the person shared details about other quiltmakers that they regretted and so the comments were removed. After one Houston interview, I encouraged editing because I thought it would hurt the interviewee’s reputation, but she stood by her words. I was pleasantly surprised by the deep friendships that happened because of interviewing people. I am so thankful that I was able to interview Yvonne Porcella, Merry Silber, Gwen Marston, Elizabeth Cherry Owen, Maxine Groves and Lisa Quintana, who are no longer with us. I think my proudest moment was after we lost our original archives at the University of Delaware. As the chair of the task force, I had to find a new archival home for the collection. Board members volunteered their universities as potential partners, but I set my goal higher. With the help of David Taylor, I wrote a successful proposal to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Repeatedly, historians often run into the same obstacle when working to identify information about a historic quilt: a dearth of clues as to the origin, maker, and story. That means a lot of mystery remains. And while Q.S.O.S. might not help today’s historians solve certain mysteries of the past, the interviews will leave behind a legacy for historians of the future. While interviewers probably did not set out to touch another’s feelings and longings, words and images emerge in interviews that are just as universal as they are personal. Q.S.O.S. has provided a place where quiltmakers’ stories are accessible, where others can draw on them for strength and make a connection. This is the gift that volunteer interviewers will continue to give for years to come. I will close with my favorite quote by Betty Reese and one I use at the end of my lecture, “If you think you are too small to be effective, you’ve never been in bed with a mosquito.” About Karen Karen S. Musgrave is an interdisciplinary, multihyphenate artist whose recent body of work deals with loss, memory, and identity. She feels passionately about connecting cultures with quilts. Her projects include curating a traveling exhibition of the African American quilts from Gee’s Bend, Alabama, alongside quilts in Georgia, Armenia, and Kazakhstan. In Kyrgyzstan, she organized, curated, and wrote the catalogue for an exhibition of American art quilts and Kyrgyz patchwork. She has served on numerous nonprofit boards. She was a consultant on the 9-part documentary Why Quits Matter. As a writer, she contributed to Spike Gillespie’s book quilts Around the World, wrote the book Quilts in the Attic: Uncovering the Hidden Stories of the Quilts We Love and has written numerous articles for magazines. She has exhibited internationally, and her work is in many different private collections. She lives in the far west suburbs of Chicago. Visit Karen on Instagram …
by Amy Milne | Mar 10, 2023 | QSOS
Three Interviews That Show Us Why QSOS is So Special By Emma Parker, Quilt Alliance Project Manager In our last newsletter, I shared a little bit about the early history of our Quilters’ Save Our Stories (QSOS) project, and our future plans for it, including a forthcoming update to the QSOS guide and a new platform that allows us to pair interview audio with descriptive text. If you missed that “Looking Back” column, you can check it out here. It’s now been 24 years since the project was founded. Now there are more ways than ever to hear quilters talk about their work, from podcast interviews to magazine features, Instagram accounts, Facebook groups, online classes and guild visits. Quilters are sharing more about themselves and their quilts than ever before. But despite this amazing ocean of information, I still think the QSOS project is a little different. An oral history interview invites a different way of talking about your life and your work than a magazine interview – there’s nothing to sell or promote, so there’s plenty of space to tell your story. And usually, the intimacy of just two people in conversation leads to more in-depth stories from a wide range of quilters. We’re giving this project a new coat of paint this year in celebration of the QA’s 30th anniversary, so this month, I want to share three QSOS interviews that I think perfectly illustrate why this project is so valuable, for quilters and for anyone who is curious about quilting, making, and a creative life. The first reason I think these interviews are so powerful is that they capture a very specific moment in time. Take for example our 2011 interview with quiltmaker Victoria Findlay Wolfe. This was one of Victoria’s very first interviews about her work. In it, she talks about a project called 15 Minutes of Play, which would eventually become the title of her 2012 book. Since this interview, she has published several other books, created multiple fabric lines and quilt templates, won national and international awards for her work, including 2013 Best in Show at QuiltCon, and lectured and taught across the country and online. In her interview, Victoria says that she has only just started teaching, and is beginning to expand her work: I take it as it comes. I don’t obsess on making a perfect quilt. I’m not sure I can do that, I’m not sure I want to do that. I prefer to learn from each quilt that I do and move onto the next and see what happens. I have felt recently that my work is sort of changing, or perhaps I’m just growing. But I think it’s just being more open to more possibilities and going back and learning and trying other things that I haven’t done before. Building my tool set of quilter skills. I let it happen and see where it will lead me. The second reason I love this project is that we hear from all different kinds of quilters, including quilters who make quilts in non-traditional ways or settings. One of my favorite examples of this is Jeanne Wright’s interview with Dave White, a quilter and long-haul trucker. Here’s Dave talking about his mobile sewing studio in the back of his truck cab: The biggest challenge to doing it and not getting frustrated is organization. I’ve got a–I think it’s a 48 or 42-quart tub with a closing top on it that I keep my notions and my projects in. When I’m going down the road they’ll sit on my bunk. But when I’m quilting or getting prepared to quilt, it goes into one of the overhead areas so that I’ll have enough work space. […] What I found best, is to keep things in Tupperware or plastic containers to a point where I can stay organized and I know where my threads are at and where my needles are and where my machine feet are. Of course the little sewing machine that I’ve got is a Brother sewing machine. It’s a nice little computerized machine. It sits on the floor during transport and it comes up on a platform that I built. It’s basically just a sheet of plywood that I set on one of the cabinets with two little steel legs, I call them pogo legs that I can detach and put in the overhead storage areas. So it’s very confined, but once you get in there and you get involved with the machine and the piecing and the enjoyment, you can lose all track of time. Even if you’ve never been behind the wheel of a big rig, you might identify with that feeling – of starting to quilt and losing track of time. The QSOS collection contains interviews with quilters around the world, an astronaut who quilted in space, and even a few quilters under the age of 10! But I’d bet that every interview has something that might remind you of your own quiltmaking, or your community. Finally, the last interview shows how a QSOS interview can help capture a lifelong legacy. In 2008, Karen Musgrave interviewed Donna Sue Groves of Adams County, Ohio. Donna Sue helped create the barn quilt movement starting in 2001, and supported the development of grassroots community quilt trails across the county. She explains the inspiration for the project and the impact it had on her community in her QSOS interview, such as in this excerpt. Donna Sue Groves passed away in November of 2021, but we are so grateful to have her story documented, in her own words, for her family, her local community, and countless others to enjoy. Recording her story in a QSOS interview helps document the history of the barn quilt movement, as well as Donna Sue’s amazing life. https://youtu.be/HUbdPEMLLuw There are more than 1,200 other interviews that are each as special as these three, and at least that many reasons to support the project. Participate in a QSOS interview, explore our archive of stories, listen and read the interviews, and tune in to Running Stitch, our QSOS podcast. This grassroots project isn’t possible without your support, so consider making a donation to the Quilt Alliance today to help sustain this important collection. …
by Emma Parker | Dec 10, 2021 | Go Tell It at the Quilt Show!, News, QSOS
This month, we have a little gift for you: seven hand-picked quilt stories from our projects, each one about the different ways we give quilts — and what quilts give us! As Tomme Fent says in her 2002 QSOS interview, I do think quilters are very generous. And quilters are so friendly. It’s like having a family connection the world over. You can go anywhere and find quilters, and just immediately strike up a conversation and have something to talk about. One thing I think is so great about quilting is what it’s done for me, and it’s also done for other quilters… Quilting is the most incredible creative expression. It’s a way of expressing grief, or joy, or love. You can just be as wild as you want or as conservative as you want. You can try something that’s totally outside your personality, outside the box. Or you can do something that’s just calming and relaxing. Tomme’s thoughts resonate with me as I think about what it means to give someone a quilt you’ve made. It’s not only the gift of a beautiful handmade object, but also the gift of time, attention, and memory. But Tomme’s quote also got me thinking about also what a gift it is to be among quilters. A diverse, resourceful, clever and–most definitely: generous!–group. Thank you for being so generous with your support and your stories this year. We can’t wait to keep celebrating quilts with you all again in 2022! Meg Cox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug9q_QpCpn4 Our first Giving Quilt story comes from Meg Cox, who tells us about the memory quilt she made for her granddaughter, Lucy. Jeanette Farmer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGV0360FzX4 In this Go Tell It! interview, Jeanette Farmer talks about a quilt she’s made for a local child experiencing homelessness. Making charity quilts to give to those in need is a perfect example of the generosity of quilters. Judy Whitson, QSOS interview Betty Jean Weaver, interviewer: Another question is how have you given quilts as gifts? Judy Whitson: Oh yes, I love to give. It is a sign that you really care for somebody when you give them a handmade item like a little baby quilt or a quilt for their bed or something, and it is more or less a memory quilt. I always put a signature block on there saying who it is for, the date, and who designed it and who made it, quilted. Starla Phelps https://youtu.be/5m9k_PE4-IM Starla Phelps made this quilt for her husband — and it was the very first quilt she EVER made! Eliza Hardy Jones https://youtu.be/jw_ZCYCmXhc?t=186 In season 3, episode 3, of our Running Stitch podcast, Janneken Smucker talks to musician and artist Eliza Hardy Jones about her quilts that interpret songs. They begin by talking about how Eliza began quilting: in the hopes of making gifts for friends and family. Steve Nabity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gXMkl0bNlw Steve Nabity, then-CEO of Accuquilt, shared the moving story of this graduation quilt, made for his daughter. As he says in the interview, “every quilt has a story. Every quilt. And don’t take it for granted, because every quilt means something”. Kim Van Etten https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt-pxkjsuO8 And our final Giving Quilt story: Kim Van Etten shares a quilt made by her grandmother, who gifted a quilt to more than 50 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. As Kim says in the video, “she’s the reason I quilt”. Kim still uses her grandmother’s sewing machine to make her own quilts. Want more quilt stories? Visit our giving page now for three great examples of the work…
by Amy Milne | Jul 11, 2020 | News, Running Stitch
The Quilt Alliance released the third episode of Running Stitch, a QSOS Podcast this week. If you’re already a subscriber, then you know that the first three episodes focused on First Quilts with guest Victoria Findlay Wolfe, Quilts and Activism with Thomas Knauer, and Quilts and Difficult Times with Melanie Testa. Host Janneken Smucker selects audio clips from QSOS oral history interviews conducted between 1999-2017, and invites the interviewees back to talk about how their quilts and their lives have changed since they were last documented by project volunteers. With a collection of around 1,200 QSOS interviews, more than 600 Go Tell It! video recordings and 30 StoryBee interviews, the Alliance has an abundance of content to draw from, documentation that spans decades and includes quilters from almost every US state and representing most sub-genres of the quilting community. Janneken, a Professor of History at West Chester University, and Emma Parker, producer and QA Project Manager, set out to create a podcast in which quilts and quiltmaking serve as a lens to examine some of today’s most pressing issues, including activism, public health, politics, race, and the economy. Janneken uses storyboarding to sketch out each episode, schedules and conducts the interviews, and records narrative, transition and credit segments. Emma uses the storyboard to retrieve clips, edits the episode together, and builds the episode webpages. The podcast was made possible by our partners at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History who recently completed the digitization of over 800 audio cassettes, the media of choice when QSOS was launched. In addition to digital audio, each interview is indexed with summaries, keywords and links. This important work, underwritten by individuals and businesses and a generous grant from the Robert and Ardis James Foundation, makes the collection infinitely more accessible and searchable for users. I have been fascinated by Janneken and Emma’s thorough and artful approach to working on Running Stitch and decided to turn the interview roles around and ask them a few questions about their work and their own podcast favorites. Janneken Q: You’ve been involved with the QA and the QSOS project since 2005 when you joined the QA board. Has doing this podcast changed your opinion about the value or utility of the QSOS collection to users? A: Working on Running Stitch reveals the depth and breadth of the QSOS collection. Now that we can search across interviews, thanks to the technology updates feasible through digitizing the collection and indexing it in OHMS (Oral History Metadata Synchronizer), we can discover hidden moments in interviews and find ways to put the interviews in conversation with one another. And as the episodes so far reveal, the interviews are extremely relevant to contemporary concerns that resonate well beyond quiltmaking. Running Stitch explores how quilts and quiltmaking relate to larger cultural issues, and this is only possible because of our archive of oral histories. Q: What are some of your favorite podcasts? A: I listen to way too many news and politics podcasts to get my fix of current events coverage, but in terms of more cultural fare, I recommend Wind of Change, which explores the rumor that the CIA wrote the song of that title which was a hit by the Scorpions, and proved pivotal in the waning years of the Cold War. I also like Slow Burn, produced by Slate, which used archival audio including oral histories as well as new interviews to explore historical topics, including Watergate and the Clinton impeachment. Similarly, Last Seen, produced by WBUR and the Boston Globe drew on historical and archival content to explore the unsolved art heist from the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum. Emma Q: Your training is in folklore, and in your job with the QA, you are producing this podcast, as well as audio oral history and video storytelling projects. Do you have a preference for either audio or video as a storytelling medium when it comes to quilts? A: That’s such a hard question! I think both audio and video have so much to offer, but in different ways. Because quilt stories often have at their heart an actual quilt, I always love to be able to see the quilt and hear someone talk about it at the same time. The interaction we get in Go Tell It at the Quilt Show videos between the “teller” and the quilt makes those videos especially powerful! I often get a special understanding of how someone feels about a quilt by the way they hold it as they talk, or how they turn all the way around to point out that one piece of appliqué they’re most proud of. That said, there’s something really special about hearing someone’s voice. I’m always surprised by just how much comes through an audio recording, whether it’s a just-a-little-bit-longer pause or a nervous giggle that suggests what’s not being said. Some of our QSOS interviews really do feel like you’re in the room with the interviewer, or on the quilt show floor where that story was recorded and I love that audio recordings let you imagine what was going on on the other side of the tape. Q: And what are some of your favorite podcasts? A: I have to admit that my podcast consumption has fallen off quite a bit now that my big daily commute for work is from the back of the house to the front! As you mentioned, I have an educational background in folklore and linguistics, so I find myself drawn to podcasts that investigate the quirks of everyday life and language. Three of my favorites in that genre are 99% Invisible, Every Little Thing, and Lexicon Valley. Recently covered topics include a deep dive on the design of the classic American mailbox with a flag, how they decided on the typeface on highway exit signs and an exhaustive history of the word ‘y’all’. I love this stuff! I think Running Stitch listeners might especially like a short podcast mini-series called Articles of Interest, which focuses on the history of clothing, including a whole episode about pockets. And of course, if you’re not listening to Quilt Alliance board president Frances O’Roark Dowell’s QuiltFiction and Off-Kilter Quilt podcasts, hop on those! Subscribe to Running Stitch, a QSOS Podcast at: Apple Podcasts – Spotify – Google…
by Emma Parker | Dec 12, 2019 | QSOS
The holiday season is in full swing, with all the twinkling lights, shopping bags, baked goods, and travel plans that come with it. To celebrate the season, we thought we’d take a look back at our QSOS interviews and feature some stories of holiday quiltmaking, family, and giving. Do you give quilts as holiday gifts? Or make quilts to accompany your holiday traditions? We’d love to hear more about how your holidays intersect with quilts–leave us a comment! We’ll start out with an excerpt from this interview with Kay Butler, about a Christmas Mystery Quilt. My favorite part of this story is that their mystery quilt group included a journal for each quiltmaker to write “the story of their lives.” What a lovely gift to include with a holiday quilt–a little note or journal that tells that quilt’s story (and of course, a cute label to go along with it!) Heather Gibson: Okay, tell me about the quilt you brought today. Kay Butler: Okay, this is a Christmas Mystery Quilt. We had a Mystery Quilt planned to do in our guild. There were four girls in the group. We were to select the fabric that we wanted, place it in a brown bag, and then pass it on to the next person in the group. And the next person would do a little bit more work, and it’s sort of like a “round robin” idea. And so I started this endeavor with a visit to a quilt shop here in Dover called Rose Valley Quilt Shop. I bought all of my fabrics there, in the Amish Shop, from a very dear friend, Rachel Hershberger. And I had in my head that I wanted a Christmas design. Normally I’m a real purple-lover, a real purple fan. But I thought, ‘I’m going to break from tradition here. I’m going to force myself to think in a different color realm here.’ And I chose what you see here on the end is called the “zinger” fabric. A lot of the quilters will buy a zinger fabric, and they will pull from that zinger fabric the various colors that are in there, like the reds and the greens and the golds that you see. So I bought the fabric. And in the brown bag we also include a journal. Each lady includes a journal, and they write the story of their lives in the journal. And what’s taking place in their lives, if they’re having difficulty with that step of the project that they’ve been doing. And that also documents the quilt and tells a little bit more about the quilt. Judy Whitson of Tuscaloosa, Alabama talked about gifting quilts, both during the holidays, and year round. I love the idea of every gifted quilt being a memory quilt that remembers both the maker and the recipient (and all the more reason to label those quilts!). “I love to give. It is a sign that you really care for somebody when you give them a handmade item like a little baby quilt or a quilt for their bed or something, and it is more or less a memory quilt. I always put a signature block on there saying who it is for, the date, and who designed it and who made it, quilted.” I also loved this interview with Resna Ximines Hammer in Washington, D.C. about the ways she uses her quilts in her family’s holiday traditions. I can’t help but laugh at interviewer Evelyn Salinger’s question “do you actually use this on Friday nights yourself?” because I know I have a few quilted objects I’m a little hesitant to use. But Resna’s notion that a table should be beautiful, and that handmade objects can enhance a family ceremony, is a lovely sentiment for the holidays. Evelyn Salinger (ES): Good. Nice of you to come today with your things to show. Let’s start out first with your telling me what you have made here. Resna Hammer (RH): These are two–One of the things that I am actually very passionate about is Jewish ceremonial kinds of cloths. And this is called a Challah cover and it’s used to cover bread on the Friday night dinner. This particular one also I tried to incorporate all of the holidays that would come in the certain period of time. Here this is Hanukkah, this is the symbol for Hanukkah, this is Purim, which is another one, and the pomegranates are for the High Holy Days. ES: Do you actually use this on Friday nights yourself? RH: We actually use it on Friday nights. ES: Every Friday night or just on the holiday time? RH: Just on the holiday. I have another one for Friday. I believe that the table should be beautiful. And normally what your traditional Challah covers are usually silk and they are painted on and I thought what I wanted to do and what I’ve been doing, a wonderful quilted ones that I just think enhance the day and the ceremony. This also has incorporated in it the seven species, which is in the Bible and that are things that are all incorporated with Shabbes or to do with the Sabbath. What I’ve written here in Hebrew is, it’s like, ‘For all the Miracles that You Perform for Us,’ and ‘We Thank You.’ I wanted it every Friday night to be able to see that. We’ll end with some sweet words from Sue Stiner of Newark, Delaware. We all love to spend time with our fabric stash, but during the holidays, what could be better than spending time with our ‘stash’ of family and friends? “Most of the quilts I’ve made though, I’ve given away. But know that I’m building up a stash of grandkids along with a stash of fabric; I’ll probably be making more for family than I will for friends.” Happy holidays to all of you from all of us at the Quilt Alliance! Thank you for another year of sharing your quilts, your stories, and your gifts with us! -Emma Parker, Project…
by Emma Parker | Nov 15, 2019 | QSOS
In October of 1999, a handful of quilters and quilt scholars gathered at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, to try something completely new: an oral history project focused on quilters’ stories, with members of the quilting community interviewing each other about their quiltmaking history, their proud moments, favorite techniques, their inspirations, frustrations, families, technologies, and communities. Little did these volunteer interviewers and first interviewees know that the project–Quilters’ S.O.S. – Save Our Stories (QSOS)–would continue for another two decades, documenting the stories of over 1,100 quilters from around the world. It would include interviewees who’ve won some of the quilt world’s biggest prizes, to a six-year-old who recently finished her first quilt. Since those first interviews, QSOS has ensured that the diverse history of two decades of quiltmaking, in sewing rooms, international quilt shows, quilt shops, and community centers, has been captured. At first, these stories were captured with cutting edge technology: the cassette tape! In 1999, the first interviews were recorded on tape, and laboriously transcribed by volunteer transcribers who’d write out every word and [laugh] and [pause for crying] in each transcript. Eventually, those transcripts would be posted online for anyone to read. Twenty years ago, that’s most of what you could do on the internet: read and look at pictures. Technologies for streaming audio and video were clunky and expensive at best. But fast-forward to 2019, and it seems practically quaint to encounter a web-page that’s just words. It’s not enough to bring you a transcript on a web page; we want you to be in the room where the stories are unfolding, to be transported to the living room or quilt show where these stories were captured, and to hear quilters tell their stories in their own voices. You may have heard about our new initiative–to make the voices of the 1,100+ quilt stories we’ve recorded since the QSOS project began 20 years ago available online. It’s a big task, taking those Radio Shack cassette tapes and making them available for anyone in the world to hear. The tapes, despite their world-class storage conditions at the Library of Congress’ Audio-Visual Conservation Center, are aging fast. Each cassette needs to be digitized in real time, meaning that a 45 minute interview will take at least 45 minutes to play through and be recorded. Each recording is reviewed for quality and completeness, labeled correctly, added to a web server so we can beam it to your computer… and that’s all just to get it online! We’re grateful to have support from our partners at the University of Kentucky’s Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, who are working to digitize and prepare these interviews. Despite the time and care it takes to make these recordings available online, it’s entirely worth it. The addition of audio transforms the experience of a QSOS interview. It offers nuance and emotion, textures and context that were entirely missing from the written transcript. Here’s just one example, from a 2011 interview with Venetta Morger. At the end of her interview, interviewer Sandi Goldman asked if she had anything to add. Venetta says: “I just know that four years ago when I started quilting full-time, having the time to quilt, my kids were all gone and off to school. I really dreamt that one day my quilt would hang in Houston. My quilt hung in Houston two years later in the special exhibits, with the Texas Guild exhibit that they do. I never would have imagined that it would have been picked as one of the best 200 quilts made in Texas in the last 25 years. But I hope that by having a dream, by encouraging others to have a dream, and making it big, that there’s nothing dreaming big. It’s absolutely the way that we can head towards a goal, and my next dream is to have a quilt in the winners circle here in Houston one of these days.” You can tell from the excerpt that she’s excited to be included in the exhibit. But when you listen to the recording, you can hear the pride in her voice. It’s a difference experience, hearing Venetta tell her own story, rather than reading it in your own voice, in your own head! Take a listen to this excerpt from an interview with Hollis Chatelain, talking about the influence of her time in Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer. There’s so much that doesn’t come through in the transcript: you can hear the loudspeaker announcements that are still ubiquitous at the International Quilt Festival, you can hear the ease and familiarity with which she switches from English to French to provide a pronunciation of ‘palétuvier’, the French word for a mangrove tree. There’s a rhythm to her recollections of the African landscapes she’s drawing from that’s not represented by the flat words on a page. Even that loudspeaker announcement that interrupts Hollis’ interview is part of that interview’s story! It sets the scene for her interview at the International Quilt Festival and it’s not too far-fetched to think that future quilt researchers may find in that short announcement a little bit of context to better understand the quilt show landscape of 1999! In the same way, I love hearing this recording of Denyse Schmidt’s QSOS interview recorded at the 2012 Quilters Take Manhattan event. You can hear the hum of the audience and their laughter at times: this is an interview recorded in front of a large audience and though it’s hard to tell just from the transcript, it has a slightly different flow than an interview conducted between two women in a living room or quilt shop. We’re so excited about all of the possibilities this newly-available audio affords us as a quilting community. Whether you’re a quilter who loves hearing others talk about their quilting journey, a women’s history researcher interested in crafting communities, a documentary maker, a family member eager to hear the voice of a loved one who’s passed away, we hope you’ll find something to treasure in these interviews. We’re thrilled to bring these quilters stories to you, in their own voices. We’ll be working on adding new interviews as the audio is digitized, so keep your eyes on the project! If you’re interested in learning more about supporting the transition of QSOS interviews to their new platform, please check out our QSOS 20th Anniversary Fund…
