This event was held on Thursday, May 15 @ 4 pm EDT on Zoom. Join us for an urgent community discussion this week. Hear how recent federal funding cuts are affecting fiber artists and organizations, and find out how you can help. Panelists include Amy Milne of the Quilt Alliance, Elaine Y. Yau of UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Susan Hudson a Diné Artist and 2024 NEA National Heritage Fellow, and Karena Bennett of the Surface Design Association.
Ways to Support the Quilt Alliance
If quilt documentation, preservation, and education remain a priority to you, we need your help right now. Here are some ways you can take action to support the Quilt Alliance and our community. Join the Quilt Alliance as a member or make a donation. Sustaining memberships allow us to budget in advance for projects and programs Encourage your guild to become a group member: includes free Zoom lecture, advertising, and QA Affiliate memberships for all group members Contact your congressional representatives in support of the National Endowment for the Arts. Subscribe to the QA newsletter Follow us on social media @quiltAlliance: IG, FB Share your quilt story to ensure that your voice is included and your quilts’ stories do not fade away.
Amy MilneQuilt Alliance
Elaine Y. YauBAMPFA
Susan Hudson2024 NEA National Heritage Fellow
Karena BennettSurface Design Association
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Quilters Take a Moment, the QA’s annual educational event is coming up on September 20 & 21 and this year all members can register for free! Just log into your membership portal and click on Register for Quilters Take a Moment. Non-members, you can purchase tickets ($60) or join and register for free via this form. This virtual event is designed to help you document the quilts you make and own. This is a unique event completely focused on tips and inspiration for documenting and preserving your personal quilt history. We often hear: What will happen to my quilts? Will my family and friends take care of them and know their value? The most important steps you can take to ensure your quilts are cared for and valued when you are no longer able to do so is to properly label and document them. Documenting a quilt underscores its value and importance and provides historical, technical, artistic, and maintenance information to the owner and anyone who comes across it. QTM Presentations will be aired live on September 20 & 21 and recorded for viewing through December 31, 2024. Sessions include: Telling the Story of Your Quilt Through Photography – Kitty Wilkin Video as a Tool for Documenting Your Quilts – Lyric Montgomery Kinard An Archive of Your Own: Using Spreadsheets to Describe and Catalog Your Quilts – Rachel Ivy Clarke Documentation as Creative Practice – Hannah Parks Documenting Your Guild or Group – A’donna Richardson Sustainable Routines for Quilt Documentation – Jenni Grover Register for Quilters Take a Moment today!
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Many National Quilting Day plans were laid aside this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. But quilters still celebrated quilts and community on March 21st virtually: sharing photos, gathering together online, and continuing to rally together (and apart) to support essential workers through the making of masks, gowns, and other supplies. Here are a few ways quilters around the world celebrated National Quilting Day this year. Quilts in the fresh air Our celebration at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky was cancelled in order to follow important social distancing rules. True to form, resourceful quiltmakers and quilt lovers across the world hung quilts outside of their homes to mark the day and to send a comforting and inspirational message to their neighbors. You can see a fantastic slide show of posts showing quilts wrapped around trees, hanging from porch rails and out of windows on the Quilt Alliance Instagram account (@quiltalliance) here. Activated and agile quiltmakers We are a resilient planet of humans and quilters, who are playing an important role right now–using our sewing skills to make masks, headbands, hats and gowns for our healthcare heroes. Others are using their organizing skills to coordinate mask requests, production and distribution. Those with design and fundraising skills are raising funds for materials and shipping costs. This is a group effort on a massive scale and the results are incredible. I started sewing masks on National Quilting Day for a Masks for Heroes group based here in North Carolina that has provided over 10,000 masks since March 21! Happy Birth Day Baby in Hungary! A group in Hungary got a jump on their National Quilting Day project and although this is a bit late, we’re so proud to share their story. Thank you to Hungarian quilter Zsuzsanna (Susan) Sziva for contacting us and sharing her groups’ story. Susan’s group, FoltModern, Hungarian Modern Quilting Group took on the Happy Birth Day Baby project this year. They adapted a pattern, Stepping Stones, designed by Janet White, founder of the project that debuted in 2003 as part of the Ohio Quilts! celebration of the Ohio bicentennial. The concept for Happy Birth Day Baby is simple and sweet: quilters make a quilt for the first baby born on National Quilting Day in their local hospital. Susan writes: A warm welcome from Hungary to all quilters around the world. We hope you will have a wonderful Quilting Day this year too. We are a small group of quilters following modern quilting principles. We are small but passionate so we organize a special day for Hungarian quilters second time this year. Last year was very exciting for us. In January we decided to celebrate Quilting Day in Hungary. We planned a virtual sew-along for the day itself and a Happy Birth Day action for the weekend. We chose a simple traditional block, flying geese as a base of the sew-along. We modernized it, but just a bit. We planned a table runner, but it could be easily converted to any size and format. In the special Facebook group of the day, we had 687 members by the end of the day. Some of them was just chatting, some of them was sewing the modified flying geese block, others just a traditional one or a 3D version. We had some sponsors so we drew small gifts a few times. The whole day was fun. Our team members sewed 15 baby blankets using different patterns. As celebrating the Happy Birth Day we gifted all newborn in 3 different hospitals. This year we asked fellow quilters to volunteer our action with blocks if they do not have time or energy for making a whole quilt. These blocks will be sewed together by our team and friends joining the event we organized for this. It is going to be a huge challenge, we have got around 60 blocks so far. Happy stitching, Zsuzsanna (Susan) Sziva FoltModern, Hungarian Modern Quilting Group Quilts made during the 2020 Quilting Day Sew Along in Hungary…
In September, the Quilt Alliance hosted its last Quilters Take Manhattan fundraising event. We are sad to end this chapter in our history, but excited about our next adventure–the launch of Quilt Story Road Show in 2018. Watch a video about the road show here! Through Quilters Take Manhattan we made a lot of new friends and worked with some of the most loyal and generous sponsors in the business. Every year at QTM we gave away door prizes and held both a silent auction and a raffle. Our sponsors went all out to provide prizes and items to bid on–the quilt bling was bountiful and beautiful! At our 2017 event in the Big Apple, one of our longtime sponsors Handi Quilter, Inc. donated one of their HQ Stitch machines for our door prize drawing. Lisa Mason of Darien, Connecticut came to QTM this year and put all of her raffle tickets into one box–the one for the HQ Stitch 210 sewing machine donated by Handi Quilter. She had a plan. Lisa’s daughter Caroline works at Elizabeth Seton Pediatric Center in Yonkers, NY, providing art therapy for mothers whose children live in the care facility full time. The program only had one sewing machine, and Lisa decided that if she won the machine in the raffle, she would gift it to this worthy program. Guess who won the raffle? 🙂 “I was so delighted when I actually won!!” said Lisa. “Karma is a wonderful thing!! I’m so thrilled that I could give them that machine. It is such a great portable!! Of course I had to try it out before I gave it to them. I used it to teach a group of 9 and 10 year olds how to sew simple patchwork at our local library. Passing down the obsession!” We were so excited to hear Lisa’s story, further proof that quilters (and quilt industry leaders) are the most generous people you’ll meet. We can’t wait to start traveling to guilds and groups across America to hear more stories of generous deeds and needs met. Find out how you can book a spot on the Quilt Story Road Show on our website. We’d love to hear about the ways you and/or your guild or group gives back to your community (comment below). On behalf of our sponsors and our members, I wish you a very happy holiday season. May we always know the joy of giving! Holiday hugs to you,…
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…
If you’re coming to Quilters Take Manhattan this year on Saturday, September 16, I hope you’ll consider supplementing the fun by coming to our amazing Garment District Scavenger Hunt the day before. The Hunt goes from 2:30 to 5:00 pm on Friday and tickets are $40/each. Buy your tickets here. Since the hunt was my idea and I put the event together last year, I wanted to let you know how it works. This isn’t the sort of scavenger hunt where you’ll have to look under rocks in parks, or knock on a stranger’s door to get a weird kitchen gadget. Instead, you’ll be roaming around the Garment District as part of a team of five, with very explicit addresses and directions. At each of the places you go, you’ll be asked to prove you were there by taking a “group selfie,” sometimes with a prop (at Mood Fabrics, you may have to pose with clashing fabrics.) What makes this hunt especially fun for quilters, is that you’ll be stopping at historic landmarks, tucked-away quilt shops and the headquarters of NY-based fabric companies and having loads of fun along the way. We’ve made the time period longer, so everybody will have time to get to each and every stop. (You won’t want to miss any: some of the people you meet along the way will give you free stuff!) You can bring friends to add to your team, but you can also sign up solo: we’ll put you on a team with other passionate quilters. Each team will have 5 people. Here are a few of the things you might be asked to do: Visit this famous sculpture of a garment worker. Get your picture taken with someone on Seventh Ave. who looks like she/he ought to be a contestant on Project Runway. The rest is a secret! You won’t find out the stops until you start this magical Scavenger Hunt. By the way, the hunt will start and stop at Gotham Quilts, a cool modern quilt shop on the 6th floor of an office building. Don’t take my word that this will be a memorable outing, let’s ask Andrea “Andi” Foster (below left) who was on last year’s winning team, pictured here (below right) with their winner ribbons and prizes! “ This event is so much fun! You and your teammates tear around NYC and try to come up with a strategy to stay ahead of the other teams. I loved meeting other quilters, learning where the fabric companies and stores were located and seeing where NYC quilters get to shop. It was a blast!” For the sake of honesty, I have to admit that I stole this idea from famous quilter Paula Nadelstern, whose 60th birthday party was a Manhattan scavenger hunt. All the stops were about things she loved (the Folk Art museum, M & Ms) and hated (cilantro) and we had to get our picture taken showing each of these things. I couldn’t believe how much fun it was to experience the city in this way (and I lived in NYC for 10 years, so it’s not a novelty for me). I wanted to share the fun with all of YOU, fans of the Quilt Alliance and its annual benefit/inspirational party, Quilters Take Manhattan. I was lucky at Paula’s party to be on the winning team (see us left, proudly wearing our plastic medals and “I’m Amazing” tee-shirts.) Join the party! Manhattan has always rewarded those with a sense of adventure! You can thank me later. Buy your tickets ($40/each) on the Quilt Alliance website. Love, Meg Meg Cox is an author, quilter and traditions expert, who served on the Quilt Alliance board from 2005-2015, and as president from 2010-2015. Visit Meg’s website: megcox.com…
