by Amy Milne | May 10, 2018 | Uncategorized
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…
by Amy Milne | May 9, 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. 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…
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 | Feb 14, 2018 | Uncategorized
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…
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…
