This is Awesome | Labeling to Preserve Quilt History

Source: The Storque, Photo by Georgia MacDonald

I came across a Storque post on Making Quilt Labels on last week.  It's written by Amy Milne, the Executive Director of the Alliance for American Quilts 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." 

Um, can you say dream job?!?

One of their goals is to encourage quiltmakers to document and label their quilts in order to preserve their stories.  Amy writes: "objects...have an undisputed inherent value. They can tell us (and future generations) about our culture, our communities, our families and our everyday lives, and whenever we carefully record and preserve information about these objects and their makers/users we are reinvesting in our culture and our history."

Quilts do carry such deep stories - when I look at the quilts created by Ian's grandmother and great grandmother, sewn by hand out of worn out clothing...I am in awe.  I humbly hope that someday my quilts will carry that same magic for others.

I've never thought about how important it is to label quilts.  I always either include a "Connect the Dots Crafts" or "Made especially for you by Carole Ann" label on my quilts, but the examples that Amy shows in her post are much more elaborate.  They include information like: the quiltmaker's name, date completed, the occasion it was created for, and contact information.  And they're beautifully handmade and so very personal.

It's something I'm thinking about moving forward.


How do you make sure the stories of your creations will be preserved?

Check out the full article here.