The Wiley H. Bates Legacy Center invites the public to participate in the Bates Legacy Center Story Telling Quilt Project! The Center is developing six Documentary Story Quilts as part of a project funded in part by a FY2023 Maryland Heritage Areas Authority (MHAA) Grant. There have been five quilt planning sessions to date, at the Bates Legacy Center, 1101 Smithville Street, Annapolis (see below). All are invited to participate! Bring your memorabilia to share, and have it scanned!
Update from Mr. Joseph Butler: “We told you at our last quilting session on September 27th that we still need content for our quilts and you should continue to do research about the four decades and seek out descendants of early Bates alumni to talk with. Lyndra Pratt-Marshall will be at the Bates Legacy Center on Wednesday, November 8 2023 from 9 am – 3 pm to scan content for quilts and we will be holding our regular quilting meeting starting at 3 pm. If you have something that you want scanned, please bring it in or make arrangements with Lyndra at some other date and time. Every team member should be focusing on their assigned decade (30’s, 40’s, 50’s, or 60’s) team quilt at this point. If you don’t know your team assignment, please let me know and I will tell you. If you can’t make it next week, you can send a copy of your quilting content to Lyndra’s email address.
Happy hunting and I hope to see you at the next session.”
Last month, Mr. Butler shared that Lyndra Marshall has determined they need a lot more content for the 1930’s since there were no yearbooks during that period of time. We may have to rely on the internet for this content. Lyndra has also indicated they need content for the 1940’s from 1947 – 1949. For the 1950’s, we still need to cover the years 1957 and 1959. For the 1960’s, we still need 1961, 1963, 1965 and 1966. Lyndra discussed the next steps in the quilting process after research and scanning which are content selection, fabric printing, panel design, sewing and stitching, embellishing and finishing. They have announced the team assignments. “Each team will help us by focusing on one quilt rather than six at a time. Hopefully, we will make more progress doing this.”
Remember if you are not able to attend our meetings, you may bring items to the Center Monday – Friday from 11 am to 4 pm or email copies to [email protected]. Please share this email with all of our interested partners. We hope to see you next week.
The six quilts planned will group graduating classes together by decade (1930’s, 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s), as well as a quilt about the life of Wiley H. Bates, and a thematic quilt about the Underground Railroad.
For more information, please contact Isaac Vineyard at [email protected]