Common Roots: the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical Centennial Story Quilt which took almost three years to make has fifty nine colorful blocks depicting a variety of the events and people that figured prominently I the life of this great institution.

The Quilt has provided interesting and highly creative avenues of expression by the more than 100 persons who lent their talents as artists to design the blocks or as crafters to do the stitchery and quilting.

Whatever their contributions to the Quilt, each participant included in his/her work a generous portion of love and care. Imagine, if you will, someone spending more than two hundred and fifty hours of carefully placed stitches in a nine by nine inch block of fabric. Such was the case for several of the quilters.

The quilters included faculty, staff, students, alumni and community members. The youngest quilter was ten years old. Work on the Quilt brought together many persons who had never before worked on a common project.

Just as there were wide variances in the ages of the Quilters, there were wide variances in the designs, fabrics and techniques that were used in making the Quilt. A wide range of topics were covered in the block by block renditions of vignettes from the life of the university during its one hundred year existence. Such major events as the sit – ins, the Student Space Shuttle Project, the university mascot and collages of student organizations are included.