Many quilt owners have acquired quilts with no provenance, meaning you don’t know who made it, where it was from, or any story about the quilt or its maker. That’s okay. We still want your quilt. There is a large section of questions for you to describe the quilt. Most of these questions you can answer by examining and measuring the quilt. If you don’t understand the questions, there will be call-outs to help. If the question has a call-out, you will find it when you hover over the question. If the call-out doesn’t help refer to the How to Document a Quilt Guide or skip the question. To help speed your date entry, QI will prompt you to skip over whole sections you don’t have information for. However, if you do know something about the quilt we want to hear it. There are questions for who the quilt maker is/was, where they got their materials, where they lived, why they made the quilt, and any stories about the maker or the quilt. The process will be slow at first. But if you are entering multiple quilts, you will speed up as you get used to the interface.

If you don’t have a professional set-up don’t worry, but try to take the best image of the quilt you can. This is the picture the public will see. Having two people hold up a quilt is better than having it lay on a bed or floor. The QI supports a feature we call “zoom”. It allows the viewer to see details of the quilt without being able to steal the image for their own use. How it works; use your best full view image of the quilt. Crop out as much of the background as you can. Re-size the image to 72 dpi and no more than 1500 pixels (~20”) wide. The length doesn’t matter. Name the file for this image with –z or –zoom after the image name, example: 22-z.jpg or 22-zoom.jpg. Take the same image and re-name it without the –z or –zoom and resize it to 72dpi and 700 pixels (~9”) wide, example 22.jpg. Make sure there are no spaces in the image file name, as they won’t show up online. Example 22-z.jpg or 22-zoom.jpg are good 22 z.jpg or 22 zoom.jpg are not good. You may submit four additional images to the record. Additional images should all be 72dpi and 700 pixels (~9”) wide. The additional images can be details, the back, the label, or the maker. If you have a lot more images consider creating a maker or story page (see below). Learn more with the guide, Preparing Images for the Quilt Index.

To insure that spam doesn’t get in the QI, each record will be verified before it is published live. Verification does not include correcting the data. Example, if the estimated date of the quilt or its pattern name appears to be wrong, it will not be changed by the QI team. The QI is a repository of information, not a guarantee of facts. Researchers will draw their own conclusions about the data offered. Sometimes correcting the data could lead to wrong conclusions as in pattern names. Just because the pattern name seems wrong, doesn’t meant that it isn’t a regional preference. The QI is a data tool, not a data conclusion. Once your data has been verified, you will receive an email with a link to your record(s).

Yes. If you have multiple quilts in your collection or ones that you have made, you can have your own page here. An artist page is for collectors as well as makers. Once ou have filled out the artist and owner fields there will be a prompt, Please make a separate artist page for this quiltmaker or Please make a separate artist page for this quilt owner. If you check the box, you will be asked to submit at least one picture and a biography (short or long). Then all the quilts you enter will appear at the bottom of this page. Note the quilts made by the artist are listed first with “Creator” in the display card, and the antique quilts owned by the artist are listed next with “Owner” in the display card. After your artist page is established you will be given a unique KID number for use when you document more quilts. When this KID number is added to any new quilt record you enter, the newly added quilt will show up on your artist page.

Most stories about quilts will be attached to the quilt record. However, if you have a special story with a lot of photographs and/or ephemera (letters, census pages, templates, etc.) it can have a record all its own. It will be on our Stories page. Check out some of the stories and decide if your story deserves its own page. In the portal there is a place for adding stories. After you have filled out the story field there will be a prompt, Please make a separate story page for this story. If you check the box, you will be asked to submit at least one picture. After the story is added and your quilt is verified you will get an email with the link to the story and the quilt.

The Stories portal can be used for quilt related stories that do not relate to a specific quilt. The Stories portal supports audio and video as well. Go to the View Story Form to begin.

While browsing the QI you may have come across Special Collections, Galleries, Exhibits, Lesson Plans, etc. They are not part of the Public Submission portal now, but are still available to you. Just email Beth Donaldson to get started.

In order to maintain The Quilt Index as a current and up-to-date resource that is accessible to everyone, it costs on average $10.00 per quilt. If you would like to support The Quilt Index or make a gift in honor of a quilter or to support the preservation and access to your quilts you would like to upload, please click here.