The Auction Begins

The newest auction for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative has started. It ends Dec 10th.

 My quilt (#8397), "Give Peace A Chance" from our quilt guild's challenge is up for bid along with Lorna Milano's (#8394) - another guild member. 

Hurry up and take a look at all the quilts. 

They would make great holiday gifts,as well as benefiting Alzheimer research.

http://www.benefitbidding.com/listings/categories/index.cfm?category=965774286

Let's Raise Money For Alzheimer's Research

Calico Cutters Quilt Guild has an annual challenge.  The last few years we have tried to structure it so that not only do we challenge our members but also raise money for a worthy organization. This year we chose the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) as our beneficiary.  The quilts could have any theme, but were supposed to be 8 1/2" x 11".  They were displayed at today's meeting.  People had the opportunity to purchase them with the proceeds going to AAQI.  The remaining quilts will be sent to AAQI and sold at the International Quilt Festival in Houston at the beginning of November. The mini quilts were just amazing.  48 of them all together. Take a look at what some of our talented members created:

I Am Proud To Be A Quilter

I am proud to be a quilter.  We have this opportunity to use our skills to help others. The public is willing to spend money to buy one of our creations to support a cause.
This is not a new phenomenon.  It has been going on for centuries. Dating back to the Civil War, quilts were used to raise funds for the soldiers.  People would pay as much as 10 cents to put their signature on a quilt.  Raffle tickets were then sold to the quilt to raise even more money.

This tradition of creating quilts and selling raffle tickets has continued.  Almost every quilt guild has some type of charity that they support.  The funds usually come from selling tickets for a special raffle quilt that guild members have made.  Women's shelters are one of the most popular types of organizations that guilds like to support with part of the proceeds.

I have been involved in creating quilts to raise funds for some of the local private schools.  These quilts were sold in an auction type setting.  Parents love to bid on things that contain their child's signature.  The quilt included photos of the students and the girls also signed pieces of their jeans that I used for the flower petals.  This quilt brought over $2500 at their annual fundraiser.

Virgina Spiegel took the concept of using quilts to raise funds to a whole new level.  She started Fiberart For A Cause(FFAC) to raise money for The American Cancer Society.  I remember seeing a wall of fiberart postcards being sold at one of the major quilt shows.  You could choose whichever one you wanted  for a donations of $30 each.  After raising over $200,000 (yes $200,000) for The American Cancer Society, FFAC has been retired. Not being able to rest on her laurels, she is hosting a one day event called ONE.  Feb 16th is the date.  You can get more info by clicking  here.

Ami Simms is another woman who has brought quiltmaking to another level as a fundraiser. She started the  Alzheimer's Art Quit Initiaitive (AAQI) to raise funds and awareness.  She says never underestimate the power of a woman and a needle.  Through her organization, more than $400,000 for Alzheimer's research has been raised. 

So what motivated me to write this post?  The horrible floods in Australia has brought out the benevolence of more quilters.  The immediacy of blogging has led some quilters to use their talent and offer some of their creations as a fundraiser to help those that have lost everything, on their blogs.

http://oneshabbychick.typepad.com/one_shabby_chick/2011/01/australia-quilt-auction.html

So where else can you do something that you love so much, in the privacy of your home, sometimes in your pajamas in the middle of the night, creating something that can end up helping so many people?  I am proud to be a quilter.

Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative Update

As many of you know, I have been a huge supporter of Ami Simms' Alzheimers Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI).  Ami, a world reknown quilter, started this organization about 5 years ago, after finding out that her mother had Alzheimers.  It started with a travelling quilt exhibit to raise awareness and money for research and now includes quilt auctions and other fundraising methods.  She has raised over $400,000 for research so far.  The wonderful news is that one of the researchers at the University of Michigan that received grant money from AAQI has made a breakthrough.  You can read about it on Ami's blog.  It is amazing that quilters and quilt lovers, with a needle, thread and a checkbook have contributed towards this discovery.

My quilt, "Leaving Us" made in memory of my Dad, has finished touring.  There were 51 quilts in the exhibit from 38 states and over 200,000 people viewed them.  Some of the quilters donated their quilts to AAQI for Ami to sell.  I did a lot of soul searching trying to figure out if I was willing to let my quilt go.  It has a photo of my Dad on the back and it is so personal.  For it to have travelled and touched so many people was a unique experience for me.  If I knew for sure that it would end up on a wall in a public place, I may have considered donating it.  So I have decided to keep it and think of my Dad whenever I see it.  I can still spread the word as I travel talking about my quilts.  This was a very tough decisions.

"Leaving Us"  depicts the progression of Alzheimers.

AAQI and Bandywine Valley Quilt Guild

AAQI is the acronym for Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative.  It was started by a wonderful quilter named Ami Simms whose mother was afflicted with this heart breaking disease.  Ami made it her mission to raise funds for research while educating people about Alzheimer's.  Her modus operandi was to use something she was very familiar with - quilts!

"Leaving Us"

I got involved when there was a call for quilts for a traveling exhibit that she was putting together.  My Dad died in 2000 and had Alzheimer's.  I was thrilled that my quilt, "Leaving Us" was not only chosen, but was one of the quilts that was used over and over on promotional material.  The exhibit is now hanging in the Shelburne Museum in Vermont.  It is the last venue for this traveling group of quilts and it will be coming home at the end of the year. Over 223,000 people have seen these quilts in their 3 years of traveling all around the USA.
Ami and her team of volunteers has raised over $400,000 for research.  One of the ways that she does it is to have internet quilt auctions.  They are called Priority quilts because they have to fit inside of a US Mail Priority envelope.  Quilters all over the world make and donate these quilts.  There is a monthly auction the fist 10 days of each month and there is also a selections of quilts that you can purchase at any time.  For a complete overview go to www.alzquilts.org .

This month I was a presenter at The Brandywine Valley Quilt Guild that meets in Wilmington, DE.  And boy was I surprised that as a guild, they had a challenge to make these Priority Alzheimer Quilts and it was unveiled during my visit.  They even used my quilt on their promotional material.  The challenge had a great response - close to 30 participants. 

Most of the BVQ's Challenge Quilts

Then I was so honored when I was asked to choose my favorite, by the organizer of the challenge, Jody Beitzel,  and present an award. They called it The Speaker's Award.  It was a very difficult decision, because so many of the quilts were made from the heart and had so much meaning to them.   Congratulations to Barbara Gross and her amazing quilt and all of the members of this generous and talented guild.

Alzheimer Quilt Exhibit

This is one of the greatest honors I have ever had - having a quilt in the traveling exhibit, Alzheimer -Forgetting Piece By Piece. It started almost 4 years ago. Ami Simms' mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. For those of you who don't know who Ami is, she's an internationally famous quilter known for her great sense of humor (http://www.amisimms.com/). In her energizer bunny kind of way, Ami wanted to do something to both raise money and awareness about Alzheimer's. She worked in the medium she knows best - quilts. She called it the Alzheimer Art Quilt Initiative.

So she first put out a call for quilts that would help to educate the public about this terrible disease. She chose 52 of them to put together a travelling quilt show. I was so thrilled when I found out that mine was one of them. My father, Leonard Krisel, died in 1998. He passed away from a heart attack, but he had Alzheimer's. It was a blessing at the time. Mentally and physically he was in terrible shape. Making this quilt was an opportunity for me to honor my father and revisit his life. "Leaving Us" was designed as a 3 panel quilt, depicting 3 stages of a person's life who has Alzheimer's. A tree full of life and family is the first panel. As the dementia starts to take hold, cognitive functions are lost. And at last, the only thing left is a shell of a person, who is still a father, a grandfather, a human being.

I made the quilt using dupioni silk and spent lots of hours sitting at my sewing machine, thinking about my Dad, and blanket stitching all of the leaves. I used a gold paint pen to write on the leaves. The poignancy of my quilt led Ami to choose it for the cover of the CD depicting all of the quilts. I was beside myself with joy.

Ami's belief in this project, led her to invest lots of her own money to self-publish a book - Alzheimer's - Forgetting Piece By Piece. (All of the profits are donated to Alzheimer research.) It is a wonderful art book with all of the quilts and the authors words about their creations. (You can purchase a copy at http://www.alzquilts.org/.) Ami also started on-line auctions for small quilt pieces to raise money for research. In all. she (along with the help of many people) has raised close to $300,000. Impressive! (Unfortunately, her mother passed away at the beginning of November, 2008).

Initially, the quilts were supposed to travel for 3 years and then return home. But there were more and more opportunities for them to travel. When asked if I would mind letting her keep the quilts for a longer time, my answer was YES! Who would see my quilt if it was sitting in my closet?

I was reminded of all of this recently, when I found out that The Upper Cumberland Quilt Show in Tennessee (http://www.quilt-festival.com/currrentnews.htm) was hosting the Alzheimer quilts in September and they were using my quilt as the poster. MY QUILT IS FAMOUS and it makes me so proud to be part of this group and to keep my Dad's memory alive.


So many of us have been touched by this cruel disease. You don't need to be a quilter to relate to these quilts. Check the schedule (http://www.alzquilts.org/) and bring a few tissues with you.