Quilter Kelley Atkinson and quilt historian Anita Weinraub were both profiled in Quiltfolk, Issue 30: Georgia, but their paths had never crossed until Kelley noticed a label on a vintage quilt she acquired.
The printed label told her the sweet, scrappy Bow Tie quilt had been “a documented quilt” through the Georgia Quilt Project. Kelley had no idea that such a project existed. She immediately wanted to dig deeper into the history of both the quilt and the project. What else could she learn about this quilt that resembled one her grandmother owned?
Anita, on the other hand, knows more or less everything about the Georgia Quilt Project because she was its chairwoman. She also edited the impressive book about the project called Georgia Quilts: Piecing Together a History, which was published in 2006. There were 76 Quilt History Days hosted all over The Peach State between 1990 and 1993. Georgians were so eager to share their quilts that limits had to be set on how many each person could bring.
Quiltfolk decided to invite the two women to have a Zoom conversation. This way, Anita could reveal more about the quilt Kelley had acquired.
But also, this was an opportunity to show our readers how state quilt documentation projects can be a key to unlocking stories behind a purchased or inherited quilt that bears such a label. There must be thousands of quilts out in the world that have been documented this way and sport the labels to prove it.
The first state documentation project began in Kentucky in 1981, during a time when interest in quilt history began to rev up after the Bicentennial. That project inspired many states to formally invite residents to pull quilts out of attics and off beds and bring them to a site where trained volunteers could take photos and record details.
Even if a quilt’s owner didn’t know much, the volunteers would try to glean facts from examining the fabric, patterns, signatures—whatever clues they could find. More than 30 additional state projects were begun in the next decade, and others continue to this day.
There are various ways to research the project quilts. Most projects resulted in books, and others can be studied in online or physical archives, sometimes in historical societies or colleges. The richest resource for learning about state projects is the mega online database called the Quilt Index, compiled under the auspices of Michigan State University. If you are trying to track down information about a particular quilt and that state project isn’t listed on the Index, look for articles online about the state project, and try to identify either someone who worked on it or an institution that houses the records.
In the case of the Georgia quilts, all the documents reside at the Atlanta History Center. Like other state projects, their documentation forms included a long list of questions about who made the quilt, when, why, and how. The Georgia records have been digitized and will eventually be searchable on the Quilt Index, but the photographs still need to be resized before the project can be posted. Before the Zoom call, Anita was able to reach someone who could access the recorded data from Kelley’s quilt and send it to her. Information on the three-page document included that this quilt was likely made in the 1940s, and the maker was Myrtis Etheridge.
What else did Kelley learn that she didn’t know?
“First and foremost, I didn’t know who brought this quilt to be documented. That was Ann Etheridge,” Kelley said. “And now, I know her relationship to the quilt is that it was passed down. It’s written on the form that the quilt was the only possession her husband had from his mother. That really tugged at my heart.”
Kelley is a rather newly minted quilter. She began to quilt in 2017 after her twin sister died from cancer. Knowing about quilts and studying those in her family has brought her unexpected joy and a new appreciation of how quilts connect families through generations.
“Of all my grandmother’s children and grandchildren, I was the only one interested in learning about her quilts,” Kelley told Anita. “And because of the quilts, I learned family history I never knew before. It is so much more than just the fabric and the occasion when a quilt was made.”
With the owner’s name and address on the form, Kelley was able to do some research of her own. She discovered that Ann Etheridge had died. But the form said Ann had two daughters and a son, and now, Kelley wants to find them.
“I would like to think that Ann’s children would like to inherit this family quilt,” Kelley said. “If I can find them and they would like to have this quilt, I would hand it over in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t even charge.”
Anita wishes she had a way to help Kelley find this information. “I so wish I could tell you one of the daughter’s names and how to reach her, but we didn’t ask people for additional contacts when we documented quilts,” she said. “If we had asked that during the project, there are a lot of quilt mysteries we could solve.”
The hunger for missing information is one of the ways this experience has changed Kelley’s habits as a quilter. “I have started labeling quilts in a much better way, now that I know about the Georgia Quilt Project,” she said. “I include more information. And for family members for whom I’ve made real simple labels, I’m now going back and adding to those labels.”
Meanwhile, Kelley won’t stop searching for details about her 1940s Bow Tie quilt and trying to track down the owner’s descendants. And she and Anita have scheduled a lunch together to continue their conversation in person.
Meg Cox joined the Quiltfolk team in 2018 and has written for the magazine and contributed to many other projects since. Learn more about Meg on her website.
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