by Quilt Alliance | Nov 15, 2013 | On this Day in History Quilts series
On this day in 1864, Union General William T. Sherman began his march from Atlanta to the coast. Sherman’s army destroyed Atlanta and much of the rest of Georgia on their way to capture the Confederate seaport of Savannah. This brown and gray wool “General Sherman’s Quilt” was made in Nebraska. The record shows that the quilt, which included another red quilt as batting, was “bought in 1980 on a bus trip to Colorado with the Tamburitzans – National Festival… (the) owner was freezing on the buss and stopped at Buffalo Bill Restaurant store (for) $15 or $30 each.” The owner, Mini Bizic, of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, documented the quilt in 2010 as part of the Western Pennsylvania Quilt Documentation Project. View this quilt on The Quilt Index to find out! Read more about its history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view or click the “See full record” link to see a larger image and all the data entered about that quilt. Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-march-to-the-sea-begins Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Quilt Alliance | Nov 13, 2013 | On this Day in History Quilts series
On this day in 1982, the Vietnam Memorial, designed by Yale University architecture student Maya Lin, was dedicated in Washington, D.C. The monument is a simple v-shaped black granite wall inscribed with the names of 57,939 Americans who died in the war, arranged in order of the date of their death versus their rank. This Double Irish Chain Crib Quilt was entirely handmade by an unknown quiltmaker in 1830 and was purchased for the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum from Kathi LaTourette of Evergreen, Colorado through memorial donations for Staff Seargant Joshua Ryan Hager, the son of a museum member who was killed while serving in Iraq in 2007. LaTourette lost her first husband in the Vietnam War and had a son who also served in Iraq. RMQM is so pleased to house this crib quilt as a symbol of a mother’s love for her child, and in keeping with that, as a symbol of new life that each child begins. Last, in tribute, that we may be reminded always, that mothers before, in the present, and mothers still to come, have and will lose their children to war. View this quilt on The Quilt Index to find out! Read more about its history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view or click the “See full record” link to see a larger image and all the data entered about that quilt. Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/vietnam-veterans-memorial-dedicated Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Quilt Alliance | Nov 11, 2013 | On this Day in History Quilts series
On this day in 1918, World War I (also known as the Great War) ended at 11 a.m. when German forces, low on manpower and supplies and facing certain invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies outside of Compiegne, France. The war left 9 million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, and at least 5 million civilians died from disease, starvation or exposure. In honor of Veteran’s Day I’d like to spotlight two quilts and their makers whose work is documented in the Quilt Index, one made for a solider and one made by a military nurse. Sallie Allen Watson of Knoxville, Tennessee hand pieced and hand quilted this “Soldier’s Quilt” (or “Peony Variation”) around 1944 for her grandson-in-law, who was serving in World War II at the time. The quilt was documented during the Quilts of Tennessee project by a relative of Watson’s. Amanda J. Wright of Lake Providence, Louisiana hand appliqued, pieced and quilted this wool feedsack Strip quilt. Wright was born in Natchez, Mississippi and learned to quilt from her slave parents. She served as a nurse in the Civil War and her husband was a Confederate soldier. She died in 1929. The quilt was documented during the Louisiana Quilt Documentation Project by one of Wright’s family members in 2005. View these quilts on The Quilt Index by clicking on the images above. Read more about each quilt’s history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view or click the “See full record” link to see a larger image and all the data entered about that quilt. Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/world-war-i-ends Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Quilt Alliance | Nov 10, 2013 | Alliance Quilt Contests
Our first week of TWENTY auction quilts went on sale on eBay.com on Monday, November 11 at 9pm Eastern. All quilts are 20″ x 20″ and the starting bid for each is only $60. The quilts will be offered through December 9 in four one-week auctions. Click here to view and bid on the quilts on eBay. Click on any of the quilts below to see a larger view. The 7th annual contest and Auction, titled TWENTY, celebrates the Alliance’s 20th anniversary, and documents the work of 93 artists from 26 states and 5 countries. The annual small quilt auction is one of the Quilt Alliance’s most important fundraisers, supporting projects like Quilters’ S.O.S. -Save Our Stories and Go Tell It at the Quilt Show, and enables our participation in projects like the Quilt Index. The Alliance contest theme is traditionally open-ended to challenge the creativity of quilters from all corners of the quilt world– traditional, modern, art, applique, embroidery, machine quilting, hand quilting and those whose work falls under several of these categories or none at all. The only strict requirements of each year’s contest are the size of the entry (usually 15-20″ square) and that the construction include 3 layers. The 2014 theme is Inspired By and entry forms will be downloadable in December, 2013 on the Quilt Alliance website. This year it all starts with inspiration. Entrants will be able to pick from our online Inspiration Gallery featuring quilts from The Quilt Index and Quilters’ S.O.S. – Save Our Stories projects, or select your own source to inspire your original…
by Quilt Alliance | Nov 10, 2013 | QSOS Spotlight, Uncategorized
We’re shining today’s Q.S.O.S. Spotlight on a just-posted interview from Cookie Williams of Dundas, Minnesota. In her interview, Cookie shared two quilts she’d made for two generations of men: her husband and her son, both veterans of the US National Guard. Cookie told interviewer Heidi Rubenstein about designing the quilts, choosing personal and patriotic symbols, and why making a quilt for her son was one of the hardest quilts to make: “These two quilts are the most special quilts I’ve ever made. The first one I’m going to tell you about I made for my husband. Fifteen years ago he was on the road and he stopped at a quilt store. He asked the storeowner to gather fifty blue fat quarters for me and he gave them to me for my birthday that year. I knew right away that those fifty blue fat quarters were going into a quilt for him. He spent 37 and a half years working for the National Guard as a full time person and I knew that this quilt was going to pertain to that career. I started with Flying Geese. I knew that he was an eagle lover and I actually tried to piece an eagle, and it sort of looked like a lame duck. So then I went to the Flying Geese. At the time for Northfield Quilters we were teaching each other classes and I elected to teach the Flying Geese block, but the hook was you need to bring me back one Flying Geese made in red and I handed the quilt club background fabric. They said ‘well, it won’t be the right color.’ I said ‘I don’t care.’ I did not have enough red in my stash to make this quilt that I had envisioned in my mind. So I got the Flying Geese together and I had red ones and blue ones and I had tried piecing the eagle. That didn’t work, so I thought ‘how about a flag.’ So the next part of the quilt is an American flag done with a Log Cabin pattern. It came together and it was sitting on top of the Flying Geese and I thought, ‘well, we still have to incorporate eagles into this quilt somehow.’ About that time I went to a Minnesota Quilt Show and went to a stencil booth at one of the vendors and they had a stencil for an eagle and I thought, ‘ok, here’s the flag, on either side of the flag we can put a blue sky and I can quilt in the eagles.’ Consequently, two days before my husband’s 70th birthday last March, the 18th of March, I finished that quilt. This past summer I entered that quilt at the Rice County Fair and it won a grand champion ribbon. That quilt took me 15 years to get done so it’s really special. The other quilt that I’m going to tell you about is titled “Why This Quilt Reminds Me of You.” Our son also belonged to the National Guard. In 2004 he was deployed to Iraq. He was gone a year. It was probably the toughest year we spent as a family. During his deployment I started putting this quilt together and every color in it reminds me of something he has done in his life. There’s red, white and blue, of course. There’s maroon because he was an athlete for Northfield High School and the school colors were maroon and gold. There’s green in there because one of his first jobs was working for his dad’s cousin baling hay. There is a blue cobblestone fabric in this quilt that reminds me of all of the travels he’s done in his life including being deployed to Iraq. It’s a star quilt and the star is because he’s been a real star in our life. The golf fabric is because that is his current hobby. He’s a golfer and he’s pretty good at it. Every fabric that I chose during the piecing of this had something to do with him. In reality, the pattern for this quilt was not a hard pattern. But it was the hardest quilt I’ve ever pieced. So these two are near and dear to my heart. And I’m proud to say that they belong to the guys that they do. HR: So the first one was Flying Geese and Log Cabin. You designed it yourself? CW: I designed that quilt. There’s not a pattern out that I know of with these elements. The process of making a quilt for me, for these two in particular, when I decided to put the flag on blue sky, well I had some blue sky fabric, but I didn’t like it, so then it was a few months down the road and we travelled somewhere and we went into a quilt store up north and there was the blue sky fabric that I had envisioned in my mind. Usually when I make a quilt and give it away I will ask the person that I’m giving it to ‘what’s your favorite color?’ But these two quilts are exactly what I designed from the bottom of my heart with every ounce of design element in my body that I could garner up. Every emotion that these quilts evoke, the other 200 plus quilts that I’ve done do not equate what these two mean to me. They are special quilts for special guys.” You can also read more stories about quilts and their makers at the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Quilt Alliance’s site. Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
