QUILTERS' S.O.S. - SAVE OUR STORIES PROJECT

Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories (Q.S.O.S), a project of The Alliance for American Quilts, was designed to be simple, inexpensive and inclusive. The project's format is intended to be easily adopted by other organizations (such as regional or local quilt guilds) eager to document the personal stories of quiltmakers in their communities.

First, what is oral history? Oral-spoken word; history- a narrative of a remembered past. Oral history records the living memories and feelings of people and creates a more vivid picture of our past. It is exciting because it is interactive. It is history shared and a rare chance for us to actually "talk to history face to face."

Q.S.O.S. is attempting to build on the techniques of oral histories to pursue conversations about quiltmaking today. Thus, Q.S.O.S. has been developed with three working concepts in mind:

• Focus Interviews
  
  Each interview is intended to run approximately forty-five minutes and to stand as a recorded conversation about observations and questions springing from a quilt or related object. Focus interviews are not intended to record comprehensive biographies of working quiltmakers but to get at questions about quilt design, techniques, sources, and standards among other issues.
  
  
• Touchstone Object
  
  Each quiltmaker interviewed is asked to bring one object that she/he considers significant in her/his own quilting practice, preferably a quilt of her/his own making. The touchstone object serves as both a point of departure and reference for the interview. The idea of a touchstone object serves two key purposes:
  
  
  1. it frames the conversation with an object chosen by the person being interviewed;
  2. it provides a consistent point of reference throughout the interview.
     
     
• Accessibility
  
  Interview equipment and techniques are designed to be easily acquired and used by individuals with minimum training. One of the primary goals of Q.S.O.S. is to initiate a project that can be pursued readily throughout the larger quilt community.

The working concepts of focus interviews, touchstone objects, and accessibility are designed to be flexible and manageable. A quiltmaker, for example, may be interviewed more than once. Interviews can take place in different venues, for instance an exhibition, guild meeting or home. The key points are to keep the process simple, manageable and focused.

Remember, Q.S.O.S. has as its basic goal: "to create a broadly accessible body of information" - our choice of format is based on equipment and methods that are easily mastered and readily shared.

There are many "tricks of the trade" and observations useful in conducting interviews. A few key techniques should be introduced at this point:

- learning to listen;
- asking open-ended questions;
- using silence;
- verbalizing visual information;
- seeking clarification;
- etiquette;
- sharing.

These will be discussed in the following pages.

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