The Alliance for American Quilts and the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution Form Partnership to Record Quilt History

April 29, 2002

Louisville, Kentucky,April 29, 2002 - The Alliance For American Quilts announced today the formation of a unique partnership with the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution to record the stories of living quiltmakers around the United States through the Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories (QSOS), a project of The Alliance.

The Alliance is a national non-profit organization that has developed a series of projects to document, preserve, and share the history and stories of quilts and quiltmakers. It plays a unique role as a catalyst, bringing together institutions and individuals from the creative, scholarly, and business aspects of quilts to advance the recognition of quilts in American culture.

QSOS is a community-based documentation effort devoted to recording and preserving the stories of living American quiltmakers, and to making those stories widely accessible to everyone. QSOS is coordinated nationally by The Alliance's regional Center for the Quilt at the University of Delaware, Center for American Material Culture Studies.

The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR) was founded in 1890 to perpetuate the memory and spirit of the men and women who achieved American Independence, to promote institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge, and to cherish, maintain and extend the institutions of American freedom, to foster true patriotism and love of country, and to aid in securing for mankind all the blessings of liberty

The QSOS/DAR project will be implemented through the NSDAR's American Heritage and Conservation committee. Dr. Bernard Herman, Director of the Center for American Material Culture Studies, will work closely with the committee's national chair and state chairs to train DAR volunteers to gather oral histories from the many DAR members and others who make quilts and perpetuate this country's rich quilting tradition. The first training sessions will take place in the NSDAR national congress in Washington DC in early July.

At the heart of QSOS are conversational 45-minute tape-recorded interviews with quiltmakers, who select a "touchstone" quilt as a starting point for sharing their personal experiences with quilts and quiltmaking. The Quilters' S.O.S.- Save Our Stories Project features "user-friendly" and manageable interviewing procedures and strategies, and is geared for beginners with no previous oral history training. The easy-to-follow online manual provides detailed "how-to" information that will be available to all DAR volunteers involved in the QSOS effort. Once recorded, QSOS interviews are transcribed and edited, and posted along with photographs on the QSOS website-part of The Alliance's Center for The Quilt Online (www.allianceforamericanquilts.org/).

Alliance president Shelly Zegart commented, "We are so pleased to be launching this partnership with the NSDAR. We are looking forward to DAR volunteers bringing their dedication and enthusiasm to the work of preserving quilts as a vital piece of American social and cultural history." Professor Herman added, "The power of quilts in American culture is scarcely understood. We are excited by the prospect of working in partnership with the NSDAR to bring the stories of quilts, quiltmakers, and quilting to people everywhere."

The Alliance implements its projects in partnership with institutions and organizations nationally, including the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress, Michigan State University Museum, MATRIX: The Center for Humane Arts and Letters On Line at MSU, Illinois State Museum, the University of Texas Center for American History, the University of Louisville Archives and Records Center, and the University of Nebraska International Quilt Study Center. QSOS is guided by a Project Task Force co-chaired by Professor Herman and Le Rowell of The Alliance Board. The Center for American Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware draws on a longstanding commitment to understanding the roles and meanings of objects and images in American life. The Center promotes learning from and the teaching about all the things people make and the ways people act upon the physical and visible world. The NSDAR's American Heritage Committee, established in 1963, focuses on preservation and practice of art, crafts, music, drama and literature through programs, exhibits, and tours.

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