2012 Quilt Symposium

Alliance for American Quilts

A new and exciting project at this years North Carolina Quilt Symposium, involves a team of local volunteers who will interview up to a dozen quiltmakers for the Quilters’ S.O.S. - Save Our Stories oral history project. Interviews will take place in a dedicated space at the Symposium meeting, sponsored jointly by the Smoky Mountains Quilters Guild and NCQSI. Quilters’ S.O.S. – Save Our Stories (Q.S.O.S.), is a project of the Alliance for American Quilts. The Alliance for American Quilts, a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization since 1993, wants to ensure that this nation’s quilt heritage is preserved, documented and widely shared.

Q.S.O.S. is the largest grassroots oral history preservation effort for quiltmakers. The goal is to create a broadly accessible body of information about contemporary quiltmakers and quiltmaking and to make it available through the Internet.The permanent repository for the original audio recordings and photographs is the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. To learn more about The Alliance for American Quilts and Quilters’ S.O.S. – Save Our Stories, check out the website by clicking here. Make sure you check out the Q.S.O.S. Manual for full details on the project and the 1,000+ interviews currently online.

Several appointment times have been set aside from Thursday, June 7 through Saturday, June 9. Please consider becoming a part of this unique and important oral history project.

Click here for the volunteer survey.

Click here for the interviewee survey.