Asheville, North Carolina
 Seven new interviews for the Go Tell It at the Quilt Show! project were conducted at QuiltCon in Austin, Texas, February 21-24. Go Tell It! is a new project of the nonprofit Quilt Alliance designed to capture the stories of quilts where quiltmakers and quilt lovers gather. The protocol for Go Tell It! is brief and personal: one person talking about one quilt in front of one video camera for three minutes, recording the most essential and compelling details of the quilt according to the "teller." Go Tell It! is in the pilot stage now and designed to be a grassroots oral history project. The Quilt Alliance launched the project in June 2012 at the Original Sewing & Quilt Expo in Raleigh, North Carolina. We were excited to partner with OS&QE along with Quilters' Newsletter TV to initiate this video oral history project. View these first Go Tell It! interviews on the Quilt Alliance Youtube channel. Interviewees featured on this video are Frieda Anderson, Sherri Driver, Tula Pink and Diana Bell-Kite. To date, Alliance staff, board and corporate partners (OS&QE and QN TV) have conducted the video interviews, but eventually, quilt lovers everywhere will be invited to document the stories of quilts with video equipment as simple as a smart phone, and upload them to the Go Tell It! archives for all to see and use. Unlike our Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories (Q.S.O.S.) project where the interviewee must be a quiltmaker, the Go Tell It! interviewee profile is much broader. Interviewees can be the maker of the quilt they bring to talk about, they can be the owner of the quilt, or they can tell the story on behalf of the quilt's owner or maker. Interviewees tell the story of their first quilt, the history of a special family quilt, or one with a funny story. Documenting, preserving and sharing these stories online via video is another way the Quilt Alliance provides education and inspiration to today's quilt lovers and tomorrow's historians and genealogists. The Q.S.O.S. oral history collection continues to grow in size and scope. Plans are underway to provide access to Q.S.O.S.-inspired projects outside of the U.S. and to enlist quilt scholars to mine the collection (now with over 1,000 interviews) for valuable and inspirational content. Anyone interested in conducting a Q.S.O.S. interview in their community can download a free guide on how to plan and carry out a 30-45 minute interview with a quiltmaker on the Quilt Alliance website. Q.S.O.S. interviews are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and shared on the Quilt Alliance website. The Quilt Alliance believes there are many ways to document and share the stories of quilts and their makers, and its goal is to keep exploring new ones, while at the same time encouraging quilters worldwide to document their own stories in their own ways.  | Go Tell It at the Quilt Show:
Victoria Findlay Wolfe |
"Quilt shows are the perfect place to capture stories amidst the excitement of prizes won and new techniques revealed, and this was especially true at QuiltCon. Along with thousands of others, Alliance staffers were excited to witness the debut of a new quilt show highlighting the fast-growing modern quilt movement," says Meg Cox, Alliance president. "We chose to share the Go Tell It! interviews with Victoria Findlay Wolfe, Jacquie Gering and Thomas Knauer first because we feel they especially capture the essence of both the modern quilt movement and QuiltCon. All three of these quilters are very active in the Modern Quilt Guild, in different parts of the country, and all three of their quilts are important expressions of its philosophy."
 | Go Tell It at the Quilt Show:
Jacquie Gering |
 | Go Tell It at the Quilt Show:
Thomas Knauer |
View the first three videos conducted at QuiltCon on the Quilt Alliance Youtube channel. You can find out more about these quilters on their websites/blogs: Victoria Findlay Wolfe Jacquie Gering Thomas Knauer |
