In the Q-niverse: Alliance for American Quilts Hit eBay

It’s an organization 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.”

That’s a brain-ful of info for one mission statement, but for almost 20 years, the Alliance for American Quilts has diligently worked its mission through its Quilt Index and the Quilter’s Save Our Stories projects, among others. The Quilt Index is an online file of tens of thousands of quilts and the Q.S.O.S. projects recordings and transcriptions of hundreds of interviews conducted with quilters since 1999.

And like any great non-profit effort, funds are always needed to keep the machine running. So six years ago, the Alliance started a quilt challenge contest. This year’s challenge theme is “Home is Where the Quilt Is” and 119 quilters submitted small quilts for judging. The grand prize was announced in July when Margarita Korioth of Longwood, Florida, (for her quilt, Quilting Makes My Heart Blossom,) was named the winner.

Quilting Makes My Heart Blossom by Margarita Korioth

Now all of the 119 quilts are on auction on eBay for the next three weeks. Each week, a couple dozen quilts will be listed here with a starting bid of $50.

Starting last week, 29 quilts were put up for auction, with some of the best known quilt artists–like Yvonne Porcella–donating their entries for the Alliance.

Monday night, that week’s auction will close and another set of quilts will be put on the cyber-block for bids.

Besides helping a great group of dedicated quilt supporters, you can start your own fiber art gallery. And do we even need to point out that the holidays are fast approaching?

Even if the wallet is thin for you, look at the entries on eBay and become inspired by this great collection of creativity. We’ve always said that participating in a challenge will stretch your creative muscles better than any other exercise you can engage in as a quilter and this one is no exception.

And before we get around to tempting you with some of the quilts listed this week, we also want to ANNOUNCE THE WINNER OF OUR TRADITIONS DRAWING!! (Woohoo!)

Helen Kipling of Darlington, United Kingdom, come on down, Girl! You have won a copy of Meg Cox’s new book, The New Book of Family Traditions!

AND LAST: Meg has told us that she will be featured on Yahoo television’s And Away We Grow on Nov. 20 to talk about holiday traditions. We didn’t have a time as of press time, so check out the site if you’re interested.

Meg was out in California a couple of weeks ago filming this segment and Jake got to play with her a little. This is Meg on the set with the host, Diane Mizota, and her son Max’s fave traveling buddy, Gus.

Now, back to the fabric. Here are a couple of this week’s quilts up for bid, just to get you wanting a little more. Have a great Monday, Q-bies!

Stories by Sylvia Weir

Home of a Sewist by Mary Henris