Quilt: A Database for Connection
Making friends as an adult is hard — we hear it all the time, but the sentiment is true. Developing friendships in the midst of real-life proves to take time and effort in our fast-paced world. Quilt is a community organization that facilitates gatherings for women to connect and create friendships. “At Quilt, you don’t just ‘meet’ people, you get to know each other,” their tagline claims. The organization contains hosts throughout the United States that open their home for an intimate gathering focused on a specific topic.
Despite what our social media following may suggest, we are not able to maintain a relationship with 500+ people. While Quilt does utilize an app to organize these events, the goal is not simply for users to make “internet friends,” but rather create true friendship through meaningful conversation, shoulder-to-shoulder.
Topics discussed range from the Enneagram (a personality typing tool) to motherhood to building community and more. Facilitated by a Quilt-authorized host, gatherings are mainly held in larger cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, though smaller cities in the states of New York and California are involved as well. Only two years in for the organization, I suspect hosts from a more diverse range of cities will be soon added.
Once you download the app, it only takes a few minutes to set up your “profile.” You go through the basics — choosing your location, selecting a profile photo, and adding a short biography. From there, you can see the gatherings listed in or around your area. A map is also provided as a database to explore — you will see small photos of women all across the country who are also Quilt users. A message feature is available to talk with hosts and fellow Quilters. (Quiltees? They aren’t quite clear on the term.) Lastly, on the app, you can invite friends, become a host, and manage details on your gatherings.
Our digital age is marked by words such as “social,” “friends,” and “community,” and yet Quilt is proving that perhaps digital friendship does not satisfy our desire for true relationship. Feedback from women who have experienced Quilt’s in-home gatherings confirms that their method works. One Quilt user reports, “I experienced immediate connection with people who were strangers before they even stepped in the door.” While, another woman said, “Connection is something I can find on the street, but DEEP connection is something I get with Quilt.”
These gatherings show us that friendship is worth investing in, mentorship matters, and our stories should be shared. They advocate for the couch, for wine (or your drink of choice), for messy homes where messy people can enter and show up as themselves.
As opposed to your Instagram following/follower count, Quilt limits their gatherings to 6–12 women. While the number may seem limited, it provides intimacy — something that scrolling through your feed will never give. Rather, it causes us to wonder if the never-ending opportunities of the Internet are the real limitation.
With the organization’s community members as only women — and the location being their homes — Quilt is working to change the narrative of what “the home” can stand for.
From a place where women (historically speaking) had to be, Quilt uses the home as an honest space these women choose to be. From a place marked by isolation, Quilt is creating community. And, from a place that relied on men, Quilt is run by women, for women.
Although the organization’s main goal is to cultivate in-person community, Quilt also uses social media, specifically Instagram, to connect with their following. (Some of which, cannot attend Quilt gatherings due to location accessibility.)
One avenue is using their stories to post a “Midweek Check-in” where they pose a question and follow up later in the week through a longer-form post. This sort of question-asking that gets immediate statistics from their followers is unique: Rather than conducting a formal, long-term study, social media allows for immediacy and conducting a study within an organization’s target audience.
Quilt’s online presence suggests that while digital connection does not satisfy our need for relationship, it can be used to “continue the conversation,” of sorts. Social media should be social, and if used well, as an avenue to friendship. They utilize the same tactics online as they do their social platform: Thought-provoking questions are asked, and genuine dialogue is created between followers.
Overall, Quilt demonstrates that the more social we become online, the more we need to evaluate our in-person, real-life connections. Perhaps they aren’t as deep as we would like, or maybe we aren’t friends with people that give us the support when we need it.
While these evaluations can cause us to worry, there is no need to fret. We can do what we do best these days: Go to the App Store and download Quilt.
