Talking Quilts is a national oral history project of The Quilters’ Guild, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. It aims to record, preserve and share the UK’s rich and diverse quilting heritage through the stories of today’s quilters.
The three-year project is being led by volunteers. Quilters are trained to conduct oral history interviews using audio recording equipment, as well as to complete interview transcriptions. The interviews focus on a ‘touchstone object’ – a quilt or quilted object made by the interviewee – and explore the story behind it. The interview then broadens out to explore the quilter’s relationship with quiltmaking and the role quiltmaking plays in their life.
The resulting digital audio recordings and transcripts of the interviews, along with accompanying photographs, are safely stored at The Quilters’ Guild and will ultimately be shared with the public through an accessible online archive. The project will also provide a template that can be easily adopted by other groups and individuals wishing to document quilters’ stories in their own communities.
By Vicky Martin | Summer 2015
Read the full article here:
The Quilter Issue 143 – TQ article