Quilters' S.O.S.- Save Our Stories Surpasses 700 Interviews
March 27, 2007
Asheville, North Carolina, March 27, 2007 - Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories, a project of The Alliance for American Quilts, now has more than 700 interviews of quiltmakers with photos of their quilts at the Center for the Quilt Online www.centerforthequilt.org. More than 150 volunteers from across the country have conducted the interviews. The project began in 1999 and has been steadily growing and expanding. The interviewees include quiltmakers of every type, from those who simply dabble to those who are professionals. "These stories are important for they encapsulate, into one compact package, information, knowledge, context and emotion about quiltmaking today," said Karen Musgrave, chair of the project.
In 2005, to ensure that all aspects of those involved in quiltmaking are represented the Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories Task Force conducted a study of the interviews to identify any gaps. Filling those gaps has been the main focus of the Task Force for the last three years. A modest grant from the Salser Family Foundation enabled interviews of the mostly Latina cooperative quilt group Los hilos de las vida to be documented and included in the project. Another modest grant from the now defunct organization IRQN enabled interviews of the quiltmakers in the exhibit "Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece" to be added to the project. In 2007, The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. became the permanent archive for Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories materials.
This extensive online resource consists not only of the transcribed interviews but a newsletter, an extensive manual on how to conduct a Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stores project of one's own and a place to ask questions. All of the work is done by dedicated volunteers. The goal of the project is to create, through recorded interviews, a broadly accessible body of information concerning quiltmaking and make it available through the Internet.
The Alliance for American Quilts is a national nonprofit member organization, committed to preserving and sharing the rich stories that quilts tell about our nation's diverse people and communities. The Alliance's website,
www.centerforthequilt.org, offers a wealth of free resources related to quilts and quiltmakers.
For information on The Alliance for American Quilts, www.centerforthequilt.org, contact Amy Milne, Executive Director (amy.milne@quiltalliance.org or 828-251-7073 Mon- Fri 9-5 Eastern). For more information on Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories, or to obtain photos and text from one of the new interviews to publish, contact Karen Musgrave (karenmusgrave@sbcglobal.net or 630.579.1024).
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