2002 Press Releases
In Their Own Words: Writing Quilt History a Little at a Time
By Karen Musgrave
Published in Quilter's Newsletter Magazine
December 2002
We can learn many things about a quilt by viewing it. Simply looking at it, though, does not afford us the whole story. Listening to the maker does. Capturing the quiltmaker's own words saves that story for the future.
Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories (Q.S.O.S.) intends to save these stories. Q.S.O.S. is a project of The Alliance for American Quilts in partnership with the Regional Center for the Quilt at the Center for American Material Culture Studies, University of Delaware. The project was designed to be simple, inexpensive and inclusive. The format can be easily adopted by other organizations and individuals eager to document the personal stories of quiltmakers in their communities. The goal is to create, through recorded interviews, a broadly accessible body of information concerning quiltmaking and make it available through the Internet at www.centerforthequilt.org/qsos. The website also offers an extensive manual on how to conduct a Q.S.O.S. project of one's own, a newsletter and a place to ask questions. All of this work is done by volunteers. The Alliance for American Quilts is a nonprofit organization that works nationally to preserve, document and share quilts and quilt history.
Q.S.O.S. has been developed with three working concepts in mind: focus interviews, touchstone object and accessibility. Each interview runs approximately forty-five minutes. The quiltmaker interviewed is asked to bring a "touchstone object" that she/he considers significant in her/his own quiltmaking. The interview unfolds from observations and questions about the touchstone object, which provides a consistent point of reference. Interview equipment and techniques are easily acquired and used with minimum training.
To structure the interviews, Q.S.O.S. has developed a set of "quadrant questions." The purpose of these questions is to help structure the interviews and to provide for comparison and analysis. Questions and conversation can flow freely between the quadrant topics. While there can be overlap and repetition of material, this maintains the informality of the interviews.
Each of us chooses the stories we weave into our families and our communities by how we do whatever we do. The interviews show the wealth and breadth of quiltmakers. They include quiltmakers of every variety from those who simply dabble to those who are professionals. There are currently more than 90 interviews from nine different projects from around the United States with more being added all the time. Here is just a small sampling of what you will find when you visit the interviews.
What is your first memory of a quilt?
Edna Kotrola (Delaware Interview #DE-04) shares, "…my grandmother did the Sunbonnet Sue. And I always used that quilt when I went over to her house. And it's such a simple pattern, you know. And I remember I used to trace and think that I could draw it, which I couldn't but…When I teach we always do a Sunbonnet Sue in a sampler that everybody makes."
Tell me if you have ever used quilting to get through a difficult time.
Beatrice Schmidtzinsky (Texas Interview #TX776121-001) expressed, "Well it [quilting] was probably my savior when my husband was so ill. That would take me away from thinking about what was happening. How am I going to handle this? It would give me some peace every once in a while, just to get away from the illness." While Ricky Tims (International Quilt Festival Interview #80) said, "…I called it "The Beat Goes On" obviously because after the surgery and I woke up and came through all of that, 'my heart is still beating.'"
How does quilting impact your family?
"I think they appreciate it. But I'll be real honest with you. I think at times they may have just a tad resentment. 'Oh there she goes quilting again. Don't bother Mom. She's quilting again. Leave Mom alone. She's quilting again.' I do have to balance that. I have to be careful and balance my time with them so I try real hard not to be a fruitcake over it but it's hard not to. But they know my passion. They know they are well taken care of if something happens to me. They will be set in quilts and I hope they appreciate all the work that I've done. But I think they appreciate it. I think at times they're proud," replied Kay Butler (Delaware Interview #DE-11)
Are there other quilters in your family?
"When I grew up those were the hard times and any quilts that my mother had in that home were quilts to keep us warm. They were mostly old quilts that she could recover. And then she would tie them. So as for fine stitches, she didn't do that. She made quilts to keep us warm. So the first top that I ever made I still have not finished it. I don't know why I don't thro it away, because I didn't want anybody to know that was my work…But her quilts, I know, that was in the area of feed sacks. She would dye them, and she would made her own dye out of the hulls of walnut. She would gather the walnut hulls and boil them. And that would bring out a greenish brown. And she'd piece these feed sacks together," said Ruth Morris (Delaware Interview #DE-06).
Why is quilting important to your life?
Jonathan Shannon (International Quilt Festival Interview #40) remarked, "I am very interested in the emotional and historical response to textile because I feel that textile represents one of the most basic forces, artistic forces and spiritual forces in humankind. As you examine every, every culture starting with ours and moving back through prehistory, textile has always played a very important ceremonial role and I wanted to see how could I use that power of textile on its own with a few pictorial references as possible, how to just work with, just the power of cloth…Everywhere I go we share a language and that language is quiltmaking."
Is there anything you would like to add?
Advice from Madge Ziegler (Delaware Interview #DE-12), "I hope if you've learned one thing from interviewing me and all these people is that you never ask someone how long it took them to make a quilt. That to me is the stupidest question anyone could ask a quiltmaker, 'How long did this take you?' I like to say fifty-three years because I was born a quiltmaker."
Like creating a patchwork quilt from scraps of fabric, Q.S.O.S. is gathering the stories of quiltmakers. The Alliance for American Quilts knows the power of giving and preserving the voices of quiltmakers. Quilts matter. Quiltmakers matter.
The Alliance for American Quilts can be reached at P.O. Box 6251, Louisville, Kentucky 40206 or online at http://www.centerforthequilt.org/qsos/qsos.html.
Karen Musgrave is a professional art quilter, quilt teacher, speaker, writer and a volunteer for The Alliance for American Quilts. She wrote the Q.S.O.S. manual.
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Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories
By Karen Musgrave
Published in Blanket Statements, Newsletter of the American Quilt Study Group
Spring 2002
Don't miss the opportunity to participate in Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories (Q.S.O.S.), an oral history project of The Alliance for American Quilts in partnership with the Regional Center for the Quilt at the Center for American Material Culture Studies, University of Delaware. We will be offering a Pre-Seminar Study Center Workshop at the AQSG Conference in Rockford, Illinois on Friday, October 5, 2002. For those who cannot attend the seminar on Friday but would like to learn about Q.S.O.S., we will also be leading a round table discussion on Saturday, October 6.
Q.S.O.S. is a remarkable national grassroots project that you can successfully implement in your quilting community. We have been collecting, preserving and publishing online the stories of today's quiltmakers for over three years.
Learn hands-on how to conduct an oral history project that is simple, inexpensive and inclusive. The morning session introduces you to the fundamentals of Q.S.O.S. In the afternoon, you will have the opportunity to participate in actual interviews that will be included in the project.
"We never stop to wonder until a person's gone. We never yearn to know him 'til he's packed and traveled on. When someone is around us, we never stop to ask," wrote Dory Previn, singer/song writer. Q.S.O.S. wants to ensure that we also document and preserve the memories and feelings of present day quiltmakers through tape-recorded interviews. Each interview is intended to run approximately forty-five minutes and to stand as a recorded conversation about observations and questions springing from a quilt or related object. These interviews are not intended to record comprehensive biographies but to create a broadly accessible body of information for anyone interested in quiltmaking. Each quiltmaker interviewed is asked to bring one "touchstone" object (this can be a quilt or quilted garment) that she considers significant to her own quilting practice, preferably a quilt of her own making. The touchstone object serves as both a point of departure and reference for the interview. Tape recorders and techniques are designed to be easily acquired and used by individuals with minimum training.
Because quilts matter, The Alliance for American Quilts, a nonprofit 501 (c) (3) organization since 1993, brings together quiltmakers and designers, the quilt industry, quilt scholars and teachers, and quilt collectors in the cause of documenting, preserving, and sharing our great American heritage. The Alliance is committed to collecting rich stories that historic and contemporary quilts tell about the nation's diverse people and communities.
Q.S.O.S. is managed by a task force of volunteers from all over the country. The task force consists of Dr. Bernard Herman and Le Rowell (co-chairs) with Dr. Patricia Crews, Marcie Ferris, Jan Gessin, Amy Henderson, Paul and Kay Jones, Patricia Keller, Judy Kreihn and Karen Musgrave.
Last year in Williamsburg, three Q.S.O.S. interviews were conducted by Amy Henderson. In one of the interviews Teddy Pruett shared,
"I had to think this up several years ago for an artist's statement for something and it always stands me in good stead. The fact that I started as most quiltmakers with lessons and follow all the rules and make my points pointy and my corners match and all like that. And I really worked hard at it and harder and harder at it. And I am really not a great technician. Once I came to terms with that and I thought well if I can't follow the rules then I'll break them and not worry. And once I quit worrying about it, it's been phenomenal. The joy is back and the fun is back. And if you don't care what people think, then it's no holds barred quilting and that's what I like. Just follow your instincts."
Teddy Pruett's interview with "The Eggplant that Ate Baltimore" has been transcribed and is available online. Her words convey the spirit of what Q.S.O.S. is trying to accomplish. There are over 80 interviews in six different projects with more being posted all the time. Online is also a comprehensive Manual, containing everything you need to know to conduct your own Q.S.O.S. project. To learn more, check out the interviews and manual at www.centerforthequilt.org/qsos/qsos.html.
We are also looking for volunteers to be interviewed. You will need to bring a quilt that has significance to you. If you are interested or have any questions about Q.S.O.S., please contact either Amy Henderson (202-237-2088) or Karen Musgrave (630-579-1024).
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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.centerforthequilt.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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Why Quilts Matter
By Bernard Herman
Forum Section
Sunday March 24,2002
Editor: Keith Runyon, reprinted with permission
I have always admired the art of the quilt, but only recently have I come to appreciate why these objects are so important in our culture-and, more important, why we should care about quilts and quiltmakers and do all in our power to preserve and share their history.
Few people realize the scope of the quilting world. Industry estimates place the number of Americans engaged in quiltmaking in the millions and the annual revenues associated with quiltmaking (excluding buying and selling quilts) at $2 billion. This is just the United States. At a recent exhibition in Japan, 250,000 visitors attended in one week. How, then, can so many people-almost all of them women-be engaged in an area of aesthetic creativity that the rest of us know so little about? How is it that few surveys of American art include quilts, and, if they do, they are invariably one Baltimore Album or one Amish or one African-American story quilt? The answers are complex and reveal, in part, the prejudices of the mainstream artworld. The one theme that unites them is that of voice.
Few objects are more closely bound to the living voice of their makers than quilts. Do not think that every quilt tells a story, rather imagine that every quilt is the maker's touchstone for reflection, personal passage, and conversation. Time and circumstance, however, grind away at the living voice until the words and memories of the makers become detached from the objects in which they are so artfully embedded. The relationship between voice and artifact is strong, of course, in other objects, but few are so personal, powerful, and everyday as the quilt. There is a quality of writing in quilting, writing that is autobiographical, transgenerational, affecting, and instructive.
In a tape-recorded interview quiltmaker Teddy Pruett, in her rich Florida accent, described this relationship between voice and object:
"When I was a child I had a real leaning towards writing, I was just real excited and thrilled by the written word. I was so excited because someone can have a thought in her mind, and [she] can put it on paper. And when you read what's on this paper that thought is transferred into your mind and you have an emotional reaction to it. And I think that is just the coolest thing in the world. And after I started making quilts like 'Rotten Bones' and 'Memorial Day' and people would stand in front of them and cry. Or 'To Hell with Housework' and this one and people would stand in front of them and laugh. And I thought, 'This is the equivalent of the written word.' You are transferring an emotion, a story, a statement, and out of this dishtowel or rag or doily or whatever you have found you have said something to someone else. That gives me chill bumps."
Teddy Pruett's interview was collected as part of a national project to record the stories of living quiltmakers and pioneered by The Alliance for American Quilts, (a not for profit organization based in Louisville, Kentucky). A team of volunteers has collected nearly 250 such interviews so far in a national grassroots effort named "Quilters' S.O.S.-Save Our Stories". They transcribe the interviews, return them to the quiltmakers for final editing, and then place each interview with accompanying photographs online in a fully accessible archive (www.centerforthequilt.org). A downloadable manual guides the volunteers through the process. The Alliance's task is to preserve the relationship between object and voice, and to share that intimacy with succeeding generations. That so many quilts fall silent may be a product of the historic course of women's experiences, but it shouldn't be so. The desire to preserve and share the living history of quiltmaking animates these volunteers and the fear of time and loss spurs them on. The silence one feels when voice and object become divorced, when a quilt is labeled "anonymous", is too painful to go unanswered. In their growing numbers, these interviews have become a quilt of their own.
Why quilts matter depends a lot on whom you ask. Nostalgia, a longing for an imagined past, inspires some; love of craft and the beauty of the handmade object attracts others; and, the need to recognize and validate women's contributions to American culture galvanizes many others. Quilts matter to me because of their transcendent humanity. In the wake of a national catastrophe like 9/11 and in the ongoing AIDS epidemic, quilts became a medium for the expression of feelings of loss, anger, love, remembrance, and the need to understand where words failed. Their making is a meditation; their completion, an investment of memory in cloth and thread from which stories are summoned for the telling. The Alliance and its volunteers are preserving those voices.
Bernard L. Herman is Edward and Elizabeth Rosenberg professor of art history and director of the Center for American Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware in Wilmington.
Bernie is a Board member of The Alliance for American Quilts. The Alliance's first regional Center for the Quilt was established at The Center for American Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware in 2000.
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