Husband just shuttled down to Longwood medical area for his second shot. He had such a reaction to a recent shingles shot that he’s kind of expecting to be laid low for a day. We’ll see. Tylenol at the ready. My second is next weekend.
As you may know, it snowed here yesterday. This morning’s walk was cold, but mainly because we were underdressed. A chilly light rain falling on bare heads is no fun. Got my two and half miles in anyway.
As soon as K buzzed off, I spent a little time in my studio. It’s really been a while. I’m looking forward to hand-quilting this larger village quilt.
The happy accident of towers / woven strips finding each other is worth pursuing, I think. I’ll cut and weave into the yellow base near the buildings’ foundations and somehow resolve the areas where the white background ends too soon.
On June 17 last summer, the Jackson family of Charleston lost three of its members: Susie Jackson, her cousin Ethel Lance, and Susie’s nephew, Tywanza Sanders. Because Tywanza Sanders tried to shield his aunt from the shooter and then reached out to comfort her as they both lay dying, I stitched their names on the same heart. Their funeral services were held together. Susie Jackson, the oldest person slain last summer, was a trustee of the Emanuel AME and a former member of the choir. In this article from “The Post and Courier”, she was remembered as “a family and church matriarch.” According to the same article, Ms. Jackson “volunteered in myriad ways over her many years of constant faith and fidelity.”
Because of her love of music, I couched some black satin cording in a G clef for the back of the block.
I learned from a “Post and Courier” article that two caissons carried the caskets of Susie Jackson and Tywanza Sanders from the church.
Before he was shot, Tywanza stood between the shooter and his Aunt Susie and said, “You don’t have to do this.”
He was said to possess a brightness of spirit and such brightness is very visible on his instragram feed. “The Post and Courier” quoted a friend as saying of him that he had a “majestic and contagious smile few people have”.
From the next quote, you can see why the article about him was headlined: Poet, Hero, Tywanza Sanders.
“He was remembered for his artistry. A poem of his was read that spoke of social conscience and ended, “divided by color/So we are all trying to be equal.” It was titled “Tragedy.”
Mourners kept coming back to Sanders’ last moments. The family’s remembrance of him in the program said his last words were, “Where is my Aunt Susie. I’ve got to get to my Aunt Susie” as he reached for her.”
Tywanza was also entrepreneurial and hoped to establish a barber business. He already had his license and undergraduate business degree. I am about to stitch the barber pole with the signature red, white and blue stripes. Liz Ackert contributed some unbelievably beautiful labels recently and I will post about them this week.
On a completely pedestrian note, it continues to be unseasonably cold here. I keep thinking I can put my down-filled coats away and then finding myself wearing them. Today I added a wool scarf for my neck!
To read more about this project,
please refer to the the sidebar category:
“Hearts for Charleston Quilt”
To investigate this style of quilting more, please visit the inspiring and generous master quilter, Jude Hill at her blog“Spirit Cloth“
This delicate and floating heart arrived from Washington state from one of my favorite fiber artists and bloggers — Cindy Monte (blog: handstories).
Instead of employing nine warp and weft strips, she used three and three. The result mimics a pieced nine patch and keeps the reference to the nine deceased Charlestonians going. Her tiny stitches create such a lovely surface! Note that there are nine stars to commemorate each of the passed souls.
The white “thread beads” (Jude Hill’s term) scatter along the appliquéd indigo “ribbon” as well as up and out of the center of the heart — looking to me like the Milky Way. Both the look of the dots and the feel of them somehow give me a sense of holy space and hope.
I encourage you to go to “handstories” to read what Cindy wrote about the making of this square. Also search: “Harriet Tubman” to read about an inspiring, educational collaborative quilt Cindy made with young students.
To read more about this project,
please refer to the the sidebar category:
“Hearts for Charleston Quilt”
To investigate this style of quilting more (most of us are students of master stitcher/storyteller Jude Hill), please visit “Spirit Cloth“
My block honors Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton. She was 45 at the time of her death and left behind three children. As a part-time minister at Emanuel AME, a speech and language pathologist at Goose Creek High School, and also the coach of the girls’ field and track team, her death impacted a wide circle of people.
image from NBC news
She was said to have run ‘cheek to cheek’ with her athletes — a method of inspiring runners to perform at their best level. Imagine that: a grown woman, strong and swift, pacing her high school students on the track, pushing them to go faster. It’s an unshakable image. I also read that there were times when she ‘prayed so hard that the tears fell down her face’. And her smile! Look at that smile! Apparently, Rev. Coleman-Singleton was known to wear that smile even when disciplining her students!
Not long before the bullets began to fly, she took a call from one of her children. I am grateful the phone call was over before the violence erupted. It was a mundane, housekeeping kind of call — letting one of her children know where she had hidden the game controller. The three stitched hearts on the left are for her children: Chris, Caleb, and Camryn. Synchronicity lead me to dedicate my heart to Reverend Sharonda Coleman-Singleton. At my town’s vigil for Charleston, the person who read the prayer for her wore an unusual dress. I actually gasped when I recognized it, because I had used fabric from an identical dress (purchased ages ago in a thrift store) for my block .The quilt square was in my purse, in fact, at the time – I wanted the cloth to be in the energy of our town’s memorializing and prayers. When I read about Rev. Coleman-Singleton’s life, I wanted to honor her even more — in part because one of my boys ran track for four years in high school and it would not be an exaggeration to say that the experience changed his life. Because of his first coach. When you start counting up all the people touched by Rev. Coleman-Singleton’s life, it really makes you shake your head.
Eulogizing her, Mayor Riley of Charleston said, “In each of her roles, everyone she touched, their personality changed. That is passed on and that’s how a community is changed.”
I used some of the indigo strips that I dyed while at a workshop outside of Charleston last September, as well as that cut up dress mentioned above and some fabric dyed here in Massachusetts in my back yard.
The nine patch in the center of the heart is mis-aligned, but I left it that way. It, of course, stands for the nine deceased. Those squares are silk and have a slight sheen to them, which makes me think of how memory shines after a person is gone. I’m not sure the block is quite done yet.
Some of the double exposures that I created during this time were visual explorations about faith, death, and martyrdom. The ‘African Christ’ figure made ages ago appears above.
One more square is winging its way to Massachusetts from Montana as I type and a block arrived from New Jersey yesterday (stay tuned!). Soon it will be time to assemble the quilt.
Many of the contributions honor all nine of the deceased. Others honor a single person. I haven’t yet resolved how this will determine the final quilt (i.e., if one is honored, shouldn’t they all be?). Furthermore, when with this in mind I started a block for Tywanza Sanders, my online reading revealed the agonizing fact that his mother watched him die. That particular article made the point that the “Charleston Nine” really ought to be the “Charleston Twelve”.
More on this as I go.
To read more about this project,
please refer to the the sidebar category:
“Hearts for Charleston Quilt”.
This eloquent square by Kathy Dorfer for the “Hearts for Charleston” quilt renders me almost (but not quite) speechless.
Variegated thread thickly applied in a whip stitch spell out the words: “Love heals”. Kathy sprinkled white ‘thread beads’ around the phrase, making it seem as though it sparkles and pops with power, or perhaps, that it is sprawled across the heavens.
A red cross constructed of slightly darker shades of red is centered within the heart and calls to mind universal symbol for ‘the Red Cross’. The red cross echoes the theme of healing, particularly healing in a time of emergency.
Organic, tendril-like emanations give us the sense of energy radiating outwards. It is almost as if we can see the healing happening right before our eyes.
Kathy’s white kantha stitch runs horizontally and unifies the blue woven strips. The white stitching integrates her layers and makes me think about the power of binding processes — the binding of wounds, of communities, of ideas.
The back of each and every quilt square has been wonderful to examine. Look at this one! The heart in reverse is a near-empty space, something I find poignant for reasons I can’t really articulate. On the other hand, the emanating tendrils look ganglionic and nearly comical. The white thread beads on the underside connect up in jagged long stitches, creating a shape almost like a cartoon bubble. The phrase is still unmistakable.
Kathy included a beautifully stamped and blue washed card inscribed with an inspirational quote from Maya Angelou.
Thank you, Kathy. Such a striking and loving contribution!
To read more about this project,
please refer to the the sidebar category:
“Hearts for Charleston Quilt”.
