Quilters Take a Moment

An Archive of Your Own: Using Spreadsheets to Describe and Catalog Your Quilts – Rachel Ivy Clarke

Ever feel like there’s not enough room on your labels to capture all the information about a quilt you’ve made? Do you give away lots of quilts to family, friends, and charitable causes and want to keep track of which quilt went where? Do you send quilts to shows with various timelines, categories, and size requirements? There’s so much information about our quilts—how can we keep track of it all? This workshop will help quilt makers and collectors use metadata and spreadsheets to describe, organize, and catalog their quilts in an easy spreadsheet-based format. No math or fancy formulas required, just an interest in getting organized!

About Rachel:

After an early career in graphic design, Rachel Ivy Clarke turned to librarianship, which in turn led to her current role as an associate professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. Her award-winning research focuses on the application of design methodologies and epistemologies to librarianship and beyond. Her current work combines her expertise in information studies, design, and textile arts to juxtapose typically feminine folk art traditions with theories and principles of data and classification in order to humanize clinical data, surface marginalized perspectives, and provoke viewers into seeing both textile arts and data in new ways. She earned a BA in creative writing from California State University Long Beach, an MLIS from San Jose State University, and a PhD from the University of Washington.

archivy.net
Instagram: @rachelivyclarke

Documentation as Creative Practice – Hannah Parks

Seen as an unexciting final chore, labeling and recording our quilts is often an afterthought, if not forgotten entirely. However, just as bookplates can be both an informative and beautiful detail in a book, quilt documentation is a final opportunity to engage with the creative energy of a quilt and give one more glimpse into the circumstances around a quilt’s creation or the personality of the quilter. In this workshop, we’ll discuss ways that quilters have embedded their creative style into their quilt labels and documentation, and learn to make one such label using selvedge letters.

About Hannah:

Hannah Parks is a quilter based in Kenai, Alaska. She dove into quilting in 2019 when she was looking for a calming respite amidst the daily chaos of motherhood. She became hooked on the creative play that quilting provided her and has been staying up late sewing ever since. Before full-time parenting, she had a career in academic libraries, which might explain her love for quilt labeling and recording. From selvedge letters to old card catalogs, she’s always looking for creative ways to document her work. When she’s not quilting, you’ll find her kayaking or building quilt forts with her two young kids.

Instagram: @halfsquarehannah

Documenting Your Guild or Group – A’donna Richardson

A’donna will discuss how quilting guilds and groups can get started documenting their quilts. She will cover what to consider, costs, preservation options, and the benefits of collaborative projects.

About A’donna:

A’donna Richardson is a quilter, historian, and lecturer.  She began documenting African American quilts in 2016 until the COVID pandemic.  Through grassroots efforts, she single-handedly documented over 35 family heritage quilts.  In 2022 she began consulting and researching quilt documentations at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive for a 3,000+ African American quilt collection.  From this work she was inspired to establish an African American Quilt Documentation Study Group and a public access African American Quilt Archive & Registry.

She is a retired military veteran, with a BS in Finance from Regis University.  She has studied Quilt History at the University of Nebraska and taken graduate courses in Art and History at UC Berkeley.   She is currently at the University of Maine working on a Graduate Certificate in Digital Curation.  A’donna is also on the Board of Directors for the Quilt Alliance and the American Quilt Study Group.

African American Quilt Documentation Study Group:
www.AAQDSG.com

Sustainable Routines for Quilt Documentation – Jenni Grover

Attendees will learn how to develop a customized and sustainable quilt documentation routine for their own unique needs. We’ll cover:

• Developing a repeatable process for documenting your quilts
• Choosing the most helpful tools, both tangible and digital
• Routinizing your quilt label process
• Organizing and storing your finished quilts and WIPS (works in progress)

About Jenni:

Jenni Grover is a wellness coach for makers, author and quilter. She cares deeply about the intersection of craft and health, coaching clients’ physical, mental, social, creative and spiritual concerns.

Jenni is also a past president and current board member of the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild, and a passionate craft journalist, having written for Quiltfolk, SuzyQuilts.com, Quiltmaker magazine, and Craft Industry Alliance.

A lifelong writer, Jenni has more than 35 years of experience in print, broadcast and online media. She has been a professional speaker since 1996.

Jenni has lived with multiple chronic illnesses and chronic pain since 1997 and has devoted much of her life to advocating for those like her. Her book ChronicBabe 101: How to Craft an Incredible Life Beyond Illness has helped countless folks feel better.

coachjennigrover.com
Instagram & Linked In:
@coachjennigrover