How about you???
The History of National Quilting Day:
In 1989, the Kentucky Heritage Quilt Society organized a “Quilters’ Day Out” on the third Saturday of March to celebrate the rich tradition of quilt making in Kentucky. In 1991, National Quilting Association officers were so enthused with the concept and success of “Quilters’ Day Out” that they voted to take it to a national level.
The first National Quilting Day was observed in 1992 and since then it has grown into a global celebration for all quiltmakers and quilt lovers. Helen Storbeck, one of the founders of National Quilting Day, wrote in The Quilting Quarterly, “Groups of quilters were encouraged to hold special events, publishers and shop owners were invited to sponsor promotions especially for quilters and it quickly became a grassroots endeavor with quilters in every part of the country participating. In the first year of National Quilting Day, quilters in other countries asked to participate.
They were welcomed with open arms. As our feelings of a community network has evolved to include a world community, it is only appropriate that quilters and quilt lovers everywhere united to give recognition to the special art form.”
Ideas for celebrating:
This National Quilting Day, we encourage you to document your quilts. Add those labels you’ve been putting off! Interview a family member or friend as part of our Q.S.O.S. Project (http://www.allianceforamericanquilts.org/qsos/). Or have a documentation day at your group or guild. From NQA’s website: 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.
- Organize a quilt history day or a quilt documentation project. Invite members of the community to share their quilts and documents the quilts for your stat documentation project. If you don’t have a state project, work with other quilters in the state to start one! A good place to start is with your local or state historical society, or search the internet for quilt documentation projects.
- 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 eve a shop hop. Coordinate a fabric or block exchange or challenge for your chapter.
- Contact your local hospital and make arrangements to donate a baby quilt to the first baby born on National Quilting Day.
- Encourage your local quilt shops to sponsor special NQD sale or activities.
- Create “goodie” boxes of sewing supplies and make arrangements with a local women’s shelter or recreation center to donate supplies or offer a beginners’ class.
And download these freebies compliments of the Quilt Alliance:
Free Quilt Patterns–four patterns to choose from, offered by Quilt Alliance board members Jodie Davis and Michele Muska.
National Quilting Day graphics to post on your blog, social media page, website,..
Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands as she shares her imaginative, magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon. Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting... from my heart and with my hands. Michele Bilyeu blogs With Heart and Hands as she shares a quilting journey through her life in Salem, Oregon and Douglas, Alaska. Sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, with small format art quilts, prayer flags, and comfort quilts for a variety of charitable programs. And best of all, sharing thousands of links to Free Quilt and Quilt Block Patterns Help us change the world, one little quilt at a time!
