The Thread: News From the Q-Niverse

Alliance Goes Global

ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA–Responding to the increasingly global nature of the q-niverse, the non-profit Alliance for American Quilts has changed its name. The new name: Quilt Alliance.

With the new name comes a new logo, which depicts a colorful ring of swatches or quilts with a threaded needle that all conspires to form the letter Q.  And in true fiber-art fashion, the logo can morph here or there to reflect specifics of an Alliance activity.

The Alliance was founded in 1993 to document, preserve and share the stories of quilts and their makers, in part through its well-known oral history project, Quilters’ Save Our Stories (QSOS). The QSOS, as well as submissions to the Alliance’s annual quilt contest, have increasing participation from quilters outside the United States. The Alliance also partners with Michigan State University Museum on the Quilt Index, an archive of more than 50,000 documented quilts, and has begun studying how to add quilts from abroad to this archive.

Alliance president Meg Cox says the name is easier to remember and a more accurate description of the group’s mission, but it’s also more accurate in reflecting its intent to expand alliances inside–and outside–the quilt and craft worlds.

We’re Ba-a-ack!

CHICAGO–Listening to popular demand, Quilts, Inc., will be bringing its popular International Quilt Festival back here next year, delighting thousands of quilters and sewists who had considered the early summer Chicago Festival a must-see event during its eight-year run.

The show was last held here in 2010, when more than 20,000 attendees gathered at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, just minutes outside of Chicago. Next year’s Chicago Festival will be June 21-23, and it will again be in the Rosemont facility.

Festival founder and director emeritus Karey Bresenhan says she’s thrill with the opportunity to bring Festival back to Chicago, but says it will not replace the current spring edition of Festival in Cincinnati, which is scheduled for April 11-13, 2013.

Chicago Festival is expected to offer a number of mini-classes and lots of educational opportunities, including Create on the Spot!, for which attendees can sign up right on the show floor. It will not have individual classes and lectures in separate rooms, as in previous years.