by Amy Milne | Jan 19, 2019 | QSOS
The Quilt Alliance’s keystone project, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories, or QSOS, celebrates an important birthday this year: two decades of preserving the voices of today’s quiltmakers. This unique oral history collection, the largest of its kind in the world, includes over 1,200 interviews with quiltmakers. Each quiltmaker interviewed between 1999 and 2017 is represented in the collection with an audio recording, a written transcript and photographs of the quilt, often pictured with the maker. The first interviews were conducted at the International Quilt Festival in 1999 with backing from Quilt Alliance founders Karey Bresenhan, Nancy O’Bryant Puentes (both of Quilts, Inc), and Shelly Zegart (of the Kentucky Quilt Project), as well as key Quilt Alliance board members. From 1999 until January 2007, the Quilt Alliance partnered with the University of Delaware, Center for Material Culture Studies, under the guidance of Dr. Bernard Herman, to house QSOS records. From January 2007, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress has served as the physical archive for QSOS interview materials. Researchers, in addition to accessing interview transcripts and photographs online via the Quilt Alliance website, can access audio recordings of interviews and related materials directly from the Library of Congress. Since its inception, QSOS has been a grassroots project with volunteer leadership. Volunteers, lead for many years by artist and Quilt Alliance board alumni Karen Musgrave, conducted interviews and curated exhibitions drawn from the archive. In addition, scholars have utilized the archive of interviews in their research. The interviews show us the complexity and diversity of quiltmakers and their quilts. Thanks to the hard work of our volunteers, the anonymous quiltmaker has gained a voice. As we enter the 20th year of the project we are adding a new level of accessibility to this collection of voices. The migration, already underway, will move all interviews and their audio recordings to a new website, qsos.quiltalliance.org. Twenty QSOS interviews have been added to the new site so far, allowing users to listen to the recordings for the first time online. New features allow users to search and browse the interview transcript, create links to specific playback points in the recording, and view an index for each interview. Indexing is done by project volunteers or staff members and entails the creation of a partial transcript, a synopsis and keywords for each section of the interview, all of which make the collection easier to search and browse. The Quilt Alliance is now raising funds to support this transition and to date, 241 interviews have been sponsored by generous supporters. To sponsor an interview, visit the new QSOS website and make a contribution of $25 or more. Your donation will help us cover the cost of preparing an interview to be made available on our new QSOS platform. That includes the costs associated with cassette digitization, file formatting, transcript editing and indexing, web hosting, and other fees. View a list of QSOS Sponsors to date…
by Amy Milne | Dec 15, 2018 | QSOS, Quilt Jigsaw Puzzles
Your Quilt Jigsaw Puzzle 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! This month, we’ve got a new challenge for you! See below for clues. Be sure to sign up for our blog notifications, so that you don’t miss any of the upcoming puzzles. Name That QSOS Interviewee! This week’s puzzle spotlights a quiltmaker who was interviewed for our Quilters’ S.O.S. – Save Our Stories oral history project on November 11, 2011. That interview is one of the first 20 interviews added to the new QSOS website to launch our QSOS 20th anniversary year. The Quilt Alliance is in the process of a major update for the project that will include searchable audio recordings and transcript, interview summaries and keywords and photos. The entire collection is still viewable on the QA website here, but this new site, when completed (hopefully by early 2020), will make the collection of more than 1,200 QSOS interviews with quiltmakers far more accessible online. Visit the new QSOS site with sample interviews here and consider making a $25 donation to sponsor an interview! Clues: Excerpts from the Interview Excerpt 1 Interviewer: Can you tell me about your process in creating this particular piece that you brought today? Interviewee: Yes I can. I work from photographs. I took the photograph and enlarged the image using a large format photocopier. On the photocopy, I traced out the majordesign elements with a black sharpie marker. The Sharpie marker bleeds thru the 2:00paper so when completed, the mirror image of the image is created on the back side of the photocopy. This becomes the master template pattern used to create the design. Each template piece was numbered then transferred to paper backed fusible web and then individually cut out. Fabrics were auditioned for each template unit, fused then cut out. Using a applique pressing sheet, the template pieces were reassembled into larger units (petals of the flower). I would work one unit (petal) at a time around the circumference of the flower I worked on entire, then I completed the center. The bee is a needle felted, and the wings are made with Angelina fiber and organza that I stitched , then attached. Excerpt 2 Interviewer: Do you currently belong to any quilt guilds or groups or both? Interviewee: I do. I belong to a number of groups. I am member of International Quilt Association (IQA), Studio Art Quilting Association (SAQA), IQF),Austin [Texas.] Fiber Artists (AFA) and it’s like an art quilt group. I’m also a member ofSurface Design Association (S.D.A.), and the Austin Area Quilt Guild. Excerpt 3 Interviewer: I’m going to ask you some questions about just your general feelings about quilting in general, like what do you think makes a great quilt? Interviewee [seven second pause.] I’d have to think about that for a second. What I think that makes a good quilt really is the fact that it’s been made. We live in such a society where people don’t know how to do anything. They go somewhere else to have things done. I think it’s important to be able to make something and to go through that process so all quilts to me have value and meaning because somebody made them and they weren’t mass produced. I guess I’m not one for kits and that type of thing or preprocessed type stuff. Every quilt has a story, there’s a meaning that every single quilt artist has and they’re trying to convey. So, just the fact that they’re made from a beginning quilt that, the first attempt that somebody trying to do something to most intricate and elaborate style quilts, just the fact that they were even thought of and made in the first place I think means something to me. Think you know who the mystery QSOS Interviewee is? Now solve the puzzle to see if you’re right! About Quilt Alliance We rely on the generous support of donors and members like you to sustain our projects. If you support our mission of documenting, preserving, and sharing the stories of quilts and quiltmakers, join us by becoming a member or renewing your membership, making a donation, or learning how your business or corporation can become a supporter of the Quilt…
by Amy Milne | Dec 15, 2018 | Alliance Quilt Contests
This month we revisit some of the gorgeous pieces in our QA Contest Quilt archives, all made by groups. Since 2007, our annual contests have been open to both individuals and groups. Often these collaborative quilts break new ground for the artists-trying new techniques, or working with a specific team approach where the quilt is sectioned and divvied up amongst collaborators. Sometimes the collaboration echoes the artists’ relationship or marks a special moment in time. We are so grateful to have received support from these artists and to have documented their work. You’ll see three quilts by the Broadway Gentlemen’s Quilting Auxiliary. This group of talented quilters all share a connection–they have at one time worked on Broadway, as actors, dressers or other creative or supportive roles. Their approach differs in each of the quilts, each showing great care to create unified design without compromising individual group member contributions. Another group quilt, “Time for Tea” made for the TWENTY contest uses a strip technique to divide up the surface and group responsibilities. The quilt made by Asheville, NC area quilters won the Grand Prize in 2014 and the team had the difficult task of sharing a Handi Quilter HQ Sweet Sixteen sit-down machine. 🙂 Another team effort made for the TWENTY contest, “Second Triangulation,” showcases leftover pieces of the group quilt, “Triangulations,” exhibited at the International Quilt Association’s “World of Beauty” show at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas in 2013. Inventive repurposing! Some group quilts featured here are a collaboration of two, sometimes a familial team and sometimes artistic colleagues. Esther Muh created a quilt with her daughter Elizabeth for the Inspired By contest in 2014, and Mary Pumphrey worked with her daughter Lorna on their entry for the 2012 Home Is Where the Quilt Is contest. Mary Kay Davis enlisted her son Clayton Alexander to submit a quilt for the Home contest. Quilt Alliance Treasurer Lisa Ellis allied with her husband Mike to create a beautiful “Sunflowers” quilt for the 2011 Alliances contest. Longtime Quilt Alliance member and volunteer Alice Helms made the quilt “Show of Hands” with her husband Arthur, “to put together two art forms – drawing and quilting. The twenty cartoon-like panels are integrated into a traditional quilt block layout and the drawings suggest the prominence of hands in all endeavors.” Syrie Blanco Walsh painted and Maria Ferri Cousins quilted their collaborative entry for the Animals We Love contest in 2015. Since quilts are historically a collaborative effort, it’s fascinating to see how group quilting evolves. Enjoy this gallery from the QA Contest Quilt Archives. [huge_it_gallery…
by Amy Milne | Nov 17, 2018 | Jigsaw puzzles, QSOS, QSOS Spotlight
Your Quilt Jigsaw Puzzle 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! This month, we’ve got a new challenge for you! See below for clues. Be sure to sign up for our blog notifications, so that you don’t miss any of the upcoming puzzles. Name That QSOS Interviewee! This week’s puzzle spotlights a quiltmaker who was interviewed for our Quilters’ S.O.S. – Save Our Stories oral history project on November 5, 2011. Clues: Excerpts from the Interview Excerpt 1: “I consider myself a traditional quiltmaker, although I’m going into new venues, which is very, very exciting but typically I’ve been known as the Star Lady, and handquilter. So this particular quilt was made entirely by me, I didn’t even have a celebrity stunt sewer do the binding [laughs.] and it has machine pieced stars, hand appliquéd and handquilted.” Excerpt 2: “What is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? Couple years ago we would’ve said bringing in new quilt, younger quiltmakers, but I’m thrilled about the modern quilt guild, they’re doing their own thing. At Quilt Market you saw all these young women and I see them facing the struggles that I faced as a young mom, being a quiltmaker. I would say right now in history, right now it would be the socioeconomic issues and quilt shops having to close down. I think our industry, despite what’s all going on in the world, is relatively alive and healthy and if all of us commit to bring in one quiltmaker, just one quiltmaker, then that quiltmaker is going to pass her fairy dust onto somebody else just like my Katie Coons.” Excerpt 3: “How will I be remembered as a quilter? The good news is, is I’m on the internet now with [removed to make it harder on you!] because it’s really who I am. I was, I had a persona that was dictated by Home and Garden Television, that I needed to be, and that’s really not who I am. I’m a little bit, have a little bit of a wild side, if anybody knows me. I think how I hope, I hope how I am remembered is somebody that opened the door of quiltmaking to another person and by the magic of me having to fall into that television opportunity, I was blessed that particular incident. It will not be for my quiltmaking skills [laughs.] Think you know who the mystery QSOS Interviewee is? Now solve the puzzle to see if you’re right! About Quilt Alliance We rely on the generous support of donors and members like you to sustain our projects. If you support our mission of documenting, preserving, and sharing the stories of quilts and quiltmakers, join us by becoming a member or renewing your membership, making a donation, or learning how your business or corporation can become a supporter of the Quilt…
by Amy Milne | Nov 17, 2018 | Alliance Quilt Contests
Our heart goes out to all those suffering from the devastating fires burning across the state of California. Friends on social media report that many in our community have lost their homes, their businesses or both. We want all those who are suffering from losses and all those in fear of these fires to know we are with you in spirit, sending our love. And please pass on the availability of our Quilt Recovery Kits to those who have had quilts damaged by the fires. Quilts made by Californians or about California are our theme for this month’s gallery from our Quilt Contest Archives. [huge_it_gallery…
