Happy Mother’s Day! We are so proud to conclude our week-long Mother’s Day StoryShare with these special messages today, including a beautiful tribute from two of our founders. May all who mother, know they are appreciated, and all who miss their mothers, take comfort in memories. We’re planning to repeat this special project next year, so start scanning those photos! Join the Quilt Alliance today to ensure that stories like these will be preserved for future generations to come! Karey Patterson Bresenhan and Nancy O’Bryant Puentes Nancy and I are two of the founders of the Alliance, but we probably would never have gotten involved with quilts or helped to build the quilting industry or helped to found any non-profit quilt organization—much less four!—if it were not for the two ladies pictured here with us. Our mothers were sisters and wonderful quilters in their own right. My mama, Jewel Pearce Patterson, is on Nancy’s left and Nancy’s mother, Helen Pearce O’Bryant, is on Jewel’s left. Together the four of us founded the International Quilt Association (IQA). The mothers were there at the family quilting bee when we learned to quilt from their mother, our Granny, Ella Glaeser Pearce. The quilt was my wedding quilt, the top of which was pieced by Granny’s mother, our Great Grandmother Karoline Uttech Glaeser, and four of her daughters came together that weekend. It was a wonderful introduction to quilting. The mothers (and much of the time that, collectively, was exactly the way we thought of them) taught us that when “the ox was in the ditch,” everybody in the family was expected to pitch in and get him out! So we learned to pitch in, and pitch in we did, every time it seemed that quilts and quilting needed help. With the mothers’ encouragement, we even took quilts to Congress and  testified when American-made quilts seemed in danger. When we did the Texas Quilt Search, the mothers often flew with us to the next city where we were holding a Quilt Day and were wonderful help. The mothers were often surprised at the projects we undertook, but they never once failed to support us with unfailing love and appreciation. We were lucky girls who knew the joy of growing into friends with their mothers.   Bradley Mitchell, QA Board Member My mother, Irene Elizabeth Mitchell… first of her name and fierce mother of 4 dragons 🐉 . Irene resides in Yorkshire, England… approximately 3270 miles from my current home in Chicago, IL.  I have learnt so much from this strong lady, but the jewel of her imparted wisdom is empathy and unconditional love. This photograph was captured in 2016, on a trip to Milano, Italy 🇮🇹. Happy Mother’s day to you boo, and to all mothers out there raising and supporting children to be the change they want to see in the world.   QA Board Member and Treasurer, Lisa Brehm Ellis My mom has a generous heart, is always upbeat, and never has a negative thing to say about another person. She taught me to always see the positive, dream big, and make the world a better place by building others up….

Only two days until Mother’s Day, and we have more special women to honor today. If you are a QA member, it’s not too late to send your images and text. Nonmembers can join or make a $30+ donation to participate. More info here.   Susan Brubaker Nash, QA Member My mother, Ellie Brubaker, was trained as a home economics teacher and was a great traditional quilter and garment sewer. This photo shows us in 1995, working on her 1958 Singer, which she gave me when I got interested in sewing. Mom taught me how to make a perfect double binding, and enthusiastically supported my quilting career. Both of my grandmothers and at least one of my great-grandmothers were also quilters, and I have several of their quilts! Visit Susan online.   Marin Hanson, QA Board Alumnus My mom wasn’t much of a seamstress; in fact, she never wanted me to be forced to take Home Economics classes because she resented the fact that she had to when she was young. She did, however, have the most amazing scarf collection and I remember digging through it regularly as a little girl, admiring the various patterns and textures. And she sure knew how to dress my brother and me in some natty 70s duds! Visit Marin online. Janneken Smucker, Past QA Board President My mom taught me about the bias. The bias is the diagonal grain of the cloth. I remember cutting a doll’s dress out of this green fabric and I cut it wrong, on the bias, instead of on the grain. My mom showed me how to look carefully at the fabric and see the weave, and to cut across it. Ironically, I chose a senior prom dress in an emerald green that had to be cut on the bias. My mother, who I should have realized by that point, made my prom dress, probably against her better judgement, now that I realize what it takes to raise a daughter. I remain against the bias, in most things. Visit Janneken…

This week, we are proud to celebrate our Mothers, including any woman who has taught, inspired and supported us. If you are a QA member, it’s not too late to send your images and text. Nonmembers can join or make a $30+ donation to participate. More info here.   Mary Evelynn Sorrell, QA board alumnus My mother was not a quilter-artist, she was a painter-artist. She taught me to recognize skill in composition, color, dimensionality, and how to pull the viewer into the frame. All of these qualities I can see in my favorite quilts. I am grateful she taught me to appreciate art and recognize the makers for the talented people they are. She led me unknowingly into the most favorite part of my career creating art exhibits. Visit Mary Evelynn on Facebook. Earamichia Brown, QA board member She has instilled in me the knowledge that love is greater than blood and any other element or force on earth. And with that love you can survive and thrive provided you keep that love in your heart and soul. Because of her I continue to shine bright and strive to live my greatest life. Visit Earamichia’s website.   Victoria Findlay Wolfe, QA board member alumnus I wish I could find the photo of my Mother and I in our matching double knit polyester crazy 60’s multi color print, that she made for us. My mother was a great seamstress and worked for a while at FingerHut. When I would ask her to make my dolls clothes, she would say, “You can do that!” And that is pretty much how I learned to sew garments, by watching my mother and making stuff up as I went a long. Thanks for allowing me to play, Mom! Visit Victoria’s website.  To participate in the Mother’s Day StoryShare Week: First: Join or renew your QA membership, or Purchase a gift membership for your mom, or Make at least a $30 donation on our website or via our FB page.   Second: Follow this link to submit your story and photo. We will notify you when your Mother’s Day StoryShare message is…

Join us this week to celebrate your Mother, including any woman who has taught, inspired and supported you. We will be sharing photos and stories all week from our members and supporters.   Amy Henderson, QA board alumnus My mom, Mary, cannot sew. Indeed, I secretly believe she takes a perverse pleasure in being the kind of woman who puts her considerable talents and energies into non-domestic, non-artistic pursuits; in being the antithesis of her mother who made everything for her home. So I did not learn to sew, quilt, embroider, knit, weave (or bake) from my mother. Luckily, I also have a father who is an avid needle-worker and he happily stepped in to pass such time-honored traditions from his generation to mine. Yet there is no doubt that I learned a life-affirming lesson from my mother that strengthens and feeds my creative soul daily, and that is how to be simply me. I do not need to be exactly like my mother, or my grandmother, or any of the other wonderful women in my life. I just need to be me. No mother could have more fully embraced her opposite—in temperament or crafty interest—than mine or been a better role model for how to embrace her child’s stark differences. I have a need to make things, and she in turn learned to cherish each and every crafty endeavor I pursued even as it took time away from the things she wanted to see me do instead. Here we are together around 1982 with my first loom when I developed a taste for crafting independence. As my daughter nears this same age, I see even more clearly how hard—and essential—it is to let her be her and not expect her to be just like me.       Mary Kay Davis, QA board member I was selected to give a speech at my 8th grade graduation. It was a special occasion so my Mom made my dress. (Can you guess the year?) While she was an amazing seamstress, sewing was really not her thing. I think it might have had to do with “having” to make her own clothes during the Depression. I was pretty excited about the whole thing. She let me help pick the pattern and fabric. It was around this time that she let me take sewing lessons and I haven’t stopped since. Visit Mary Kay online.  To participate in the Mother’s Day StoryShare Week: First: Join or renew your QA membership, or Purchase a gift membership for your mom, or Make at least a $30 donation on our website or via our FB page.   Second: Follow this link to submit your story and photo. We will notify you when your Mother’s Day StoryShare message is…

Join us this week to celebrate your Mother, including any woman who has taught, inspired and supported you. We will be sharing photos and stories all week from our members and supporters. Debby Josephs, QA Office Manager My mother, Marjorie Grant, was a remarkable, beautiful, incredibly smart woman who graduated from high school at 15, graduated from Wellesley at 19 where she majored in art history and had her first job after graduation in the library at MOMA. My mother was always an artist but somehow apparently was convinced by my father that she could be a clothes designer as well. They took the huge step in 1954, with four kids, to start their own business, Midge Grant Inc. Mom was the designer and Dad was the manufacturer. They had a showroom and factory in NYC and I always loved visiting both. They started modestly designing and selling aprons – I still proudly have one – and Mom evolved into a sportswear designer with six lines a year. They were in business for about 30 years. This photo was a publicity shot for some publication and I’m the bad posture girl in the pic. I wish there had been DVRs back then in the 50’s because we four kids, and Mom and Dad, went on a live Hugh Downs tv show modeling those early aprons! Amy Milne, QA executive director This is a favorite photo of me and my mom, Sylvia (who is now 84 years young and lives on Bluebird Farm in Morganton, NC). She taught me to sew and knit (and retaught me to knit when I forgot). I can describe in vivid detail the sewing boxes she has owned over the years: how they smelled, how the compartments were organized, and what you could find on the very bottom of the box if you were lucky, and persistent (a single peppermint Lifesavers clinging to the bottom of gritty wrapper). I cherish the fabric scraps that she has given me and the garments that she has passed down to me. A great joy for me was to make Mom a quilt in 2014 from the fabric scraps of the curtains she made for her very first house. Here’s the Go Tell It! recording about that quilt (yes, humbly juxtaposed against quilts in an exhibition of Gee’s Bend quilts) :https://youtu.be/osZ2RTgA9xA To participate in the Mother’s Day StoryShare Week: First: Join or renew your QA membership, or Purchase a gift membership for your mom, or Make at least a $30 donation on our website or via our FB page.   Second: Follow this link to submit your story and photo. We will notify you when your Mother’s Day StoryShare message is posted!  …

The nonprofit Quilt Alliance launched StoryBee, a new interview show created for its members. The twenty-minute web-based program will profile notable people who make, collect, sell, study, exhibit and/or preserve quilts. In keeping with the Quilt Alliance mission to document, preserve and share the history of quilts, StoryBee will record conversations with interesting people from all corners of the quilt world and bring these stories to our members.   The Quilt Alliance is proud to feature Victoria Findlay Wolfe in the debut episode of StoryBee. Victoria is a NYC based International Award Winning Quilter and teacher. She was raised on a farm in central Minnesota, and learned to sew and quilt when she was just four years old. Victoria graduated from the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Art in 1993, and a year later moved to New York City. Victoria has an upcoming exhibit at the Iowa Quilt Museum opening April 17th (through July 29): Playing with Purpose: Victoria Findlay Wolfe Retrospective. Victoria Findlay Wolfe   Frances O’Roark Dowell, the host of StoryBee, is an author and quiltmaker and is best known for her “beloved books for tweens and teenagers” (New York Times Sunday Book Review). Since 2010 she has also hosted a popular podcast about her life as a quilter, The Off-Kilter Quilt, and in 2016 established a small publishing company to bring out a line of stories and novels especially for quiltmakers and quilt lovers. The quilting novel Birds in the Air was followed by the short story collection Margaret Goes Modern in 2017. Stars Upon Stars – a sequel to Birds in the Air – will be published in 2018. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband, two sons, and a dog named Travis. Frances O’Roark Dowell   StoryBee, Episode 1 will be available to the public through the end of February, after which a member’s login will be required to access StoryBee videos. Upcoming guests include: Alex Anderson, Carolyn Crump, Marin Hanson, Roderick Kiracofe, Carolyn Mazloomi, Luana Rubin, Denyse Schmidt, Julie Silber, Ricky Tims, and Nichole Wilde. Quilt Alliance members pick the membership fee that suits their budget, starting as low as $25, with the option to receive thank you gifts at each level. New and current Quilt Alliance members are encouraged to begin or renew their memberships by February 28, after which fees will go up 20% (the first increase since 2004, when the QA membership program began). One lucky QA member will win a special Valentine’s Bundle, sponsored by Victoria Findlay Wolfe Quilts, to be drawn on March 1. All current members as of February 28 will be eligible to win. Valentines Bundle Giveaway for QA Members Member support enables the small nonprofit, with one full time and two part-time staff members, to maintain and grow several important grassroots oral history projects. Projects include Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories (QSOS), archived in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, Go Tell It at the Quilt Show! a short-format video project presented on YouTube, and the Quilt Story Road Show education and outreach program. For more information visit our membership page. The Quilt Alliance is proud to be sponsored by these generous companies. View our full sponsor list…