Quilter's Save our Stories

Have you heard of Quilter's SOS- Save Our Stories?

Quilter's SOS is a part of the non- profit organization, 
Quilter's Alliance. This is a snippet directly from their mission statement.

Quilt Alliance is a nonprofit 501c3 organization established in 1993 whose mission is to document, preserve, and share our American quilt heritage by collecting the rich stories that historic and contemporary quilts, and their makers, tell about our nation's diverse peoples and their communities. 

 Pretty powerful mission statement.

 Mark Dunn, president of Moda fabrics is on the executive board of this organization and it's many causes are near and dear to all of us here. Recently the board members were visiting the Dallas offices of moda as they were training more board members to document stories of quilters. 
Barbara Brackman and myself were the "guinea pigs".

photo courtesy of Quilt Alliance

We were both asked to bring one thing that could tell our story. 

Do you know how hard that is?

I finally decided to bring a quilt top that was in 

the works. It was in the works for over 20 years. The 

quilt top was part of a friendship swap that I had 

participated in 

many years ago with my sister, 

Angie Tardy 

and 11 other friends. 

The quilt top/pieces was actually Angie's 

and I had been working on finishing the quilt top 

for one of my sister's kids. 

This quilt top was pretty iconic in my life 

because my sister passed away from melanoma 

in the late 1980's. We were both married the same year as well as learned to quilt that same year. 

If we were not talking about family, we were planning 

what our next quilting project 

was going to be. 

The Alliance documented the full interview

 and you can read it here.

 The  quilt patten is a double Irish Chain and the only rule in the swap was we all had to use the same pink solid as the background. Each of us chose a different fabric to use as our setting fabric. As shown above, Angie choose a romantic floral by Concord fabrics. Those of you that have been quilting for over 25 years are sure to have owned a piece of this fabric.
Why did it take me so long to finish the quilt top? I would like to say that Angie's boys were 6, 4 and 2 at the time so they probably were not interested in a pink floral quilt. Maybe it was to painful to work on, I don't really know.

Kadence snuggling

Advance time 25 years later and my nephews are all grown and married, so now was the time to finish the quilt and have a little therapy. I gave the completed quilt to my nephew Kirk and his precious family. Kirk sent me this picture of his daughter, 
Kadence with the quilt. I think my sister would be thrilled
 to know that her granddaughter owned 
something she had made.

A few months later, Kirk sent me a picture he had found of Angie actually piecing this quilt top. Of course you can barely see the quilt pieces on that colorful bedspread.(so 80's)  
I will treasure the picture as it completes the circle on my Quilter's S.O.S.

If you are interested in the vision of the Quilt Alliance—that quilts and quiltmakers are an important part of American history and deserve to be documented, preserved and shared in a permanent archive—please become an Alliance member. Membership information can be found on their website: http://www.quiltalliance.org/support/.

Thank you to Quilt Alliance-Alliance of American Quilts for letting me permanently document my story for future generations.

thank you Kadence for being such a precious model