Online X-clusive:

Lost but not forgotten…
Rediscovering The Pittsburgh Friendship Quilt

Visitors to International Quilt Festival in Houston this October are in for a big treat—and we do mean big! On display at Festival this fall will be the incredible 80-foot wide Pittsburgh Friendship Quilt, a work of art consisting of more than 32,000 small fabric squares, signed by some of Pittsburgh’s best-known citizens. And while the quilt itself is an amazing feat of fabric engineering, its 20-year history is just as remarkable. 

Construction on the quilt—sometimes referred to as “Thousands of Pieces of Pittsburgh”—was begun in July of 1987 at what was then Pittsburgh’s Buhl Planetarium and Institute of Popular Science. The idea for the project, initiated by Buhl’s Jane Werner and Martha Bell, developed out of a traveling Smithsonian exhibit on numbers entitled “Millions.” When Bell could no longer oversee the project, Janet Kaiser was asked to step in as the Quilt Coordinator.

The idea behind the effort was to show just how many—in this case, thousands—of signed squares could be used to create one large quilt. To collect the “thousands of pieces,” organizers placed baskets of 2.25-inch fabric squares at Buhl for visitors to the center to sign. They also distributed kits of these squares to area schools, sports teams, public figures, and cultural and social organizations.

Among some of the most famous names to appear in the quilt are former Presidents Reagan, Carter, and Ford—along with former first ladies Nancy Reagan, Betty Ford, and Lady Bird Johnson—as well as long-time Pittsburgh resident, and beloved children’s television host, Mr. Rogers, and the postman on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Mr. McFeely.

The quilt was completed in September of 1988, through the help of countless volunteers, who spent more than 600 hours sorting the squares into the colors of the spectrum and machine stitching them together. This enormous work was then set into an eight-foot by 80-foot curved “wall” comprised of 21 Plexiglas® panels—a display designed by Buhl’s Carol Weston.

The Pittsburgh Friendship Quilt was presented to the public at Buhl at the end of October 1988 and remained on display through March of 1989—the year of Buhl’s 50th anniversary. In fact, the quilt was included in Buhl’s Anniversary Souvenir Guide, where it was described as “a lasting symbol of Pittsburgh’s people and community spirit.” Organizers had hoped that the quilt would continue to be displayed at venues throughout the area and would eventually find a permanent home at the newly opened Carnegie Science Center. Instead, something completely different happened—the quilt simply disappeared for almost 20 years.

In 1990, Coordinator Janet Kaiser wrote an article about the massive—but missing—artwork for Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine. She sent this article, along with a personal note, to the current director of the Buhl Science Center, but received no response. “I thought it had been lost forever after it disappeared in 1988,” she says. “One wonders how anything so huge could be lost, but it happened.”

Kaiser revived her effort to find—and spotlight—the lost quilt in 2007, the year of Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary celebration, but had little luck. But she received an unexpected surprise the following year, when she found out that the Quilt Company East Quilter’s Guild of Pennsylvania had possession of the quilt and intended to display it at their quilt show that August. “I was absolutely thrilled!” Kaiser says. “After attending the show and seeing the quilt once again, I learned of the circumstance of its rediscovery.”

Earlier that year, the Quilt Company East’s President, Elizabeth Jones, was reading through old quilting magazines—while recovering from a knee injury—and came across the 1990 article that Kaiser had written for Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine. Upon seeing photos of the quilt, Jones decided that she and her guild should attempt to find it so that it could be displayed at their summer show. Her fellow guild member, Kathy Crawford, persistently called the Carnegie Science Center, until she was able to locate an employee who was willing to look for the missing artwork.

In the basement of the Center’s SportsWorks building was the quilt—Plexiglas® panels piled on top of one another on pallets. The building itself was actually scheduled to be demolished, so the quilt was saved just in time. Guild members—along with their husbands and friends—cleaned the exposed areas of the quilt and polished up the Plexiglas® panels. With the exception of a broken corner and a few “mouse holes” in the green area of the quilt, it was in remarkable shape.

The quilt was exhibited for three days during the Quilt Company East show in Monroeville, Pennsylvania and again, for two days, at the Senator John Heinz History Center’s second annual Quilters Weekend. “Most people who saw The Pittsburgh Quilt on display were absolutely amazed,” Kaiser says. “They were overwhelmed with its size and the number of squares set in ‘colorwash’ spectrum—we didn’t even know what ‘colorwash’ was at the time of its assembly. Most also felt that the quilt should be preserved and protected as a part of Pittsburgh’s history.”

When the spring edition of International Quilt Market traveled to Pittsburgh last May, it seemed only appropriate that the quilt should be displayed at the show. And after receiving a terrific response there, the quilt traveled back to Houston so that it may be shown at Quilt Market and Festival this fall, where Kaiser believes the reaction among attendees will be just as incredible.

“Truthfully, I hope the attendees are just ‘blown away’ by both its size and the visual impact of the arrangement of 32,000 fabric squares,” she adds. “Perhaps they will recognize it as a tremendous volunteer effort. Many quilters and non-quilters from various Pittsburgh neighborhoods came together to help with the project. In 1988, we used ‘networking’ before the term was part of our vocabulary. I am absolutely ecstatic about the Pittsburgh Friendship Quilt being displayed at the biggest quilt festival in the U.S.! Now tens of thousands of people can see this incredible quilt.” --Rhianna White

For additional information on the Pittsburgh Friendship Quilt Visit: http://quiltpittsburgh.org/QPPittsburghQuilt.html