Opinion: My ‘Spring’ quilt is a patchwork of history, memory and hope
I think of my best friend’s mother, Mrs. Lucille Foster, who told me of the time in the 1940s when she saw a pretty Easter dress in the window ofdepartment store, which African Americans were not allowed to enter; she had to give the money to her White employer, who went in and made the purchase. I think of how Black neighborhoods were left off the bus routes when the schools were finally desegregated in the 1960s.
This required changing the way I work. Usually, my technique is improvisational. I begin a quilt with an idea of what the final product will look like, but not with an inflexible plan. I let the fabric’s colors and textures tell me how they want to fit together. To produce the new effects I was after, I needed to find a way to plan the piece in detail without losing the feeling of spontaneity. First, I created a sketch of the design.
With this “Seasons” project for The Post, which will continue through the year with “Summer,” “Fall” and “Winter,” I hope to explore new directions while also honoring the centuries-old traditions of African American fabric art. Traditionally, Black quilters relied on found fabrics — used clothing and household linens; pieces of older, worn-out quilts — that held meaningfor the artists that stretched beyond the utilitarian and the aesthetic.
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