The Connecticut Quilt Search Project was a not-for-profit grassroots organization, which began in 1991. Its members included quilt historians, curators, antique quilt collectors, quilt appraisers, independent researchers, and quiltmakers. Over a six year period, they traveled to 46 D-Days across Connecticut and documented over 3,000 quilts. The quilts represented a variety of sources from across Connecticut including family owned treasures, large private collections, historical societies and museums.
 

Criteria for documentation included:

• Quilts currently in Connecticut
• Quilts made in Connecticut
• Quilts made prior to 1950

The documentation was a three step process:

• A physical analysis of the quilt
• An oral history
• A photographic image of the quilt

 

The Project's work included fundraising; a Quilt Gala; a quilt exhibition at the New England Quilt Museum and the Vermont Quilt Festival; and sponsorship of the 2006 American Quilt Study Group's Annual Seminar in Farmington, Connecticut. Quilts and Quiltmakers: Covering Connecticut (2001, Schiffer Book for Collectors an Designers) is the culmination of CQSP's 10 years of documentation and research of pre-1950 quilts made in the state. It showcases more than 145 quilts accompanied by the histories of the quiltmakers. They range from a signed and dated pre-Revolutionary War medallion quilt from Stonington to a Grandmother's Flower Garden made by one of Connecticut's most prolific 20th-century quiltmakers.

The Connecticut Quilt Search Project donated their extensive documentation forms, database, slides, and other items connected to its project to the Connecticut Historical Society. Proceeds from the successful sales of the book were used to establish an endowment fund, the Connecticut Quilt Registry Legacy Fund in the Main Street Community Foundation, to provide maintenance and upkeep of this archive.

Project description provided by the Connecticut Quilt Search.