Our Projects

The Alliance for American Quilts (AAQ) links the world of quilts, scholarship, and the general public. We develop projects and carry them out in partnership with museums, universities, business partners and grassroots quilt guilds around the country.

Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories (Q.S.O.S.)

Our national grassroots oral histories capture the stories and culture of today's quilt makers. This project includes transcribed interviews and photographs and a downloadable, easy-to-use how-to manual. Hundreds of Q.S.O.S. interviews and transcripts are archived at the Library of Congress American Folklife Center, where they are available for research.

Quilt Treasures

Oral history based "web portraits" document the lives, work, and influence of leaders of the American quilt revival of the 1960's and 1970's. This project was developed by AAQ in partnership with the Great Lakes Quilt Center at the Michigan State University Museum, MATRIX: Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online at Michigan State University, and the Library of Congress American Folklife Center.

The Quilt Index

This on-line repository provides access to documentation and digital images of individual quilts held privately or in public institutional collections. An estimated 50,000 quilts will be accessible through the Quilt Index by the end of 2009. The Quilt Index (www.quiltindex.org) is a joint project of AAQ and Michigan State University through MATRIX and the MSU Museum. The Quilt Index is being implemented with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Contributors from across the country are including their quilt images and documentation.

Boxes Under the Bed™

This project is designed to educate the public about the importance of identifying, preserving, and making accessible the archives and ephemera of quilt history. The project, currently being developed, will offer several methodologies, including a Boxes website tutorial about making quilt history documentation accessible for research in an institutional setting; sharing examples of quilt history ephemera through digital displays in a browsing gallery on the Boxes website; and training local researchers to identify and rescue quilt-related documentation in need of preservation. AAQ is partnering mainly with Winedale, The Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin and also with MSU Museum to develop this project.

H-Quilts

This moderated online discussion list fosters and makes possible the continuous sharing among individuals engaged in quilting research and documentation. It provides a forum for raising issues, reporting findings, and sharing information about quilt exhibitions, collections, publications, research projects, and other topics within a virtual worldwide community of subscribers. This network, a community of H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences OnLine, was developed by AAQ with American Quilt Study Group and Michigan State University.