Quinn Tailor wants to know how you’re feeling.
Specifically, if you count yourself as part of an LGBTQ+ community, Tailor wants to know how you feel about the world right now, and how you feel about the future.
Those responses, combined with respondents’ ages, will fuel the creation of five quilts that will explore sentiments across generations of LGBTQ+ people. Each question includes seven choices, from which Tailor will create a color key to represent the spectrum of responses. Each survey will generate a square made of two triangles.
“The idea is to spark some intergenerational conversations,” said Tailor, who at 40 straddles the millennial and Generation X divide.
Four quilts will be dedicated to single generations — Baby Boomers, Gen X, millennial and Gen Z. The last quilt will blend all four.
The project, called QLT GEN, comes at a time of rising anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and a rollback of transgender rights. Yet Tailor said they see divisions within the LGBTQ+ community, often along generational lines.
“It just kills me. We shouldn’t be making choices of how or who to support within our own community,” they said. “If we come together, we can be this unstoppable force for change, for positive, good things.”
From Indiana to Los Angeles and back
Tailor’s sewing career began when they were 3, under the guidance of their grandmother. It started with hand-sewing finger puppets, inspired by Tailor’s love of the puppets on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
Later, Tailor helped their grandmother, herself an avid quilter, with her projects.
“So I’ve been quilting pretty much my whole life,” Tailor said.
After high school, Tailor attended the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, where both the machines and city were much bigger than what Tailor was used to.
“I grew up, technically, in a village, because we had under 200 people,” Tailor said of their hometown of Vallonia, Indiana. “So I went from nothing to, oh, I can take the bus to West Hollywood.”
Tailor has since moved to Indianapolis, where they now work with their husband out of their eastside basement studio. Together, the couple creates and sells fabric wallets, tote bags and other designs under the name QNT Supply.
An idea is born
Tailor started thinking of a project last year that would combine their craft with their community.
Aside from their decades of experience, quilting made sense due to its prominence in LGBTQ+ history.
In the 1980s, gay activists in San Francisco began creating and collecting panels for what would become the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Today, the quilt features nearly 50,000 panels dedicated to more than 110,000 individuals who died of AIDS, according to the National AIDS Memorial.
Tailor’s project will be a team effort. It’s supported by a grant facilitated by Big Car Collaborative and funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ Regional Regranting Program. A number of local businesses will collect survey responses over the coming weeks.
The quilts will be constructed by “a small army of the most lovely quilters” who have been taught by Tailor over the years. And a number of businesses have offered to provide materials to the project.
“Everything in our community, that is how it has to happen,” Tailor said. “It could never just be me.”
How to contribute
Those interested in taking the survey can do so online. Paper surveys will be available at:
- Hampton & Co., 5515 E. Washington St.
- Toolbox Men’s Supply Company, 750 N. College Ave.
- Irvington Vinyl & Books, 202 S. Audubon Road
- Dream Palace Books & Coffee, 111 E. 16th St.
The quilts will be unveiled Nov. 21 at Irvington Vinyl & Books.
A clarification was made on July 8, 2025: Information was added to clarify the source of funding for Tailor’s project.
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Emily Hopkins is a Mirror Indy reporter focused on data and accountability. You can reach them on phone or Signal at 317-790-5268 or by email at emily.hopkins@mirrorindy.org. Follow them on most social media @indyemapolis or on Bluesky @emilyhopkins.bsky.social.
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