Social Justice Sewing Academy Anti-Racist Guidebook

Last fall, after a summer of Black Lives Matter protests, the Social Justice Sewing Academy set out to do some different kind of work. This, on top of the amazing lessons, memorials, and community work they already do. They’ve just published a guidebook for the sewers of the world, An Anti-Racist Guidebook.

What is Anti-Racism?

I came to the term through Ibram X. Kendi and his book How to Be an Anti Racist. Essentially, it is about doing more than saying you believe all races are equal. Saying you don’t see colour isn’t the answer. It is about examining the systemic racism that we all participate in one way or another, then actively working to dismantle it.

When the call for volunteers came out I signed up immediately. As a quilter who works almost exclusively in cotton, as a white woman who only learned more than pop culture civil rights history in the last 10 years, as a human, I wanted to do some of the anti-racism work for myself and our community. Ever since my trip to Alabama and seeing cotton fields for the first time I’ve wanted to dive deeper into its production. Hand in hand with that is the deep dive into the role cotton has played in systemic racism.

My essay in the Anti-Racist Guidebook is the result. I looked into the ties between slavery and cotton production, which most of us know about. But it also examines the growth of the Industrial Revolution and capitalism as tied to cotton production, and therefore slavery. It also examines current cotton production, including how those links aren’t really gone.

The process was eye-opening for sure. I hope it is for you. It has me hanging on to every scrap of my cotton, not wanting to waste a bit of effort that went into making it. I won’t lie, it also gives me mixed feelings about using cotton at all. This discomfort is good, its going to force me to dig deeper. The next step is to talk to the fabric companies that make our medium of choice and ask them about their current supply chain. The more we all know, the better.

I highly recommend checking out the entire Anti-Racist Guidebook. There are some incredible pieces on everything from code-meshing to political quilts, from housing to resiliency. Each essay is written by a volunteer. They place themselves in the work, to show the work rather than centre their story. Each essay also includes recommendations for self reflection by the reader, to do their own work on the topic.

For my part one of my resources was this book: Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert. I pulled from multiple sections but now I am sitting down for a good read. It is fascinating and disheartening at the same time, illuminating and depressing. But we can’t walk away from the thick, the ugly, the hard just because they are so. People live this still and it is up to all of us to move forward for all.

And for those of you who might want to tell me to keep politics out of quilting, I hope you read this guidebook. If anything, to know that cotton, our material of choice is inherently political.

Sunny Day Stars

Sunny Day Stars

72” x 72”

This was one of the oldest quilts from the Quilts Under Construction list. I looked back and realized I started it in 2007! It began as a free Block of the Month called Celestial Migraine by Planet Patchwork. Shortly after the year it ran the whole thing disappeared. (Planet Patchwork also appears to be no more.) I think I made 3/12 blocks. I do remember that the final quilt was quite lovely in a seemingly random layout with a lot of negative space, mimicking stars in the night sky.

Over the years I would make another star block or two when I was craving some precision piecing. Lucky for me there are a tonne of traditional, free star block patterns. A few modern ones too. Then late last summer I got it in my head to actually finish this quilt. Well, at least the top! So I set out to make stars.

Each star block is repeated 3 times, for a total of 12 different star patterns. Each one, however, has a different combination of fabrics. Orange, gold, green, grey, beige, and white. In truth, it is a rather spring coloured quilt. But I finished the top during a September snow storm and finished the whole thing in the summer thunder storms. Still all about the sunshine!

It was a lot of fun to play with fabric on this quilt. Some stars pop, others recede. By playing with the contrast between the stars and the background, or the different components of the design I could change the entire look. The key was making sure not one star was too bossy.

The quilt back started with the scraps from making the last of the stars. Little bits and leftover triangles sewn together for fun. I used that as the centre and raided my stash for the rest. That large floral just happens to go with the first stars I made years ago. All of them are from a collection by Heather Bailly. The rest was just stuff I had around to make it work.

Quilting inspiration came from Dara Tomasson and her book, Walk, Jog, Run. She shared a ribbon quilting pattern - essentially a large meander that you echo to look like a ribbon. It was perfect for this. I quilted the whole thing in a peach Aurifil 50W.

I won’t lie, I wanted a green binding. Alas, there was not enough of the right greens in my stash and these are Covid times. No in person shopping. Then I found the grey and white stripe hiding on the cutting table. Perfection!

This quilt is already in it’s new home. As I was finishing the quilt top last fall I decided it would eventually go to a friend of mine. I wanted to spoil her with something just for her. Giving quilty gifts is the best!

Yes, There is Racism in Quilting

Stop the pearl clutching. Let go of your conventions.

Stop saying that politics has no place in quilting. It 100% does.

Stop thinking that white privilege is not a thing. It absolutely is.

Much is being said this week, much is going on this week. I feel like we are at a reckoning for civil action. People are FED UP with the systemic and blatant racism in policing, in society. Thousands and thousands are marching peacefully. Many are raging too. Quilting should be no different.

Like the White House was built by slaves, quilting was also built on the backs, the deaths, the enslavement of people. Cotton. Just think of cotton. Not a person among us should be free of the imagery, the reality, of a cotton plantation. White owners, black slaves. All for cotton. And what is it that is the mainstay of our industry? Cotton.

Of course I am not saying that current quilt shops, fabric companies, and designers are slave owners. But we must absolutely acknowledge that this industry arose as a direct result of slavery.

So, yeah, stop clutching your pearls.

When quilters want to use their skills and their creativity to make a statement with their quilts they are doing so with over a century of tradition behind them. Temperance quilts, church fundraisers, signature quilts all have something to say or show. Block designs acknowledge periods of history or events and we use them now not knowing. So many quilt blocks have Biblical inspirations, those are just as political as a modern interpretation of a raised fist. Quilters use quilts to raise their voices.

The people complaining that politics have no place in quilting are really saying that politics different than theirs don’t belong. It is about silencing a voice they disagree with. And more often than not it is about a white person silencing a voice that is coming from a person of colour or in support of. A perfect example of this is the quilt show reaction to the travelling exhibit Threads of Resistance.

So yeah, quilts always have, and always will be political.

My skin is white. That affords me a luxury of safety and comfort that many others do not have. I do not have to worry that I will be viewed as a thief in a store, just for being in the store. I don’t have to style my hair differently when shooting a class so that I look less ethnic. I am not questioned about whether I am in the right place, ever. All because my skin is white. If you need more explanation or white privilege and you haven’t been watching the news lately, this post is quite succinct. Here is a direct example from the quilt industry. Or take a look at the faculty of nearly every major show, and some of us may remember the defensiveness or organizations when it was pointed out. That is all white privilege.

Look at your book shelf of quilting books, or at the bins in your stash. How many of them were created by black quilters? I’m not saying that the companies are blatantly racist and excluding black designers. It is more that we are all conditioned to see white as better, myself included. I’ve benefited from that system, no doubt. That is white privilege. I had to sell myself, but I had a built in advantage. There are, you should know, a tonne of talented black quilters, designers, artists, and teachers including are Nicole Neblett, Chawne Kimber, and Carole Lyles Shaw. They deserve their spotlight too.

A few years back, it was either at Quilt Market or QuiltCon, a group of women came together to take a photograph. Their point was to show that they were all different people. It wasn’t a group of blonds or middle aged pattern designers, it was a group of black women. Ebony is not Latifah is not Rashida, yet people always want to mix them up. Why? Because they are all notable black quilters and seemingly people couldn’t tell them apart. Why? Because they likely weren’t seeing them as individual people, just ‘the black quilter’. People laughed at the stunt, but it was more telling of the industry than anything.

So yeah, white privilege exists and it is here in quilting.

There is no perfect way forward. And I know that people don’t want to hear that they are wrong or even get the hint that they are racist. Now is the time for all of us to look in the mirror, look at the words we say, and how we act towards all people. I am doing that, so should you.

Don’t be complacent, do the work.

Don’t expect others to educate you, educate yourself.

Don’t assume that you are without fault, we are all a product of history and a system.

I do sincerely hope that time is a reckoning. Here, as a quilter, I want to do the work to make those changes. So I will keep reading, writing, researching, making, listening, amplifying, and respecting. I encourage you to do the same.

As a start, I recommend the following:

The Social Justice Sewing Academy.

The work of both Carolyn Mazloomi and Faith Ringgold.

Checking out the collections of various museums like the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Berkley Art Museum. There is more to African American quilt traditions than Gees Bend.

Reading Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert and How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi.

Sawtooth Sampler from Walk, Jog, Run: A Free Motion Quilting Workout

A few years back I met the bundle of positive energy Dara Tomasson. I think it was at a trunk show I was doing but don’t quote me on that! As we got to know each other we discovered that she had family living only blocks away, her husband and I likely crossed paths as teens, and we had a mutual love of dogs and ice cream. Now she has her first book debuting in the world! When she asked if I could help her showcase it I did not hesitate.

Walk, Jog, Run is a free motion quilt (FMQ) book designed to help you build muscle memory, and thus, expertise. It isn’t just a book full of doodles for FMQ though. Dara walks us through set up, the right tools, and trouble shooting before she even gets to quilting patterns. As a former school teacher and current coach she is adept at breaking everything down to feel both manageable and informative. One of my favourite bits is the discussion on tension troublesheeting - something that I still have to look up after 21 years of quilting.

One of the other parts of the book that makes it unique is the drawing exercises and ‘training’ she suggests to build your skills. Like the title suggests, you can’t run a marathon until you know how to walk first. You can’t FMQ the king size beauty until you can draw the lines you want to make.

Now I am pretty comfortable with my FMQ skills. But I admit that I get lazy. I want to minimize stops and starts so I choose all over designs. Or I want to finish quickly so I choose something easy. But after reading the book and making this Sawtooth sampler I am motivated to try a few new to me things. That’s because they aren’t any more difficult, it was just my perception of the difficulty.

I’ve never done the ribbon candy before, but I love the look. It is definitely something that requires the muscle memory, so I did it all over the background on this piece. And one of my new favourites is the double meander on the top there. These are only 15” stars so quilting on a piece this size was a perfect way to practice. The sandwich was easy to manipulate yet I had ample space to experiment

To quilt I used two colours of Auriful 50W - a fuschia for all the stars and a pale yellow on the backgrounds. Of course, if you really want your stitching to pop then use a contrasting thread. You can see that in effect when I used the fuschia on the blue star.

Confession: I made a mistake when I was cutting the fabric for one of the stars, but I didn’t notice it until I was sewing. Of course, I didn’t have enough fabric left. So with a quick pivot I decided to turn this into a pillow cover. With pandemic shut down though I had to go with a size of pillow form already in the house. That just meant I could do a literal pivot too. I rotated things as I trimmed the quilted pillow top, cutting off points and the oddly shaped star mess. A fun solution! Since it had to be just a few inches bigger than my largest ruler I made the pillow back first and trimmed based off that. Nothing fancy there, just an unquilted envelope back of some fabric in the stash.

Congratulations Dara on your book! It’s a great one and I hope the rest of you will check it out. Especially if FMQ is new or intimidating to you. This book is a great trainer and Dara is a wonderful coach.

As you can see, about 20 minutes after I finished the pillow was put to good use as my littles listened to a teacher reading stories.