When Hurricane Harvey brought historic flooding to large areas of Texas and Louisiana earlier this week, quilters all across the world began planning donation quilts. Quilters are among the most generous of artists, who routinely give away their work to comfort, warm and cheer the recipient, often someone they’ve never met. Quilt Alliance Oral History Program Coordinator, Emma Parker, looked into the Quilters’ S.O.S. oral history collection to find three excerpts that speak to this tradition of the generosity and care taking that quilters have provided for centuries. Irene Fankhauser, interviewed by Sharon Ann Louden in Tecumseh, Nebraska in 2009. SL: How do you think quilts are important for American life? IF: I think that quilts are [clears throat.] important to the history of America because the early settlers had to use pieces of material they had in order to make quilts they were utility quilts they had to make them to keep warm. My grandmother my dad’s mother made a quilt for her mother when their home was destroyed by a tornado and that was about in the late 1890’s or early 1900’s. Evidently the quilt passed on to another daughter who was a sister of my grandmother and a few years ago when she passed away her son gave it to me because she had put a note on there saying what had happened and that the quilt was made by my grandmother and so I got it kind of around the bush so I have that now too. Mitzi Wiebe Oakes interviewed by Nola Forbes in South Burlington, Vermont in 2009. MO: I did a lot of small quilts to get through the Katrina hurricane, where my daughter’s house was destroyed. She was in desperate need of having small quilts for the hospital. I made as many as possible. And also did the quilt guild. We sent, I think, over seventy quilts to New Orleans. MO: I do have trouble letting go of my quilts. They all represent something about my life or me at the time I do them. They really do tell a story about my life. Donna Sue Groves interviewed by Karen Musgrave in Columbus, Ohio in 2008. DG: I thought that it would grow, it would probably grow out throughout the Appalachian region, the thirteen states. Really never thought so much about the United States in 2001, and it growing that big, but what’s interesting is now that for the last seven years, and I’ve watched it go into Iowa and Missouri and Kansas and Indiana and Illinois and Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia. As I’ve watched it grow and participated in that growth, I’ve come to realize that what I didn’t realize before, that rural people, in our rural lands, the places that people settled with their families and on small farms, are truly the backbone of America, and that we’re not so different from one another. I never thought about Iowa up until 2002. I never really gave a lot of thought about Illinois or Indiana. Now, when I hear the news of the great flooding that’s happening in Iowa or along the Mississippi, now I reflect and think about those folks. My life always has been, tied to other states, counties, but now I think about how really really flat we are and how we’re intertwined and connected together. You can take one project, Adams County, Ohio for example; you could take our project in 2001, teleport it to Mason County, West Virginia, right now. They’re planning theirs. They have their first quilt square up. You couldn’t tell the difference except the names have changed and maybe the shapes of the barns. We’re all one family, in a sense. We all have similar dreams, hopes, and aspirations. KM: There’s power in quilting. I believe that. DG: There is power in quilts. Everybody has a quilt story. Everybody remembers a…
We first met Laura Hartrich at QuiltCon 2015 in Austin, Texas, when she recorded a Go Tell It at the Quilt Show! video with us. Her quilt “Quilt for Our Bed,” pieced by Laura and quilted by Nikki Maroon, won the People’s Choice Award at QuiltCon that year, and we were thrilled to document Laura’s quilt story, along with 39 others exhibited at the show.
In 2016, Laura founded an Instagram account, Quilt Stories, that already has over 3,000 followers. We recently asked Laura to tell us more about her inspiration and goals for the project. Q: Laura, what motivated you to start the Quilt Stories Instagram Page? A: To be completely honest, the motivation was a little selfish. I’m a quilter myself. On my good days, I love the community and inspiration that come along with being connected to so many quilters around the world, via social media, especially Instagram. On my not-so-good days, I struggle with comparing my work to that of others, and feeling like I’ll never measure up to the vast talent that’s out there in the quilt world. I wanted to create a project that would remind me that it’s not all about talent and design and book deals and QuiltCon acceptance letters. I thought providing a platform for people to tell their most meaningful quilt stories would give me that reminder. That’s not to say I don’t love great design and show-worthy quilts. But I wanted to showcase quilts that shine for other reasons… Q: Your page header says: “A place to share quilts with special stories. A place to be reminded why we quilt.” Do you give any perimeters for the stories people submit? A: I really don’t. I let people interpret it as they will. I also don’t curate the account at all. I post all the stories people submit, in the order received. If someone thinks their quilt has a story worth telling, I want @quiltstories to be the place where they share it. And I really believe that every handmade quilt has a story worth telling. The people who follow the account have all been so sweet and supportive when folks share quilts, whether they are commenting on a master quilter’s work or a first time quilter’s work. The focus is more on the intention of the maker, and a little less on the end result. I think it’s a special corner of social media, where positivity and encouragement are the norm. Q: When did you start the page and how many stories have you received since you started? A: I started the account in October 2016. I’ve shared a story almost every day for the last 9 months. There are almost 200 stories posted, and the Quilt Stories community, as I like to think of it, has grown to over 3,000 followers. Q: What is the funniest story you’ve received? A: I don’t actually receive a lot of funny stories! Most of them are more purely in the happy or sad range. But I can think of a couple. My favorite has to be from Jill of @pieladyquilts who sent in a story about a quilt she made called “Let’s Get Married” (pictured at left). She explained how her husband proposed so unexpectedly (after a very short courtship!) that she “nearly drove off the road.” Her full description was funnier than mine. You can scroll back and find her post on December 8, 2016. Q: What story made you the most emotional? A: Oh, wow… There are so many beautiful stories submitted, that either make your heart break or burst with happiness. It feels impossible to choose one. Nikki of @babylovesquilts sent in a quilt (pictured at right) she made for friends who lost their baby 23 weeks into their pregnancy. That was a heart-wrenching story. Many quilt stories I receive tell a story of loss and grief. A memorial quilt can bring healing both to the maker and the recipient. On the happier side, I loved a story from Melanie, @southerncharmquilts, about admiring a picture of her great-grandmother with a beautiful hexie quilt top (pictured at left), but no one in her family knowing where that quilt had ended up. Not long after, Melanie received a phone call from her grandma, who had found the quilt top, bagged up and in mint condition. Melanie was, of course, thrilled, and went on to finish the quilt. Quilters finishing long-forgotten quilts is a common theme, and always a happy story. Q: What are your plans for the project? A: I can’t say that I have any plans for the project, other than to keep posting as long as people are willing to share their stories with me and the Quilt Stories audience. Thank you for featuring Quilt Stories, and thank you for all the great work you to do preserve stories of quilts at Quilt…
The Quilt Alliance contest turns eleven this year and the 2017 theme, “Voices,” hints at the diversity and the history of the yearly challenge. Each year since 2007, we have asked artists to create a quilt that speaks to an open-ended theme, adaptable to any quilt medium. We encourage everyone who makes quilts to enter our annual contest regardless of their style (traditional, modern, art) or technique (longarm, hand quilting, applique, pieced…) –all are welcomed and valued! The first QA contest was launched in 2007 with several goals in mind. One goal was to raise funds to support the Alliance’s move from Louisville, Kentucky to our present home in Asheville, North Carolina. We also wanted to establish this fundraiser as an annual initiative to provide ongoing operating support. Another aim was to document the work of our members by taking a “snapshot” of quilts made in a particular year. QA board members Karen Musgrave and the late Yvonne Porcella set out to make the contest friendly to all quilters, whether they identified as longarmers, hand quilters, modern quilters… or simply artists. With this in mind, they crafted an open-ended theme that anyone could speak to, and that tradition has continued. Quilt Alliance quilt contests from 2007-2016 2007: Put a Roof Over Our Head 2008: My Quilts/Our History 2009: Crazy for Quilts 2010: New from Old 2011: Alliances: People, Patterns, Passion 2012: Home Is Where the Quilt Is 2013: TWENTY 2014: Inspired By 2015: Animals We Love 2016: Playing Favorites There are two weeks left to enter the 2017 contest–we extended our postmark deadline to July 3, 2017. Find full details and online registration for the “Voices” contest on the Voices contest webpage.. Get a sense of the quality and range of our past contests by perusing our press gallery: Talking Textiles, Issue #1, September 2016. Please note the omission of credit in this piece for the quilt on the left side of the page: Luke Hayne’s quilt, “[Gifts #22] Like Michael James “. Quilting Arts Magazine, Nov/Dec 2015. The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colorado. Sunday, December 26, 2010. The Laurel of Asheville. September 2009. Quilters Newsletter Magazine. Nov/Dec…
A chorus of artistic voices from all over the US and abroad are pouring into the Quilt Alliance office in Asheville this month. It’s entry time for our annual quilt contest and this year’s theme is “Voices,” We invite entrants to share their opinions, memories, language, conversation and truths in the form of a quilt. Help us document the state of quilting in 2017—let your voice be heard. And to ensure more voices are included, we have extended the postmark deadline to July 3, 2017. As part of our mission, the Quilt Alliance records the stories of quilts and quiltmakers through our oral history projects. We value the human voice as well as your voice expressed in cloth and thread. We encourage everyone who makes quilts to enter our annual contest regardless of their style (traditional, modern, art) or technique (longarm, hand quilting, applique, pieced…) –all are welcomed and valued! Join us for a walk down QA Contest Memory Lane! We are proud to present archives of all eleven years of Quilt Alliance contest entries on the Quilt Alliance website, as well as the Quilt Index site. For our 2011-2013 seasons, we asked artists to record their artists statements in audio form so that we could present and preserve the artists’ voices along with their quilts. Here are quilts and artist’s statements from our 2011 contest, “Alliances: People, Patterns, Passion.” Click on the audio files below each image to hear the makers of each quilt read their artist’s statement. [audio…
Sherri Lynn Wood is the keynote speaker at this year’s Quilters Take Manhattan, the Quilt Alliance’s annual fundraising event in New York City. Also speaking at the Saturday, September 16 Main Event at the Fashion Institute of Technology will be Merikay Waldvogel and Michael A. Cummings. Women of Color Quilters Network founder Carolyn L. Mazloomi will interview Cummings for Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories (QSOS), and Craft Napa founder Pokey Bolton will emcee. Sherri is a working artist based in Oakland, CA. Most recently she completed a four-month residency at Recology San Francisco with the task of presenting a body of work made completely from materials scavenged from the city dump. She has been making quilts and facilitating improvisational patchwork as a restorative life practice for twenty-five years. She is the author of The Improv Handbook For Modern Quilters – A Guide to Creating, Quilting and Living Courageously (Abrams 2015). We recently asked Sherri to answer five questions we ask quiltmakers as part of our QSOS oral history project. 1. What is your first quilt memory? Sherri Lynn Wood (SLW): One of my father’s co-workers in Richmond, VA, named PT for Hiram Petty Thomas, had a farm in South Hill, Virginia, which he visited every weekend to work it. Sometimes our whole family would visit PT on the farm just for a day. One summer when I was 9 or 10, I rode up one weekend with PT and stayed for a whole week with just his Aunt Helen and his mother Florence. PT returned the following weekend and brought me back with him. Helen and Florence ran a florist business in South Hill and maintained the farm some. During that week they took me to their neighbors house, one farm over, to a quilting bee. The hostess lowered a big frame from the ceiling and Florence, Helen and two or three other women sat around and quilted for the afternoon. I remember peeking underneath and waxing thread, and then threading the needles. When we were back at PT’s farm, Helen always had a sewing machine set up on the dining room table with stacks of diamonds, or squares, or triangles ready to be stitched whenever there was a free moment. They showed me how to chain stitch the patches, and that, I think, was the first time I ever sewed on a machine. I bought my first sewing machine when I was twelve, but didn’t make my first quilt until I was 24. 2. Have you ever used quilts to get through a difficult time? SLW: Yes, actually. I became depressed, and I dropped out of divinity school at Emory University around the age of 24 and I took up quilting. I loved it so much that I got a booth at the local farmer’s market and began making quilts for sale. I had always thought I would be a minister, and when I dropped out of school because of the depression, I was without a sense of identity. Quilting was hands on and very soothing, and eventually led me into becoming an artist. Over the course of my career and as I’ve become more healed myself, I’ve consciously chosen a trajectory of service and healing with my art and quilting practice. Also, fun note – seven years after dropping out of divinity school, Emory accepted one of my first major bodies of art work, “Parable Quilts,” for my masters thesis and awarded me a Master of Theological Studies. 3. What are your favorite quilting tools? SLW: Well, I have so many favorites, but let’s start with scissors since they seem to have taken a back seat to the rotary cutter. I still use my rotary cutter but there is so much I couldn’t do without my scissors. Since I do not use rulers to square blocks up, as my quilts get bigger I have to use my scissors to cut large sections and rows to match before I flip and sew. I always list SHARP dressmaking shears on my list of supplies for students, and am always dumfounded by how many people ignore this staple tool and bring dull or an itty bitty pair of scissors to class. Scissors are also necessary for cutting clothes apart, which I do a lot in my make-do and passage quilting practice. I also love my 15 year old straight stitchin’ and shootin’ Juki. It’s still going strong! Can’t live without my Q-Snap floor frame, also at least 15 years old, for hand quilting. 4. What do you think makes a great quilt? SLW: This is a great question and my answer is the rhythm of the maker’s attention. Another way to say that is honesty, or limbic resonance, or making relationships from a soul level. I’m all about flexible patterns and following internal cues to improvise patchwork. The more honest I am with myself, the more present I am to my emotions, habits, desires, joys, and challenges as they arise, the better the quilt. There is a lot of emphasis in the quilting world and the broader culture on good design, but my emphasis is on self-discovery, seeing my patterns. My goal is to get my design-planning brain and ego out of the way so that the patterns can flow as immediately as possible from a soul level. It’s not so easy to do! For me it’s a life practice. When I see this kind of soul-level honesty, this kind of deep rhythm of attention in another person’s quilt, I’m in awe. 5. What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? SLW: I may have answered that on a personal level in the question above. However, on a community level, I think quilt makers are diverse politically and it’s a rare opportunity these days to work side by side and share a similar love for a craft or activity, with people who have opposing political views. I think the biggest challenge may be for us to continue to explore, understand, accept and celebrate our differences rather than ignoring them, as well as celebrating our similarities. I would love to see the community of quilters to continue to grow in diversity in the areas of race, age, gender, nationality, and class. I think it’s great how guilds come together to make quilts for other people who have suffered or are at some disadvantage, but what I would like to see more of is these same quilters going out and quilting WITH these communities, like refugee communities, or with homeless populations for example, rather than for them. There is so much potential and infrastructure that has barely been tapped for social change, systemic healing, and growth for guild members and the broader communities they are a part of….
