Scope and Content
This collection consists of sound recordings, transcripts and photographic images documenting interviews conducted as a part of Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories (QSOS) project. QSOS is one of several projects and partnerships created by the Quilt Alliance in an effort to preserve, document, and share the lives and stories of quilters and quiltmaking. The project began in 1999 and continued though 2016.
QSOS is a grassroots project that utilizes volunteers from across the country to conduct and transcribe oral histories. Interviews are approximately 45 minutes in length and are usually conducted in person, but occasionally are conducted by phone or via e-mail.
Interviewees are encouraged to bring a "touchstone" quilt or other object to serve as a focus point for the interview. Rather than record comprehensive life histories, focused interviews target the conversation, for example, on quilt design, sources, techniques, inspiration, standards, and processes, along with other quilt-related topics.
The quilts represented in the collection vary widely in technique, style, and execution. Some are self-designed, while some follow traditional patterns or patterns by current designers. There are also historical quilts that date back to the mid-nineteenth to early twenty-first century. Among the quilt types seen in the collection are: hand quilts, machine-quilts (including long arm), traditional pattern quilts, scrap quilts, art quilts, round robin quilts, patriotic quilts and wearable art.
The QSOS project documents the complexity and diversity of quiltmakers and their quilts, creating a broadly accessible body of information concerning quiltmaking, both present-day and in living memory.
As of November 2016 the collection includes 1189 interviews, with all fifty US states, the United States Virgin Islands, and nine other countries represented including: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Georgia (Republic), Germany, Japan, Kenya, Peru, and Russia. The interviews are documented by sound recordings, transcripts and images, in a mix of physical and digital formats.
Earlier sound recordings of the interviews are largely on cassette tapes, with later interviews recorded on digital media in .wav, .wma, .mp3, .aif, and .cda formats. The images include both physical photographic prints and digital images in .jpg and .tif formats.
The majority of interviews have an associated draft and/or final versions of the transcript. The manuscripts associated with the interviews may also consist of a participant and quilt information form, correspondence, and promotional materials. These documents may be in a physical print format or in digital media in .doc, .docx, .pdf, or .rtf formats.
Digital media was received on a variety of carrier formats including compact disks, 3.5 in. floppy disks and zip disks.