New Quilt Jigsaw Puzzle Welcome to this week’s quilt jigsaw puzzle from Quilt Alliance! We are creating new quilt jigsaw puzzles for you that are both fun to solve and inspirational, too!  The beautiful quilts in the puzzles have all been contestants or quilt donations in past Quilt Alliance contests and auctions. Be sure to sign up for our blog notifications, so that you don’t miss any of the upcoming puzzles. The Quilt Alliance presents a contest, exhibition and auction of small wall quilts every year. This key fundraiser supports our mission of documenting, preserving and sharing the history of quilts and their makers, and is an important opportunity to showcase and record the work of quilters in the U.S. and all over the world. You can browse the 2017 contest quilts here www.QuiltAllanceAuction.org to start picking out your favorites for our annual online auction that begins on Nov. 13, 2017. Good Morning by Nita E. Markos This week’s puzzle quilt is entitled Good Morning and was made by Nita E Markos of Hillsboro, Illinois for the 2017 Quilt Alliance “Voices” contest and auction. Nita used self-tinted fabric, applique, collage and oil pastel crayons on her piece.   Artist’s Statement The rooster makes me think of a visit to relations in a small Greek village in the mountians. Each morning we were awakened by a rooster crowing, then a dog barking, then a donkey braying. What a way to wake up. 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…

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…

Note: this puzzle works best on a desktop or laptop computer. For a phone and tablet-friendly version, visit this link. http://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play&pid=0aba8f2a0e3f New Quilt Jigsaw Puzzle Feature Welcome to a fun new quilt jigsaw puzzle feature from Quilt Alliance! We are creating new quilt jigsaw puzzles for you that are both fun to solve and inspirational, too!  The beautiful quilts in the puzzles have all been contestants in past Quilt Alliance contests. Be sure to sign up for our blog notifications, so that you don’t miss any of the upcoming puzzles. The Quilt Alliance presents a contest, exhibition and auction of small wall quilts every year. This key fundraiser supports our mission of documenting, preserving and sharing the history of quilts and their makers, and is an important opportunity to showcase and record the work of quilters in the U.S. and all over the world. You can browse the 2017 contest quilts here www.QuiltAllanceAuction.org to start picking out your favorites for our annual online auction that begins on Nov. 13, 2017. My Garden This week’s puzzle quilt is entitled My Garden and was made by Margaret Cibulsky of Port Washington, NY. This quilt was the Handi Quilter Grand Prize winner in the 2016 My Favorite Things  contest. If you need help solving the puzzle, you can find a picture of the puzzle quilt here. Artist’s Statement The whole style of this quilt was an experiment. While my favorite way to make a quilt is improvisational piecing, I had never used this technique with the intention of using my work as the background for a natural scene. Another first was the free-cut blooms which I attached with raw-edge applique and then using some fancy stitches on my machine to create greenery. All in all, this little quilt is one of my favorites! Judges’ Comments We were all in agreement about the appropriateness of My Garden for this prize. The maker is clearly not stuck in any particular genre. Cone flowers and daisies bloom atop a somewhat “improvisational” background of random-size squares and rectangles, mostly—but not entirely—solids. The freeform flowers, though not ultra-realistic, are easily recognizable and nicely balanced. We love the lacy, embroidered stems and purple flowers that make up the lower third of the piece. Congratulations on a job well done! 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…