Potwin Place Quilt Project collection

Abstract: Records relating to the Potwin Place Centennial Quilt Project. The collection consists of a scrapbook with historical information about Potwin Place & the project; meeting materials from the project; photographs of the quilt-making process & related centennial events; newspaper clippings; and fliers, leaflets, correspondence, & other ephemera. Also in the collection are loose photographs particularly documenting the houses for the quilt project; photocopies, notes, & other historical research material; house tours information; meeting minutes & other planning materials; a video of the 1988 ice cream social; and other related documentation from the project.

Administrative History: In 1986 residents of Potwin Place, once a separate city and now a historic neighborhood in Topeka, Kansas, began planning centennial celebrations for the founding of their city. Suggested celebration activities included house tours and creating a quilt documenting Potwin.

Jeanne Hirschberg headed up the Potwin Place Centennial Quilt Project with the assistance of Muriel Segerson, O'Thene Leonard, Marilyn Waugh, Lee Martell, Barbara Laird, Sally Dinkel, Sally Dyke, and Naomi Spratt in 1987. Organizers surveyed the neighborhood to determine the fabric colors and then delivered quilting kits to each resident. Residents created a block with their property on it. Neighbors scheduled "stitch-ins" and rediscovered the social aspects of quilting enjoyed by their mothers and grandmothers. The project brought together quilters and non-quilters who helped each other as needed. Participants pieced together the quilt blocks and then quilted the various layers together.

[Kansas State Historical Society. "Cool Things: Potwin Place Quilt." http://www.kshs.org/cool3/potwinquilt.htm (accessed 12 October 2009).]

Associated materials: The quilt itself was donated to the Kansas Museum of History in 1988.