The Alliance for American Quilts: Partnerships Launching Quilts onto Center Stage

In this age of technology, it is amazing that quilts and quilting are still a vital part of the lives of so many people. An estimated 20 million contemporary quilters continue to create treasures that connect us to both our past and our future. Quilts are loving records of family occasions, holders of memories, statements of independence, and reflections of life in many eras. They are also works of art enjoyed for their vibrancy of color and sophistication of design. We have come to recognize that the artists that created these pieces have given us incomparable insights into society and culture throughout American history. Unfortunately, the connection to the makers of many wonderful quilts has often been lost. A group of committed scholars, collectors, quilters and historians have vowed that won’t happen again. The age of technology has embraced the tradition of quilts and the future is bright for both. The Alliance for American Quilts is committed to putting quilts and quilters on center stage. The process for preserving the legacy of quilts embraced by The Alliance is different than anything else in quilt history and it is moving forward at a remarkable pace.

To achieve its goals, The Alliance for American Quilts, a not-for-profit 501 c3 organization, plays a unique role as a catalyst bringing together institutions and individuals from creative, scholarly, and business aspects of quilts to advance the recognition of quilts in American culture. A board of more than twenty men and women from a variety of academic and business backgrounds has worked since 1993 to achieve this objective. Through the development of unique creative projects and partnerships with universities and museums around the country, using state of the art technology, The Alliance is attempting to create an accessible, comprehensive record and interpretation of the stories, images and ephemera of American quilts and quilters .

The key to coordinating and bringing forward the work of the partners is that The Alliance is creating a virtual quilt center, which will be accessible and user friendly for the research savvy scholar as well as the passionately interested but novice collector and everyone in between. The Center for the Quilt Online is America’s Quilt Home on the Internet. This virtual resource center is the first stop on the road for information about what’s happening in quilt documentation, preservation and interpretation.

The Alliance is in the process of developing a series of Regional Centers for the Quilt under the Alliance umbrella around the country whose work will be instrumental in moving Alliance objectives forward. The Alliance’s first Regional Center is at The University of Delaware’s Center for American Material Culture Studies (CAMCS). CAMCS, an interdisciplinary and collaborative venture dedicated to the documentation, preservation, interpretation, and exhibition of all aspects of American material culture, has played a leading role in developing and implementing nationally a key Alliance project: The Quilters’ S.O..S Project- Save our Stories (QSOS). The QSOS project is collecting the culture of quilting today and has developed an easy-to-duplicate model that allows local quilt guilds and others to record the wonderful, personal stories of today’s quilt makers. These stories provide a window to current American quiltmaking with information related in the most personal and engaging terms. The oral histories and a photograph of the quilt brought by the maker to the interview are touchstones and provide the catalyst for sharing memories and wisdom. Today a manual to do your own QSOS project is available to download from the site and you can also can visit the largest repository of interviews with quilters on the internet. Click on Quilters’ Save Our Stories and begin reading their stories or downloading the manual.

The Delaware Center will also work with The Alliance on other projects within a six-state Mid-Atlantic region, including the Alliance’s Boxes Under the Bed Project. Most quilters would not refer to the storage box under their bed stuffed to over-flowing with fabric, patterns, letters, articles, and notes as an "archive" of quilting information. But for historians it is an archeological dig, a source of valuable history and culture. "Boxes" trains local researchers to identify and rescue quilt-related artifacts and ephemera in need of preservation. Each Regional Center will serve as a regional repository for quilt documentation that results from Boxes and other projects.

Professor Bernard Herman, Director of the Center for American Material Culture Studies, is enthusiastic about the Delaware projects and refers to the quilt-related Internet sites as ‘an index of ideas.’ Dr. Herman said, "The power of quilts in American culture is scarcely understood. We are excited by the prospect of working in partnership with The Alliance to bring the stories of quilts, quilters, and quilting to the fore."

Michigan State University recently cemented their relationship with The Alliance by becoming the second Regional Center for the Quilt. The Great Lakes Quilt Center (GLQC) at the Michigan State University Museum will play a leading role in developing and implementing The Quilt Index, a key Alliance project. They will continue to provide national coordination for Index expansion. This Regional Center for The Quilt will also take on the role of national coordinator of another important Alliance project, Quilt Treasures. It will record and protect the legacy of nationally recognized, 20th century, master quilters and scholars of quilting through a planned series of interactive, multi-media, oral histories, also for distribution through the Internet. GLQC at the Michigan State University Museum has a long standing interest in and commitment to documentation, preservation, and presentation of quilting history with a particular focus on Michigan and the Great Lakes.

 The Quilt Index is a project conceived and developed by The Alliance for American Quilts and implemented in partnership with MATRIX: The Center for Humane Arts and Letters Online based at Michigan State University.

The Quilt Index is a comprehensive on-line tool featuring information about quilts in both public and private collections. State and regional quilt projects will gain new importance and permanency with the Quilt Index as it brings together all the previously scattered and difficult to access documentation and images into one site. Both private and public collections, as well as bibliographies of secondary materials and finding aids will also be available through the Index’s site on the World Wide Web. Hundreds of thousands of quilts have been documented around the country and now we must begin the process of collecting and, most importantly, interpreting that data

With the support of a The National Endowment for the Humanities grant of $200,000, Matrix: The Center for Humane Arts and Letters On Line based at Michigan State University, will begin working on a pilot project for the Index with four state quilt projects to gather quilt records and documentation into The Quilt Index,. The pilot projects are The Illinois State Museum, The Kentucky Quilt Project/University of Louisville Archives and Records Center, the Michigan Quilt Project/Michigan State University Museum, and The Quilts of Tennessee/Tennessee State Library. Matrix will digitize a portion of the extensive records of these state projects as part of the Index’s development and initial offerings.

Alliance co-president Shelly Zegart commented, "The Quilt Index has long been a dream of many who study quilts and work to preserve their history. For the first time, anyone with access to the Internet will be able to search a vast database of quilt images and information." Professor Mark Kornbluh, Executive Director of MATRIX said, "We are so pleased to be working with

The Alliance and its partners to develop and host The Quilt Index; it will provide unprecedented access to previously unpublished documentation on American quilts and quilt making; and will be a rich resource for students, teachers, scholars, quilt makers, and the general public."

Another way the Alliance is offering access to information is through H-Quilts. H-Quilts is a moderated internet discussion forum, hosted by H-Net at Michigan State University, whose purpose is to provide an exchange of information for individuals around the world engaged in quilting research and documentation.

The future is bright for quilts as The Alliance and its partners sew together a rich tapestry that will inform and excite us all about quilts for many years to come.

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Other Alliance for American Quilt partners include: Center for American History-University of Texas, Austin, American Quilt Study Group, International Quilt Festival, Quilts Inc., and the University of Nebraska-International Quilt Study Center.

For additional information contact Kay Grubola (502) 897-3819  

The Alliance For American Quilts

P.O.B. 6251

Louisville, Kentucky 40206

502-897-3819

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