Tonight is the seventh night of Hanukkah, and Christmas is only three days away–we’re right in the middle of a season of giving. Whether it’s new gadgets and gifts to friends, quilts for family, or a donation to an organization near and dear, there will be a whole lot of giving going on this week! Today’s Q.S.O.S. features 4 quiltmakers on giving. What do you plan on giving this year? Violette Denney, interviewed in Carollton, Georgia: In all I have made about 189 quilts. I do keep a log of my quilts and I probably have less than 100 still, so those others I’ve given away. So I’ve given lots of quilts away. And that doesn’t count the quilt tops that I’ve made, I did five for the DAR that were quilted by someone else and used as fund-raisers. We’ve made many, many for the children’s home, we’ve made them for Kosovo and troops and I did one for Merrill Gardens, the assisted Living Facility here in town. I did one for the Historical Society to be given to the city during the anniversary celebration and it’s hanging in City Hall [Carrollton, Georgia.] now. My daughter-in-law works for Home Depot and I did a quilt for her and it actually ended up in the Home Depot Museum. So, anyway I’ve done lots and given lots away, but I guess my favorite is giving them to the children. I gave 8 to hospice last year for the children patients at Heartland Hospice and made pillowcases with animal prints and all for them too. So I like to do things like that. Judy Whitson of Tuscaloosa, Alabama: I love to give. It is a sign that you really care for somebody when you give them a handmade item like a little baby quilt or a quilt for their bed or something, and it is more or less a memory quilt. I always put a signature block on there saying who it is for, the date, and who designed it and who made it, quilted. Judy Kriehn, at the International Quilt Festival in Houston said: I don’t have kids. I’m not married and I don’t have kids. All I have is fabric. [laughs.] I have three sewing machines and fabric. I had a lot of cousins who were having babies so I made baby quilts for them. I make a lot things that I give away and people are like, ‘How can you give that stuff away?’ Well because it’s personal even when it’s a baby quilt. It’s coming from my heart and I’d rather give it to somebody who is going to appreciate it than try to sell it and be unhappy no one wanted to buy it. And I just love the way Sue Stinner in Elkton, Maryland talks about her grandchildren: Most of the quilts I’ve made though, I’ve given away. But know that I’m building up a stash of grandkids along with a stash of fabric; I’ll probably be making more for family than I will for friends. You can read more quilt stories on the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Quilt Alliance site. Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
Today’s Q.S.O.S. Spotlight is shining on a 2002 interview with Rosemary Zaugg, in Fort Worth, Texas. In her interview, Rosemary shared about the 30 year gap between her first quilt and her second, how she came to quilt-making (again), and her advice to new quilters. Read on for more words of wisdom from Rosemary: My first quilt was when I was 18 and right out of high school. When I was 15 or 16, I made a list of things that I was going to accomplish in my life and one of the things on there was ‘piece a quilt.’ And so I took a cardboard shoe box and took some cardboard templates, I first went to see my dad’s cousin who had tons of quilt tops that she had made all her life. People brought her scraps and people in the town had given her scraps to make quilt tops and they’d come and she would sell the quilt tops and she had hundreds of them. So I went to visit her and I picked out a pattern and she gave me her templates and I had cardboard templates and I cut out all these triangles with the scissors. The pattern was supposed to be “Hope of Hartford but I got the pinwheels turned around, half of them, so I called it “Hope of Rosemary.” And I got the quilt finished, my mother put it on the frame, and she had her friends come and quilt it. And I was going to learn to hand quilt and I pricked my finger and it bled on the quilt and my mother said, ‘Honey, you can serve the lemonade.’ So I never learned to hand quilt because I was serving the lemonade. So I checked off on the list that I had made my quilt and it was quilted. And that was in 1964, and I never did a quilt again until 1994. […] In 1992, I had a liver transplant and I could not go back to work as an accountant because I couldn’t–I wouldn’t have the stamina to take that many hours. I had done our daughters’ wedding–we had two daughters get married and a liver transplant in eight months and when that all was over with, I got bored. I couldn’t go back to work and I said, ‘I think I’ll piece a quilt.’ My husband said, ‘Well, why don’t you write a book?’ and I said, ‘No, I think I’ll piece a quilt.’ I got a quilt book and by the first time I had–by the first quilt I got done, I had three more cut out. And it was just my thing and I just got into it and I made thirty-two full-size or queen-size bed quilts. I’ve made over 180 quilts. I have paper-pieced 1500 blocks in wall hangings, jackets, and quilts and I’ve got a few unfinished projects […] Edie Jones (interviewer): What advice, in parting words, would you give to new quilters? Rosemary Zaugg: The first couple of years, I said, ‘There are quilters who talk about it and quilters who do it.’ I said, ‘Get out there and do it. Don’t just go to meetings and learn about it. Don’t go to classes and never make a quilt. Get out there and do it.’ And the vender booth Pastime Fabrics has this display and she’s got these quilter’s quotes out there, and as I walked past it yesterday, I pointed to the one and I said, ‘It says, She who dies with the most fabric wins.’ I said, ‘That’s not really true. She who dies with the most fabric is still dead, so get out there and use the fabric, make the quilts, don’t just collect the fabric.’ You can read more quilt stories on the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Quilt Alliance site. Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
Here in the US, we’ve just finished the Thanksgiving holiday, a time to celebrate, gather, remember and give thanks for our families. But now that that holiday is finished, the malls and commercials have started pushing one thing: gifts for Christmas! Today’s Q.S.O.S. spotlight features an excerpt from an interview with Bonnie Gallagher as she talks about making gifts for her family: Bonnie Gallagher: I’m doing the family Christmas project this year is they are holiday fabrics actually and they are table runners and table toppers for everyone’s dining room tables for the holidays with the exception of one for my nephew, Misha, and his wife-to-be, Katie I asked them to be really specific with me about what they would like in the way of quilting because I said, ‘After all your Aunt Bonnie quilts and that’s what everybody gets for Christmas.’ [both laugh.] Bless his heart, two years ago Misha asked me, he said, ‘Well Aunt Bonnie, now that I’ve graduated from college and I have my own apartment and I’m fully grown. Does that mean I get to graduate to the family quilt project list?’ I just couldn’t believe it. I could have just hugged him because first of all he was a guy and second of all he was a guy in his 20’s and so it was kind of like graduating to the adult table at Thanksgiving when you’re a little kid. [both laugh.] I said, ‘You bet.’ I said, ‘Well, did you have anything specific in mind?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I love having friends over for dinner and I really would like to have one of your table toppers and those wonderful napkins that you make.’ I said, ‘Well, I have one more question.’ He said, ‘Blue and green.’ [both laugh.] He knew what that next question was. This year, bless his heart, I asked he and Katie here not soon enough practically. I said, ‘Did they have any specific thing in mind this year?’ And they both said, “Yep, you have one over here on your quilt rack that we both just love.’ And I said, ‘Ah oh, so do you remember which one it was?’ By golly, they went right to it and it was a Bargello quilt that I’d made to commemorate my mother’s Chinese dinners over the years and they just loved it. Well, I’ll tell you, Bargello, some of these pieces are like 7/8 inches wide and they are just itty-bitty things, but it’s a technique that I love to do. It is just that I kind of recalled that one quilt I did for Mom took me about two months and here I’m asking them the first of November what it is they want for Christmas this year. I’m down to the borders now, hallelujah. They may not have it quilted in time for Christmas, but they will be able to see the design. That’s kind of fun. Carolyn Kolzow (interviewer): What a treasure. BG: Yeah, well I hope they like it. [laughs.] I said, ‘Oh cripes, you guys are going for the art quilts.’ I said, ‘You do know those take a little longer than the traditional ones.’ Anyway, that is okay. It gives me a warm heart that they’re thrilled with it. CK: I suppose that is what you find most pleasing about quilts too. BG: I do. It’s like you think of whomever you’re making them for with great love every stitch of the way. I mean you have that person in mind and it’s just wonderful and they know it when they get it that quilt was especially made for them. It does give me great joy. I did for this year’s family reunion that Jim and I host here at the house in Sandy for all my Lippincott, my father’s family, come and I’m fortunate enough to have still five aunts and uncles that are living on that side, which thankfully makes me feel not quite so much like an orphan with both of my parents gone now. Every year for the family reunion I do a big quilt, a napping size I guess I call it. The napping blanket and I only let my aunts and uncles put their name into the hat and I pull a name or have the youngest person at the reunion pull a name and that quilt goes home with that aunt or uncle. My Uncle Boyd won the last one and my Aunt Sharon won before then and my Aunt Rhodie bless her heart is 96 years old, so she called me about March and she said, ‘Bonnie this is your Aunt Rhodie. Have you started that family reunion quilt yet?’ And I said, ‘Well no, I have clear till August.’ Anyway she said, ‘Well, I’m kind of figuring this out. I think my odds are improving.’ Because if they won before they are not eligible at the next one. She said, ‘So your Aunt Becky usually only comes to every other reunion.’ She said, ‘Your Uncle Boyd already won and your Aunt Sharon already won.’ So she figures, ‘I’m down to one in three now and I really want to win that quilt before I die.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my God. How am I going to do this?’ I just shifted into high gear and I figured the only way I was going to do it was to make a quilt for each and every one of them for this year’s reunion. I did. I made a total of six of them each specifically for that…
They say everything is bigger in Texas, and they might be right! At the end of October, the Quilt Alliance visited the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas. It was the festival’s 40th anniversary–its Ruby Jubilee–and there were more quilts than ever before. With all those quilts and quiltmakers in one place, it was a perfect location to capture some Go Tell It at the Quilt Show videos… lots of them! We filmed the stories of over 100 quilts this year in Houston! We hope to have all of the videos on our YouTube channel soon, but in the mean time, kick off your weekend with this sneak peek: Flora Joy, Viewer’s Choice winner: Marisela Rumberg: Sandra Lauterbach: Candice Phelan: Look for more Go Tell It at the Quilt Show videos from the International Quilt Festival…
This Sunday’s Q.S.O.S. Spotlight is a few days late, but we have a very special quilt to share in honor of today, Veterans Day in the US. When Pam Neil’s son Scott was deployed to Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, she decided to make a quilt for him and add one square for every day he was gone. Scott’s children, friends and extended family wrote messages on each block, which grew, square by square, each day Scott was gone. Pam shared the quilt in a 2009 Q.S.O.S. interview: Well, the name of this quilt is “Scott’s Victory Quilt”and he named it sort of tongue in cheek. When the events of September 11, 2001 occurred, Scott was in the Army Special Forces and he was a first responder to Afghanistan after those attacks in New York. I told him that it was more danger than we knew he had ever been in before knowing that he was going to Afghanistan. I think the country in general was in shock during that time and we just didn’t know what to expect with his going over there. But because of that I said, ‘Scott, I really don’t know what to do to help you, but I’m going to make a quilt while you’re gone. We’ll put a block in it for every day you’re gone so that you will know without a doubt that we thought about you every single day and that we did not just become complacent about your being over there.’ We chose to do this quilt as a memory quilt and we used Pigma markers to actually write messages on the blocks each day. The pattern is a half square triangle, a very simple quiltmaking pattern. The construction method or technique is called quilt-as-you-go [all three layers are sewn at once.] and while I developed the specific construction plan for this quilt, I’m pretty sure I was influenced at the time by a book written by Georgia Bonesteel. And I forget the name of her book, but it was a book about quilt-as-you-go methods. The blocks I did by machine and we wrote messages on the blocks and then all the quilting was done by hand and then each block was added day by day and row by row. We chose to start the blocks in the center of the quilt and then we added the rows in a clockwise fashion around to build out from the center and the reason we did that was because we didn’t know how long Scott was going to be deployed. He could have been deployed 2 years. He could have been deployed 2 months or God forbid, he could have been gone 2 weeks and come home in a box. We just really did not know how big this quilt was gonna be so we started in the center. The quilt is almost a play by play of the war and in many cases it documents things that were going on in the family like his dad’s 60th birthday, his brother being deployed in the Navy reserves and there was even a proposal of marriage documented in this quilt. It was signed by his children, his siblings, his cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and a couple of strangers that he didn’t even know that were friends of the family. There are even some secret messages in this quilt that some people wrote on the seams of the quilt and I’ve never told Scott where they are or what they say. I only told him that someday I might tell him. It just really documents a whole lot that was going on in our lives. That first deployment Scott was only gone 6½ months and he’s fine. I should say that he did come home and he was gone about 6½ months for that deployment but a couple of weeks before he was due to come home, he was able to let us know that and so we planned the edges of the quilt. The borders we actually sent out to California to his grandmother, who is Lucille, my mother-in-law. She quilted those and sent them back and they became part of the quilt too and then the top and bottom borders that you’ll see were actually signed by people who came to his coming home party when he got home. And because we had done it in a quilt as you go fashion, the quilt was done just a couple of weeks after he came home even though it was all hand quilted. If I had made the quilt top and then quilted it after the fact, he would have had to wait for it probably 6 months or more. Pam also recorded an audio ‘postscript’, sharing a bit about Scott and the quilt since her interview in 2009, and how this quilt provided comfort in a difficult time: You can read more quilt stories on the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Quilt Alliance website. Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
Will you be attending the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas this year? If so, we want you! Quilt Alliance will be filming 3 minute videos for our Go Tell It at the Quilt Show! series at the International Quilt Festival this year. Check out some of our videos from last year here. We need quilters to tell us the story of their quilts, and volunteers to help us collect these stories. We also need volunteers to help staff the Quilt Alliance booth and share information about the organization. If you’ll be in Houston and you: would like to bring a quilt and share it in your own Go Tell It at the Quilt Show interview have a quilt in the IQA ‘A World of Beauty’ judged show OR a Special Exhibit and would like to share it are interested in being a beloved, celebrated and much-needed volunteer (you can give us as little as 2 hours) at the Quilt Alliance booth or Go Tell It at the Quilt Show booth We’d love to talk to you! Sign up for a Go Tell It! Interview If you arre interested in participating in Go Tell It at the Quilt Show, either with a quilt in the show or a quilt you’ve brought, you can sign up here. Volunteer If you’d like to help out in the Quilt Alliance booth (sharing brochures and membership information) or at the separate Go Tell It booth (registering interviewees, collecting forms, keeping time) you can sign up here. Please share this post with friends who are headed to Houston–we hope to see you there! Even if you can’t volunteer, stop by the Quilt Alliance booth and say hello! If you have questions about volunteering or the Go Tell It at the Quilt Show project, email us at qsos@quiltalliance.org. Thanks! Emma Parker, Q.S.O.S. and Go Tell It! Project…
