Quilts as sites for liberation

Praise and glory

Image Description : Classmates holding up my quilt tops while I talk in front of them with a mic while Lukaza kneels and documents

There are two things I love more than anything in this world : god and quilts.

Quilts have a long history as sites for transformation, liberation, storytelling, radical generosity, and imaginative gifts. I am not the first or the last to tell you this, but today I wanted to share more about the powerful experience I had studying with Mary Ann Pettway and China Pettway at the Gee’s Bend Quilt Retreat a few weeks ago.

I started quilting in 2013 when Eliza Fernand taught an improvisational quilt class at Have Company, my shop/gallery/residency space in Grand Rapids, MI. My life really changed forever after that day. I had been knitting since I was a kid but had never learned a new skill outside of dance in many years. It was both the pleasure of learning the new skill and finding one that resulted in a beautiful tangible object.

The first quilt I ever made I used the tablecloths and napkins from John and I’s wedding, used no batting, and quilted it directly onto an old wool blanket that my dad had in his basement. I love this quilt and it is on my couch today with a few holes chewed in it from June’s puppy days. A spell in every stitch not to stay married but to stay family. Quilt spells work.

I have seen after teaching over four hundred students to make quilts in A Quilt is Something Human how powerful it is to take scraps, clothes of our beloveds, and new fabrics and cut them up and reorganize them into this arrangement that we call a blanket. It is in the teaching that I learn so much, and I felt that my work needed new eyes on it in order to move forward in my own facilitation.

Like many quilters I have long admired the flow of improvisation that has come out of Gee’s Bend so when the opportunity to study with Mary Ann and China came along I knew I wanted their mentorship and camaraderie amongst my own quilt making.

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Ok so back to god. While I write a lot and talk a lot about god in a very casual yet direct way I always feel this level of embarrassment like I don’t want people to think I am religious or Christian or into Jesus as my Lord and Savior. Don’t get me wrong, Jesus - great sounding guy. But being saved is not my jam, I don’t belong to a church, and my version of god is more like clouds and wind and water.

With Mary Ann and China all glory goes to god, in all moments of their life and their teaching. The level of unapologetic praise and worship before every meal, while we quilted, before we talked, filled the room with the divine spirit of everything. There was never an over explanation like - if this isn’t your jam just ignore it. It was just a part of the experience. Singing, singing together, and being in communion with god through handwork.

I found this to be greatly inspiring in the ways that I weave in my love for spirit into my own work, often with some sort of caveat or reasoning. What if I just left it out and trusted people to take what they like and leave the rest. What if I just let god in the room and let everyone else decide how they wanted to interact with that notion, more material to sew in or cut out.

In a moment of stress I felt like I needed to cut a quilt top I made in half because I needed the yellow to be in more than one spot, Mary Ann said - Why don’t you just add more yellow to one of the ends? Ah yes of course, destroying everything to make it the way I want it to be may have another pathway, it may be as simple as adding to one side. It may be as simple as asking for guidance, of pausing before I chop.

Studying with Mary Ann

I sat with Mary Ann and studied some of her aunt’s quilts, specifically the housetop pattern which I had never made before. We went over some compositional ways to start and it is probably my favorite quilt I’ve ever made, like sea glass.

In one of the storytelling hours they talked about the radical work and picketing they did to be able to vote, to be able to have their rights, and to be able to be in a room like we were in together. As my friend Lukaza reminded me, who joined me on this journey, this is not a miracle, the being together. This is from hard fought work and resistance. I felt so much gratitude for our elders who fought not so long ago, a reminder to keep fighting now. To keep liberation work at the forefront of my mind and heart, before myself and everything I do.

During the show and tell everyone had such a personal story of how the process of quilting liberates them from something. From fear, from grief, from pain. How it brings them joy and community and hope. Quilting shows us how these things can all be together, they don’t have to be separate, all parts welcome here.

I was amazed by how much I got done in four days, seven quilt tops total. Some big some small, but all just whizzing through my sewing machine and my fingers. No rules no rulers no patterns and a rotary cutter to trim my edges. This was new for me as I don’t use this tool but it really sped things up in a way I liked.

As I continue to research and write about the focus of the artist I was struck by how much can be done when we only work in one medium, for days on end, all our meals cooked for us, no dog to walk or let outside, no dishes to be done, no chores to do, no emails to write. It was a remarkable exercise in doing just one thing for many days, and I’ll be asking myself to implement some of this into my ordinary days as well.

Lukaza, Clara, and Anna

Back home I am finding myself pinning together the layers of these quilts in my new studio, visitors coming by to see Meg and telling them all about my experience at the retreat, planning my first art show, piecing it all together with grad school.

In the last few months I have seen so many mobilize their activism with quilts. Quilts being raffled off for different mutual aid organizations and families, the quilt for Gaza on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many community quilts coming out in this time of great need, fundraising, and awareness.

I think quilts are the greatest thing in the world. Making them, teaching people to make them, learning from the best, surrounded by other people zip zip sewing away for their own liberation, the personal experience of stitching it all together, one quilt block at a time.

In a world where it can be so difficult to start, to know where to begin, to know how to enter, quilts remind me the only way is to take two scraps. Not four, not three, not cutting the whole thing out and planning it. You just need two scraps, then you sew them together. Then you take a third scrap, and so on and so forth.

The plan reveals itself as you choose, as you undo, as you backstitch and stay curious. The inquiry of where it all comes from stays close to my heart, the choice making a critical tool for change and creation.

May your choices be added onto, undone, and of great benefit to the whole.

I am teaching a new quilt class April 26 + 27 from 12-3pm EST both days live on zoom
THE POETICS OF SQUARES : Quilt in a Weekend

Registration opens later this week and to be the first to hear about it sign up for the waitlist - class is capped at sixty participants

It’s true - we are really going to make a whole crib sized quilt in two days together (!!!)

1. I have a new favorite book and it is Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti. It is now my favorite book ever written. I can’t believe how much I loved it.

2. Starting May 5 I am hosting a six week book club for paying subscribers where we read Living The Artist’s Way : An Intuitive Path to Greater Creativity (not the original, the new one!) No previous Artist Way experience necessary

3. Housetop : Housetop quilts as teachings of survival, land, warmth, destruction by

   Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo
   is another beautiful telling of our time at the Gee’s Bend Quilt Retreat

4. Another perspective I liked listening to, even if I didn’t agree with everything. Maybe it goes without saying that what I share here means I am paying attention to it, that I am consuming it, that it feels worth sharing - not that I loved every second.

5. I’m signed up for Bear Hebert’s next cohort of their six month coaching program Radical Business Incubator and I’m really looking forward to weaving my values and work together, and being willing to expand - especially in times of great hopelessness - there are a few spots left :)

6. Fariha Róisín
   in the Creative Independent : “I’ve never been normal and I don’t know what that is. I think having your agency taken away from you at such a young age makes you confront the reality that that can even happen. And so you are forced into a position of fighting for yourself to validate your story, and to be seen in a world that doesn’t want to see you on so many different levels.”

7. Jacqueline Suskin
   in the Creative Independent : I loved reading about some of Jacqueline’s journaling practice
   ”A big part of my personal practice has been to develop this system with my journals that has helped me review everything I’ve written and sort out the stuff that I want to use and utilize.”

8. This whole album wow

9. Inspired by Jessie Cutt’s banners

   

10. “Scrambling for security has never brought anything but momentary joy.” - Pema Chodron, been returning to When Things Fall Apart

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