by Amy Milne | May 11, 2018 | Uncategorized
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…
by Amy Milne | May 8, 2018 | Uncategorized
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! …
by Amy Milne | Sep 2, 2017 | Uncategorized
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…
by Amy Milne | Sep 2, 2017 | Uncategorized
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…
by Suzan Ellis | Aug 26, 2017 | Uncategorized
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. Kumasi Spools This week’s puzzle quilt is entitled Kumasi Spools and was made by Amy Milne of Cary, NC for the 2008 Quilt Alliance auction. Amy Milne has been the executive director of the Quilt Alliance since 2006. She has two decades of experience as a nonprofit administrator, educator and artist. Amy has overseen the expansion of the Quilt Alliance’s oral history projects, including the creation of the Go Tell It at the Quilt Show! project, as well as the Quilt Alliance’s biennial Not Fade Away: Sharing Quilt Stories in the Digital Age conference. Artist’s Statement This quilt marks my transition from potholder to small quilt. The fabric came from a trip to Ghana – this was the only non-orange fabric I bought. When I went to my stash for this project the fabric reminded me of a red and white spools quilt in the Winedale Historical Center collection I’d seen on the Quilt Index: http://www.quiltindex.org/basicdisplay.php?pbd=TexasWinedale-a0a0c9-a 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 Quilt Alliance | Aug 11, 2017 | Uncategorized
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…
