Announcing a New Membership Benefit

by | Apr 12, 2024 | News

Announcing a New Membership Benefit from Aurifil! Last year QA board co-president, quilter, curator and writer Laura Hopper created a Birthday Block of the Month featuring blocks by nine incredible designers to celebrate our 30th anniversary. It was a huge hit and helped us grow our membership by 32%. This year, co-president Bradley Mitchell and his generous and creative colleagues at Aurifil are gifting our members another Block of the Month! Starting in May we will begin sharing the Aurifil Flora Block of the Month with our members. The blocks, instructions and any supplemental resources will be shared via this newsletter and your membership portal. So if you haven’t yet logged in to your portal, give it a try soon. There are twelve months/blocks in the Flora series and we will keep the BOM archived in your membership portal for at least six months after the last block is released in April 2025.  Not a member yet? Join today! The last few years have been a wild ride. We’ve had to stop, adjust, reimagine, reroute, redo.  It’s been a challenge, but in some ways, all of the changes have helped us to slow down, to appreciate the beauty that lives right in front of us, and to experience the small things with a more grateful heart. Perhaps it manifests as an unexpected cool breeze on a hot summer day or the sound of a bird chirping outside your window. Maybe it’s a favorite hike just outside the city or maybe it’s a burst of color that provides the perfect distraction on your Sunday morning stroll. A tree, a flower, a bloom, a petal… the sense of calm and renewal that nature provides is often overlooked, but this year, we are choosing to bring that natural beauty to the forefront.  Introducing Flora, a 12 month Botanical Appliqué BOM designed by Aurifil’s Kate Brennan in partnership with graphic designer Christina Weisbard. The colors and design of Flora were drawn from 12 breathtaking rainforest plants from the Amazon Water Lily and the Bird of Paradise to the Jade Vine and the Spider Lily. The monthly blocks,  allow each of the 12 featured plants to take center stage.  While instructions are given for fusible appliqué, a variety of methods of appliqué and finishing will be highlighted. Depending on the month, raw blocks are 12-1/2″ x 12-1/2” or 12-1/2” x 24-1/2”. They can be finished into individual minis or collected to create a finished 48” x 48” quilt.
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We Are Our Stories

by | 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                            …

Why QSOS is Special

by | 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.          …

Quilt Puzzle: The Darwin Quilt

by | Nov 24, 2022 | Jigsaw puzzles, News

Your Quilt Jigsaw Puzzle for November is below!   Do you love the monthly Quilt Jigsaw Puzzle? We’d love to have you as a member if you’re not already on the team!   We rely on the generous support of donors and members to sustain our projects. If you support our mission of documenting, preserving, and sharing the stories of quilts and quiltmakers, join us by starting and maintaining an annual membership, making a donation, or learning how your business or corporation can become a supporter of the Quilt Alliance. We thank our members regularly with special content like QSOS interviews and other community oral history events.   Tip: for best results, solve puzzle on this page on a desktop computer or laptop. If you are solving on a mobile device, click on the puzzle piece icon in the lower righthand corner to solve on the Jigsaw Planet website.   Welcome to another quilt jigsaw puzzle from Quilt Alliance! The beautiful quilts in our puzzles have all been entries in past Quilt Alliance quilt contests.     The Darwin Quilt by Jean Van Bockel   This month’s puzzle spotlights a quilt titled The Darwin Quilt made by Jean Van Bockel of Boise, Idaho for the 2014 Quilt Alliance contest and auction, Inspired By     Materials   Cotton fabric, hand appliqued and embroidered, machine quilted Artist’s Statement   Honorable Mention: Members’ Choice Awards From the DAR collection there is a beautiful appliqued quilt made by Josephine Miller Adkins in 1874. Her family called it the Biblical Stories Quilt. It was made right after Darwin’s theory of evolution was published, This shocking new concept stirred up controversy around the world and is still debated 140 years later. I took design ideas from Josephine’s quilt but used bright colors, added a Darwin fish and put a monkey on the tree of knowledge.  …

Quilt Puzzle: Bat Love

by | Oct 22, 2022 | Jigsaw puzzles

Your Quilt Jigsaw Puzzle for October is below! Do you love the monthly Quilt Jigsaw Puzzle? We’d love to have you as a member if you’re not already on the team! We rely on the generous support of donors and members to sustain our projects. If you support our mission of documenting, preserving, and sharing the stories of quilts and quiltmakers, join us by starting and maintaining an annual membership, making a donation, or learning how your business or corporation can become a supporter of the Quilt Alliance. We thank our members regularly with special content like QSOS interviews and other community oral history events. Tip: for best results, solve puzzle on this page on a desktop computer or laptop. If you are solving on a mobile device, click on the puzzle piece icon in the lower righthand corner to solve on the Jigsaw Planet website. Welcome to another quilt jigsaw puzzle from Quilt Alliance! The beautiful quilts in our puzzles have all been entries in past Quilt Alliance quilt contests. Bat Love by Elizabeth Ferry Pekins This month’s puzzle spotlights a quilt titled Bat Love made by Elizabeth Ferry Pekins of Lampasas, Texas for the 2015 Quilt Alliance contest and auction, Animals We Love Materials Double sided art quilt with integrated hanging sleeve. Artist’s Statement We love bats! Bats are cute,furry,loveable,sensitive and often misunderstood. They are endangered and threatened world wide. Our family loves bats and our life revolves around their nocturnal world. Vacations and outings involve visiting bat caves and urban colonies. My doubled sided art quilt features a colorful bat hanging around with bat friends flying in the distance. Many of my pieces are donated to bat and cave conservation charities. We love bats!…