This National Quilting Day, the Quilt Alliance encouranges us to label our quilts and conduct interviews to document, preserve and share our quilt stories.
Plan a National Quilting Day Celebration!
Make it a service day and work on a quilt for your favorite cause – national projects such as ABC Quilts and Project Linus, or local projects. If you don’t have a local service project, National Quilting Day is the perfect time to start one! Check with police and fire departments, children’s services, nursing or rehabilitation facilities or local hospitals to see if they have a need for quilts.
Organize an exhibit for your local library or historical society. Exhibit quilts, tools, books, etc. Donate books to the library.
Make arrangements with your local library, historical society, quilt shop, or other public space to demonstrate how to make and attach simple quilt labels. Provide printed instructions and encourage everyone to label all their quilts and value them as family and community history.
Offer to teach a simple quilt project to a school, 4-H, scout, or other youth group, or spend the day passing along your love of quilting to your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, or neighbors.
Contact a local senior citizens group or facility and organize show and tell of their quilts and yours. Or sponsor a sewing day to make lap quilts for seniors. Turn it into an oral history project to gather quilters’ stories from your community. You will be amazed at what you learn.
Organize a stitch-in, banquet, workshop, lecture, retreat, bus trip or even a shop hop.
Contact your local hospital and make arrangements to donate a baby quilt to the first baby born on National Quilting Day.
Create “goodie” boxes of sewing supplies and make arrangements with a local shelter or recreation center to donate supplies or offer a beginners’ class.
The possibilities for National Quilting Day are limited only by your time and energy! Even if you just curl up with your favorite quilting magazine(s) or book, do something special to celebrate your place in the community of quilters.
Free Quilt Patterns are available for download from Quilt Alliance board members Jodie Davis (Robbing Peter to Pay Paul and Wedge Log Cabin) and Michele Muska (A Graceful Wedding and Modern Love).
Quilters' S.O.S. (Save Our Stories - QSOS) hopes to capture the voices and stories of quiltmakers. Volunteers from across the country conduct and transcribe the interview. Find out how you can get involved with Q.S.O.S.