#celebratingblackquilters
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If you are near #lincoln #nebraska, Chawne Kimber and Celeste Butler will be speaking Friday 6/20 at a free event

Kimber, of course, is widely recognized, but I was unfamiliar with Butler's work (she's on my list for next #blackhistorymonth's #celebratingblackquilters though now) […]
Original post on mastodon.art
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June 18, 2025 at 5:15 PM
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Video about Gary Tyler, a quilter incarcerated for 42 years for a crime he did not commit

https://www.nbcmiami.com/on-air/as-seen-on/voices-reclaiming-his-time-one-quilt-at-a-time/3555669/

#quilting #quiltingnews #celebratingblackquilters
Voices: Reclaiming His Time One Quilt At A Time
Exonerated after serving more than 40 years for a crime he didn’t commit, Gary Tyler creates comforting works of art from a skill he learned in prison.
www.nbcmiami.com
March 2, 2025 at 3:38 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Dorothy Burge (1956?-) used her industrial design and urban planning degrees as a springboard for a lifetime of public housing and criminal justice activism in Chicago. Her sewing career started with making banners […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Figural quilt of Eric Blackmon, who served 16 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Not a traditional rectangle, this quilt is shaped as a slightly larger than life-size portrait of Blackmon standing. He has one hand in his pocket and the other is holding a black notebook or folder, possibly representing his work as a paralegal for his and others cases while incarcerated or his time in law school after being freed. He is wearing a black and beige African-American print sweater over a collared shirt and blue jeans with black Nike sneakers. The artist has appliqued different solid prints to give the realistic portrait shading and detail and it is heavily quilted in many areas with echo quilting.
February 28, 2025 at 2:40 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Elizabeth Talford Scott (1916-2011) learned quilting from both parents growing up in South Carolina. After a career as a domestic worker, she expanded on those childhood lessons, developing a unique, mixed media […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Quilt consisting of alternating tan and white wonky fabric rectangles, thickly encrusted with colorful appliques. Many of the overlapping appliques are vaguely star or floral shaped and almost all are outlined with strings of beads or trim. The individual blocks are outlined with beads and trim, as well. Nearly every bit of the quilt is outlined with beads and trim! Though I’m not sure it’s what the artist intended, the quilt feels beachy and celebratory to me, like if an oyster bed invited all the neighboring starfish over for a Mardi Gras party.
February 27, 2025 at 3:05 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Sara Trail (1995-) was a quilt book author and fabric designer by the age of 12. After creating a portrait quilt of Trayvon Martin when she was 17, she realized traditional quilting spaces no longer welcomed her […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Portrait quilt of Trayvon Martin based on a photograph that often appeared in news articles after his murder. Trayvon’s face peers from under a dark grey hoodie, against a background of randomly place beige and cream fabrics with an occasional accent of all black. There are also two sections of a large black text print that resembles graffiti though no words are readable. The artist used fabric placement to give the realistic image of the young man’s face serious, almost questioning eyes.
February 26, 2025 at 2:54 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Mozell Benson (1934-2012) raised 10 children as a bus driver in Alabama. Widowed in 1968, she began strip piecing quilts to keep her large family warm. She used seasonal rhythms to inform her NEA Heritage […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
A mostly pastel quilt featuring improv pieced techniques, created from a wide variety of solid, floral, stripe and print fabrics. The quilt is displayed vertically with 15 blocks laid out in 3 rows of 5. Each block is a different pattern, in the sampler quilt style, with sashing and borders that lean heavily into wonky piecing. The quilt is tied with yarn and bound with what appears to be a blue toile.
February 25, 2025 at 2:54 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Earamichia Brown always wanted to be in fashion, so of course she became a Howard University Law grad. The quilting part of her life began in earnest with an art quilt for an aunt who lost everything in Katrina […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Portrait quilt of Janaye Ingram, co-founder and board member of Women’s March, Inc. The central image is a young Black woman wearing a white suit jacket; her face and hair are a digital picture printed on fabric, her suit is an applique and both are outlined in squiggly pink fabric lines. Behind her head is a black and white applique of the US Capital Building and below her suit jacket is sewn a block of floral fabric with the word ‘Advocate’. The backround of the quilt consists of improvisationally pieced courthouse steps blocks in shades of hot pink, grey, white and black.
February 24, 2025 at 3:12 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Basil Kincaid (1986-) comes from a family that has quilted for 9 generations. Splitting his time between St. Louis and Ghana, he is known for the scale and dimensionality of his quilts, with massive works that often […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Colorful improvisational quilt incorporating Kente cloth, Ghanaian Wax Block fabric, cotton, wool, velour, polyester, sequins, embroidery floss, lace, batting, buttons, curtains. At first, all the parts of the very busy piece seem to blur together, but eventually a series of monstrous figures emerge, each patterned differently and posed in an overlapping fashion. There is a section in the upper left that looks most traditional, made from scrappy blue rail fence blocks. The bottom right is a field of brown glittery material.
February 23, 2025 at 3:11 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Beverly Y. Smith (1957-) combines graphite drawings of figures with vintage textiles, hand embroidery, machine stitching and paint to create her unique mixed-media quilt style. Many of her pieces depict family […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
A mixed media quilt featuring a young black girl holding a rag doll in front of her by its hands. She stands against a backdrop of a primarily yellow 30s feedsack kite-block quilt. The child’s face, hair and hands have been realistically drawn in graphite; her shirt, pants and stocking feet are appliquéd from fabric. The doll, which resembles a white person, is wearing an appliqued dress from the same fabrics as the background and has two 3-dimensional legs sewn from a red and white stripe fabric. Daisy-like embroidered flowers are randomly placed across the background of the quilt; these embroideries also appear on the girl’s shirt laid out in a more regular pattern. A dark, intricate tapestry is used as an outside border around the entire piece.
February 22, 2025 at 2:53 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

NedRa Bonds (1948-) learned to quilt as a kid but as an adult pursued a career in a civil rights activism. In 1989, after learning her historic Black Kansas neighborhood was slated to become a landfill, she made a […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Applique quilt protesting recent environmental disasters. A caramel-colored bald figure rests their head on their clasped hands while tears stream from their eyes in the center of the quilt. On their oversized scalp are written the names and descriptions of 6 recent environmental disasters: Bhopal, Chernobyl, Love Canal, Exon (sic) Valdez, 3 Mile Island and Katrina. Behind the figure are pieced blue fabrics, including two panels, one with tropical palm trees, the other with trees in winter, evoking the sky, nature and water in harmony. The figure’s hands lay on a dark green horizontal section that stretches across the quilt dividing the blue part from an area of black, brown and beige fabrics. The darkest black part has the words Deep Water Horizon written on it; the ombre look of the remaining brown and beige fabrics suggests an oil spill. Beneath the figure’s tears, a small brightly colored image of the earth encircled by figures of children from around the world has been appliqued. There are also four appliqued batik fish above and below the oil spill, their white on black coloring makes them look skeletal.
February 21, 2025 at 3:07 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Yvonne Wells (1939-) made her first quilt in 1979 because her home was being remodeled and she needed a warm blanket while the furnace was down. Self-taught in both piecing and applique, she describes her folk art […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
A color block pieced and appliqued quilt depicting the biblical story of animals boarding Noah's Ark. (Further alt text via Smithsonian) The quilt has a blue sky and a rust-red ground machine-stitched together. The ark, animals, and people are hand appliqued to the background. The animals are lined up in pairs waiting to board the ark, which is in the bottom left facing corner. Noah stands near the ark, while a woman with pink rickrack hair looks out the window and two other people stand on the deck. Two additional people are standing at the right facing side near the seam of the sky and ground backgrounds, with one holding an umbrella. The animals are made from a variety of fabrics and colors including faux fur, sheep's skin, printed stripes, and a Halloween fabric turned with the wrong side facing. The animals have plastic button eyes in a range of colors and sizes, while the people have embroidered faces. The central motif is bordered on the sides with a solid purple and on the top and bottom with a purple and red check. Each corner of the border features a different applique design with a series of diagonal scraps at the top left facing corner, a white cross in the top right, a green polka dot tree trunk in the bottom left, and an embroidered signature in the bottom right reading "YW1P88" in green thread. The quilting is done by hand in white thread in a scallop or fan design.
February 20, 2025 at 3:44 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Ed Johnetta Miller (1945-) was a professional weaver before taking up improv quilting 30 years ago. While her works, which often incorporate photo transfers, are exhibited worldwide, she is also an artist in […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Brightly colored, full-of-movement pieced improv quilt featuring the prominent use of lavender, yellow and orange fabrics mixed with black and gold. The quilt celebrates an African ceremony called Yaboo that welcomes adolescents into adulthood thru dance. The artist appliqued chevron-like figures of snakes around an outer teal border in homage to the movement of the dancers. The piece incorporates an unfinished vintage quilt top and molas in addition to African-American and European cloth.
February 19, 2025 at 3:16 PM
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Posted about quilter Chawne Kimber in the #celebratingblackquilters thread today as she came up in conversation overnight; seemed fitting
February 18, 2025 at 3:49 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Chawne Kimber (1971-) turned to quilting in the mid aughts. Her signature improv word art-style continues to evolve, but she is mostly known for her unique voice, deliberate fabric choices, color placement and hand […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Quilt with blocky, improv pieced words that read “I am/I am still/I am not still/I am still not free.” The words are in white on a background of scrappy blue denim. Surrounding this central section is a border of colorful patches; occasionally, a colorful patch is pieced among the blue background, giving the impression that the border is falling like confetti into the main part of the quilt. All the pieces in the design are small and wonkily shaped, there are thousands. Oversized sashiko ‘x’ stitches in various colors cover the quilt in vertical lines like rain.
February 18, 2025 at 3:47 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Patricia A. Montgomery has been quilting for over 40 years. Early on, her quilt style featured story quilts with very heavy topstitching. But more recently, she emerged as the ‘Coat Lady’ for a series of quilted […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Quilted swing coat on a coat rack displayed from the back. The coat is made from red and white fabrics which have been pieced in stripes. Appliquéd in the center of the back is an image of a Montgomery, AL municipal bus overlayed with a sepia portrait of Claudette Colvin. Claudette’s story is written in black ink on the heavily quilted fabric and reads “One cop grabbed my hand and his partner grabbed the other. They pulled me straight up and out of my seat - dragging me off the bus. Don't fight! I started yelling, "It's my constitutional rights!" A school girl, Claudetta Colvin, got arrested for refusing to surrender her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was arrested on March 2, 1955, eight months before the arrest of Rosa Parks. That started the Montgomery Bus Boycott on December 1, 1955. On February 1, 1956, Colvin was one of the four plaintiffs of the Supreme Court Case - Browder vs. Gayle - that ruled Montgomery's segregated public bus system was unconstitutional.”
February 17, 2025 at 2:51 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Bisa Butler (1973-) was encouraged to be an artist from age 3, but it wasn’t until her Master’s thesis involved quilting that she found a calling. Her life-size, hyper-colorful representations of famous Black […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Quilt with image of an unidentified Black man, seated with legs crossed, and his left hand raised to his mouth in a thoughtful pose. His clothes are formed from a riot of colorful fabrics, with meticulous attention paid to shadows and highlights. The mix of vibrant fabrics intensify and enhance what would be an otherwise realistic image. The seated man appears to float against a large background of bright pink scroll fabric that has been quilted. This piece was inspired by James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and the artist described her fabric choices by saying “I used reds and oranges in his complexion to indicate this while this man sits calmly [there] is fire inside.”
February 16, 2025 at 2:54 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Carolyn Mazloomi (1948-) started quilting in the 70s, but was for years best known as a quilt historian and mentor to other Black quilters, founding the Women of Color Quilters Network in 1986. Now retired from a […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Black and white quilt describing the story of Ruby Bridges, one of the first Black children to integrate white schools in the United States. In the quilt’s center, Ruby walks through the entrance of the school building, accompanied by United States Marshals. Outside the door are angry white people holding signs protesting integration. At the bottom of the quilt are National Guardsmen with guns are holding back an angry white protestor. The border of the quilt is a series of patchwork blocks alternating between sawtooth stars, apples and an “A+” (symbolic of Ruby being a great student.)
February 15, 2025 at 3:32 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Peggy L. Hartwell (1939-) relocated to NYC from South Carolina as part of the Great Migration, not returning to her home state until 2001. Originally a jazz performer and dancer, her quilting career began in the […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Quilt featuring a figurative appliqué of a Black woman in a plaid shirt and straw hat against a backdrop of bright blue, green and teal batik. She sits, weaving a sweetgrass basket next to container of yet to be used branches. Clever fabric choices and placement make the chair look like it’s made of wicker, the container look like it’s made of weathered wood and that there is a colorful, floral quilt covering the woman’s legs.
February 14, 2025 at 3:11 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Marla Jackson (1952-) was initially scorned by traditional quilters for her unique style and desire to call out historical injustices with her art. She founded the African-American Quilt Museum and Textile Academy […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Fabric portrait of Michelle Obama appliquéd on a near solid bright yellow background. In the image, Obama appears to turn, looking slightly over her left shoulder. Her hair is quilted into a low bun and her face is created from artful placement of blue and purple fabrics with paint accenting the eyes and lips. She is wearing a shawl of what appears to be a blue, yellow orange and brown African wax cloth; that shawl is draped 3-dimensionally, rising off the surface of the quilt. The artist, who had been legally blind most of her life, had laser eye surgery prior to making this quilt and deliberately chose colors for their vibrancy and intensity now that she could see them clearly.
February 13, 2025 at 2:43 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Alice Beasley (1945-) started quilting in the late ‘80s, seeking an artistic outlet from her job as a civil rights litigator. Now retired in Oakland, CA, she prefers working with commercially printed or […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Quilt featuring an image of a young Black woman seemingly dancing underwater — or is she drowning? She wears a diaphanous white dress that billows behind her to show bare legs. Her arms stretch out before and above her as she gracefully sinks. The background consists of blocky shapes in shades of light to dark watery blue that look at once peaceful and roiling; these shapes give the quilt a slightly irregular outline. The quilt is an homage to the Ta-Nehisi Coates novel “The Water Dancer” where he poses the question: What if the captives who leaped from slave ships into the Atlantic Ocean were not drowning themselves in terror and anguish but going home, dancing among the waves in one last song of triumph?
February 12, 2025 at 3:54 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Faith Ringgold (1930-2024) grew up in the Harlem arts scene. Gifted in painting, writing, sculpture and performance, she is best known for narrative quilts, choosing to work with textiles as an escape from Western […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Painted and pieced quilt featuring an image of saxophonist Sonny Rollins playing his horn high atop a bridge with the New York City skyline in the background. The sky and the river are blue and the buildings are gray, but strips of richly colored fabric overlay the scene in rising lines like music coming to a crescendo. The center of the quilt is framed by two multicolor borders where red/yellow and teal tie dye fabrics predominate.
February 11, 2025 at 3:53 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Aisha Lumumba (1955?-) once considered herself “a mediocre art major” uninterested in quilting. Discovering the world of African-America story quilts changed that, though. The Georgia-based artist rarely places […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Quilt featuring a doll-like Black figure with her hands on her hips, wearing a ballgown with an exaggeratedly oversized skirt. The skirt is improv pieced from scraps of pink and green fabrics in various shades and accented with 3D trim near the bottom. The woman has long black dreads that sweep behind her head, making her appear confidently and proudly moving forward. The background of the quilt is a field of bright lime green encircled by a small hot pink inner border and a wider lime green semi-scrappy outer border
February 10, 2025 at 2:57 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Jessie Telfair (1913-1986) was a Georgia quilter known for several versions of the quilt shown, all made between the mid-1970s and her death. Believed to be self-taught, Telfair was inspired to make the quilts after […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Improvisationally pieced quilt with the word FREEDOM repeated in 7 rows; each letter is its own block. All the letters are in a solid navy on a solid red background. The sashing is the same solid red with white cornerstones and the quilt is bound in white.
February 9, 2025 at 3:32 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Gwendolyn Ann Magee (1943-2011) first made traditional quilts but quickly transitioned to powerful imagery tied to Black history and her own participation in the civil rights movement. A magazine featuring her work […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Mixed media art of an anguished Black mother watching a white family who has purchased her child leave by horse carriage. The work consists of two parts, a wall quilt and a 3-dimensional sack of cotton. The quilt shows the horse-drawn carriage on a red dirt road next to a field under a spiral sun that shines in the bright yellow sky. In the lower right corner, the torso of an otherwise featureless Black woman opens her mouth in a scream. Below this figure an actual sack of cotton obscures what would be the woman’s body if the flat quilt continued to the floor. Perspective makes it seem like the woman picking cotton is powerlessly outside the scene, watching her child disappear without any recourse.
February 8, 2025 at 3:47 PM
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#celebratingblackquilters
#blackhistorymonth

Stephen Townes (1980-) established himself as a painter, taking up quilting in 2013 because the stories he wanted to tell worked better in fabric. The first major museum exhibition of his quilts was held just 4 […]

[Original post on mastodon.art]
Appliqued image of a Black woman nursing a white baby in front of the 13-star Betsy Ross American flag hung vertically. The nursing woman is wearing a headscarf and shirt from African-inspired fabric and long beige skirt. The skirt has two scraps of toile adhered to it. The toile features images of white women playing and flirting.
February 7, 2025 at 4:04 PM