Follow along with me as I participate in the 2024 Save Your Story Challenge by Quilt Alliance. You can find all of my blog posts that are part of this challenge.

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Throughout the year, I have eagerly looked forward to the monthly emails from Quilt Alliance for these Save Your Story Challenges. The challenges have helped me reflect upon my complete portfolio of quilting and engage in best practices for documenting my quilts and the stories they share. For some time, I thought I had missed the October newsletter which announced the next challenge. But then, the November newsletter came with the heartbreaking news of the impact of Hurricane Helene (I wasn’t aware that QA operations are based out of Asheville, NC). As someone that moved to Miami, Florida, one week before Hurricane Andrew made landfall, I’m well aware of the fear, anxiety, and extensive recovery time for individuals, families, businesses, and the entire community. My heart is with Quilt Alliance and those that will be building back from Hurricane Helene for years to come.

Somehow, Quilt Alliance has channeled their inner strength during this time to continue the Save Your Story Challenge, and shared the following prompt as the combined October/November challenge:

For me, sharing my quilts has been one of the best parts of quilting! As quilting is such a solo activity, I thoroughly enjoy being able to take others through my initial story idea, design process, how I select fabrics, etc. – all of the steps that it takes to get to the finished product.

Quilt Alliance provided the bulleted list above as potential venues and activities for sharing – and I’ve actually done all of these! Online, I share my quilts through posts on this Journeys of Dr. G blog tagged with the word quilt. I also share on my Instagram account at @drlauraguertin. A few of my quilt collections have their own dedicated websites, such as the 19 quilts I made for the Stories from the South Atlantic Ocean collection. I’ve entered my quilts in shows organized by local quilting guilds, and my quilts have appeared in the online juried galleries for the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators (GNSI). I also present about not just my quilts but my journey as a scientist who uses quilts for science storytelling. Those presentations have been at quilting guilds, garden clubs, libraries, senior friendship circles, science outreach programs, through Zoom, and more. I’ve even discussed my science quilts on various podcasts (see blog post to listen to the recordings) and appeared on an episode of a pubic television show in Massachusetts titled Innovation Showcase.

It is important to me that I also share my quilts within my science community. I’ve had two of my collections on display at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (Stitching Hope for Louisiana Coast at AGU (in New Orleans!) and 10 quilts from Stories from the South Atlantic Ocean at AGU), and several quilts as part of my regular oral and poster presentations. One unique event I was invited to present at was a StoryCollider event in San Francisco in 2019 themed on Disaster Response (again, talking about the Louisiana quilts!). I was featured in a Smithsonian Magazine article titled Inside the Growing Movement to Share Science Through Quilting, and two of my quilts have appeared in the online science/art journal Consilience (Taking the Temperature and Christmas Trees for Coastal Optimism). One exciting publication coming up is a chapter in a book titled Ocean Literacy: The Foundation for the Success of the Ocean Decade. I have a chapter on collaborative quilting (featuring photos of my student quilts and two of my South Atlantic Ocean quilts) that will be among the 50+ submissions representing 33 countries and 12 U.S. states!

And there’s one more dissemination “venue” I use for my science quilts – the front door of my house! I try to swap out these mini quilts every month or so, presenting a science-themed quilt with science information to teach those that walk by some new science information. One example of quilts that have been on my front door is the Endangered Species Act collection I created in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act.

You might think this is enough dissemination – but no, there’s so much more I want to do! During the pandemic, I created some videos about the quilts (I have a YouTube playlist for Quilting Science Stories), but I want to get back to doing this to describe entire collections of my quilts. During the pandemic, I also created two virtual galleries in ArtSteps – one for Stitching Hope for the Louisiana Coast and one for Drawing Down Towards Climate Solutions. I’d like to get back to sharing through virtual galleries like these as well.

I’d also love to publish a book that describes my science quilts, with lots of photos of not just the quilts but the science behind them. I’ve had my quilts on extended display at some museums (Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Jenkins Arboretum, Delaware County Institute of Science, and the Penn State Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum and Art Gallery) – but I hope to showcase them at more (Smithsonian Institution and any Philadelphia museum, I’m looking at you!).

One very important audience I want to work to share my story and quilts with even more – students in grades K-12. I want to make sure all students realize that you don’t have to be a scientist or an artist, that you can have an analytical science and a creative side. In fact, for me, it is the balance between being a scientist and quilter that makes me stronger at both! I’m hoping to connect with more youth outreach activities (either in-person or in Zoom) to highlight that it is OK to be interdisciplinary across fields you wouldn’t think could connect.

OK, I provided alot of details in this blog post, and I’m hoping that by providing the various venues I have shared my work, this might inspire other quilters to think of expanding their own ways to disseminate their creative work. I look forward to future dissemination opportunities in addition to learning from where and how others are sharing their own quilts!