PAST AND CURRENT PROJECTS
Louisiana Quilt Documentation Project

The Louisiana Quilt Documentation Project identifies and documents quilt makers and their quilts made in Louisiana from the days of earliest settlement of the state to the present. Collecting information for this project began in 2001 as a research activity of the Louisiana Tech University branch of the Louisiana Regional Folklife Program and expanded to the University of New Orleans branch. Louisiana was invited to network with other states through the National Quilt Index, a project of Michigan State University. Official documentation ended with the closing of the Regional Folklife program in 2009; however, Susan Roach is continuing to enter later data to the National Quilt Index.

The primary goals are to develop appreciation for quilting as an important expressive artistic form, to assist quilt owners in identifying and preserving and maintaining the history of family and historic quilts, and to compile a searchable database of quilts.

Project Data

"Grandmother's Engagement Ring" ca. 1880 by Amadilla Lyons, Jackson Parish.

The main means of collecting information for the database is the quilt documentation clinic, modeled after earlier quilt days (or quilt registries) in Kentucky, Mississippi, and other states. At the documentation clinic, quilt owners and quilt makers bring their quilts to a designated site where specific information about the quilt, its maker, and history is collected and entered on the documentation form. Additional information on individual quilt makers is sometimes obtained through more in-depth follow up interviews.

This project also includes quilts from earlier quilt documentation efforts of the Masur Museum in Monroe in 1997, and the Louisiana Quilt Project in 1987-1990, directed by Judy Godfrey and Sandra Todaro. Thanks to the generosity of the Masur Museum, these researchers, and the Louisiana State Archives, this project included over 2500 quilts documented across the state.

"Herculaneum Revisited" 1990 by Peggy Rogers, New Orleans.

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