Deb Josephs, QA Office Manager, recommends one of her favorite Go Tell It! videos to watch this holiday season…
“One of my favorite Go Tell Its was part of a Quilt Alliance Community Quilt Day event in western North Carolina in a small, beautiful town called Sandy Mush in April, 2023. We were in an old gym that had been converted to a community center. Hanging from a second story railing were many quilts including a very large one that we were told hadn’t been taken down in decades.
Several of the women who created blocks for the quilt were with us that day and we were privileged to help bring the quilt down and hear the story behind it. The quilt was created in 1986 and was called the Celebration of Sandy Mush. It was the work of more than 50 local quilters to show their community, its beauty and importance to them, in a protest against a proposed site for a high-level nuclear depository in their town. With those blocks, the quilters highlighted the scenery, churches and houses that generationally meant so much to them including the schoolhouse that was now the community center where we were together.
Along with others, their efforts creating this beautiful, meaningful quilt, helped to call off the threat of the site later that year.”
Executive Director Amy Milne shared two videos from 2025 that stood out for her:
Her first pick was this Go Tell It! interview with Eric Galindo. Eric was interviewed by QA board member A’donna Richardson, founder of the African American Quilt Documentation Study Group, at a documentation day at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive.
Amy loves Eric’s video not only because it was an amazing example of the partnerships that help us expand and sustain our work (it really, truly, takes a village, folks!) but also because she’s always interested in seeing a new generation of artists using quilts made by family members (or anyone, really) as inspiration for their own creative process. Eric is an artist and fashion designer living in California — you can hear more about his work in a Textile Talk from earlier this year that highlighted stories recorded by the AAQDSG.
Amy also picked this Go Tell It! featuring Quilt Alliance member Carol Mann sharing her version of the ‘Color My World’ block of the month by Wendy Williams. The quilt is a joyful, colorful, and personalized quilt that took Carol six months to make and six weeks to quilt! She recorded this Go Tell It herself using our Go Tell It! guidelines online, and she did a great job! This video is a great reminder that anyone, whether a Quilt Alliance member or not, is welcome to share your quilt story with the Alliance — we’d love to hear all about what you’ve made this year!
Want to see more interviews that stood out from 2025? Find three picks from QA Project Manager Emma Parker online here. And you can find all of our Go Tell It! interviews, from 2025 and beyond, at www.youtube.com/quiltalliance — what videos did you love from this year? And don’t forget, you can explore more than 1,200 QSOS interviews as well at www.QSOS.quiltalliance.org. We can’t wait to hear what inspires you from our collection of quilt documentation and quilt stories.