Working with Diane Wood, a local fabric artist and activist, women from WISH participated in creating the 65 panels (more being added) of the Women’s Memorial Quilt. This quilt commemorates the sisters, daughters, cousins, girlfriends and friends who have disappeared or been murdered in the community. The quilt looks like a row of giant prayer flags when it is carried in the Missing Women’s March on February 14th of each year. Here are some pictures of the quilt and an article written by Diane inviting community members to participate in the project.
Do you like to sew? Would you like to learn how? Women are invited to join Diane at the Carnegie on Tuesday evenings from 6-9pm and Thursday mornings from 9-11:30am to sew quilts, banners and fabric art. Some of us are working on a Memorial Quilt in remembrance of all women who have died through violence - physical violence, alcohol and drug addiction, HIV/ AIDS, poverty and homelessness. Materials will be supplied, just bring yourself and your ideas. There’s also a Monday night session for the street-workers at WISH from 6pm to 8:30pm where I sew alongside some very artistic women, one of who calls herself “Martha Stewart on crack”.
The Women’s Memorial Quilt Project has evolved into a fabric banner that we plan to carry on the Valentine’s Day Memorial March, to display where everyone can read the names, and can be added to over time. It will be a banner like no other in that we all make it, and it represents our community as we see it, in a giant ribbon, something like the dragon in Chinatown parades. More loving than a stone monument that someone is paid to come in and design, in the way that our grandmother made quilts and baskets that we use, passed down from one generation to another, even after the grandmothers are no longer alive.
We know when we make something like this it will outlive us. By creating and teaching quilts, I am challenging the stereotype of “a woman’s place”, and a woman’s silence. My involvement with the issues of addiction, abuse and recovery are the basis of my art. I call on a long herstory of craft and spirituality to challenge the oppression of women. Please remember, it’s not me who is making the Banner/Quilt, it’s the whole community. I’m not signing my name or making a video. I’m being a gardener or a midwife who facilitates the growth and birth of new life. I don’t even mind if people forget my name and just call me the quilt lady, although I prefer the crazy quilt lady.