Oral histories of Minnesota Quilters
Beginning in the late 1980s, MQP visited numerous counties around the state to hold "Quilt Discovery Days." During these events, Minnesotans brought their quilts to be documented. Afterwards, a number of quilters were interviewed and their oral histories were captured on audio cassette tapes. In 2021, MQP received funding from the Minnesota Historical and Cultural Heritage grant program to make digital sound recordings and transcripts of the oral histories available, posting the interviews to The Quilt Index. In addition to information about quilting, many contain interesting personal and social history stories. As the interviews are uploaded to The Quilt Index, links will appear here.
Quilter and MN County
- Anna Wacker (Le Sueur)
- Alma Esser (Crow Wing)
- Gertrude Pritzel (Washington)
- Anna Wetzel (Le Sueur)
- Clara Jenkins (Morrison)
- Genevieve J. Moffitt (Le Sueur)
- Merle Eddy Vollmer (Le Sueur)
- Nell Flohrs (Martin)
- Ruby Hoie (Clearwater)
- Vivian Smithburg (Crow Wing)
Tell us your quilt story!
The Minnesota Quilt Project continues to interview MQ members and share their special stories of quilting. You can be a new quilter or a more experienced one, a modern, contemporary, traditionalist or all of the above. To participate, you can fill out this form and email it together with pictures, to MQP at [email protected]. Alternatively we can schedule a date to interview you and get a picture with some of your quilts. We hope you will enjoy knowing more about one another!