Threads of Freedom: How Women Have Used Quilts to Gather, Resist, and Inspire

During my first week of seventh grade, feeling like a foreigner in my own Virginia hometown after eight years of living abroad, I was given an unorthodox assignment: read Langston Hughes’ “The Dream Keeper,” write my own aspirational dream poem, and then hand-stich my desires for the future into a quilt square. Skeptical but conscientious, I let Hughes’ prose sink in, his “cloud-cloths” and “heart melodies” melting away all the confusion, fear, and loneliness spurred by my move across the globe. 

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Little did I know, the project was in fact an initiation, if you will, into a long tradition of women who have used quilts as a medium for storytelling, solidarity, and social change. As we celebrate Women’s History Month twenty years later, it feels like an opportune moment to reflect on the journey of the craft into an artform and recognize the independent American women who refused to let the “too rough fingers of the world,” to quote Hughes, stop them from daring to dream.

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For generations, the pejorative, gendered term “women’s work” has been used by men as a way to denounce the resilience, artistry, and adaptability at the root of the feminine experience. But a gander down the hallways of American history shows that us women have not only braved every restriction society has placed upon us, but responded creatively and resourcefully, using our bare hands to weave opposition into the fabric of everyday life. 

From using letter writing to create secret political networks to embedding messages of equality into recipes and cookbooks, “women’s work” has in fact been about defiance not limitation—the real “work” has always been about proving our strength in the face of insurmountable odds.

Of all the artifacts we’ve left behind over the years, few objects embody the spirit of grassroots activism and organizing as powerfully as the quilt. Whether woven from fraying overalls to keep our families warm, sewn with potent words advocating for political action, or born from such immense creativity that the textiles become a form of art, quiltmaking has long been both a private refuge and a communal act of resistance.

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Today, quilts have been elevated into an artform. Contemporary works like Pamela Burns’ MMIW read like a painting or a political poster, giving voice to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement. The most recognizable features of a traditional quilt—multi-layered textiles, stitched edges, bordered geometric shapes—are nonexistent here, as Burns’ goal of raising awareness around the staggering murder rate of Indigenous American women takes center stage. Silenced and faceless, the Indigenous woman pictured speaks to both the long history of Indigenous oppression and injustice toward women. 

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But for other contemporary female quiltmakers, using more traditional techniques is a way to honor their ancestors and the legacy of the craft as one of resourcefulness and defiance. Inspired by the Leger Art tradition practiced by Plains Indians, Susan Hudson (Navajo Nation) makes narrative quilts that reclaim the craft from a symbol of suffering in her family into an act of resistance against Indigenous erasure. Recounting her mother and her grandmother’s traumatic stories, Hudson’s Tears of our Children, Tears for our Children pays tribute to these matriarchs who were forced to adopt Anglo-European quilting techniques at Indian boarding schools, in what Hudson calls “child labor.” As she heals from ancestral trauma, Hudson says, “sometimes I hear my grandmothers talking to me.”

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For my own grandmother on the other hand, who grew up in a well-to-do family in Lynchburg, Virginia, quiltmaking is a means of unbridled artistic expression—a way for her to experiment with and explore the creativity her family fostered in her from a young age. Intentionally asymmetric, her funky, hand sewn quilts feature colorful, abstracted shapes and gleeful objects created with equal amounts precision, creativity, and love. From a practical and aesthetic standpoint, they bring vibrancy to the bedrooms of all of my family members, but on an emotional level, they serve as reminders of the joy and artistry present in my family across generations.

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Historically, it was a woman’s responsibility to make the home a comfortable, loving space. To fulfill this role, young girls were taught how to cut and sew cloth squares together, eventually infusing their own voice and style into the practice as they grew older. By the early 1800s, quilting had moved beyond the confines of the home for the first time in American history, as women gathered together at “quilting bees” to collectively complete a singular quilt. Both productive and social, “quilting bees” became safe spaces for women to gossip and be themselves—free to discuss topics they didn’t want their husbands to hear. Though the quilts were often practical, the solidarity and support fostered in these spaces helped lay the foundation for social movements toward women’s rights.

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While white women were quilting in communion, life looked very different for Black women, especially in the American South. The role that quiltmaking played in enslaved communities remains controversial due to lack of documentation but a book called Hidden in Plain View (2000) suggests that quilt squares were encoded with information from the Underground Railroad. While hanging out to dry, quilts informed other “slaves” how and when to prepare to escape. According to oral histories, the “wagon wheel” pattern, for example, meant transportation was coming to assist an escape.

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As anti-slavery sentiments grew, especially among Quaker communities in the Northeast, activists like Lydia Maria Child stitched their desire for abolition into patchwork, both for fundraising purposes and to disseminate anti-slavery messaging. Made for a Boston abolitionist fair in 1836, Child’s “cradle quilt” of geometric stars contains a heartwrenching poem at its center:

Mother! when around your child
You clasp your arms in love,
And when with grateful joy you raise
Your eyes to God above,
Think of the negro mother, when
Her child is torn away,
Sold for a little slave-oh then
For that poor mother pray!

‍As the fight for abolition gave way to new struggles for civil rights and women’s suffrage, quilting evolved into a powerful tool for political expression. In the early 20th century, spurred by WWI, the Suffrage Movement, and changing ideas of femininity, women’s political involvement became closely tied to domestic work. Led by Frances Willard, President of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) from 1879 to 1898, women were inspired to transform what was once considered “women’s work” into a bold act of protest.

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The Hoosier Suffrage Quilt is just one example of a quilt that functions as a rally sign, likely displayed at suffrage meetings, fundraising events, or community gatherings. At the center are 300 leading suffrage advocates, including Frances Willard, Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. With a frame of 48 stars representing each state (Alaska and Hawaii were still territories), the quilt asserts women’s voting rights as fundamental to American democracy.

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The ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 marked only the beginning of the struggle for Black rights. During the height of the Great Depression, Ruth Clement Bond famously organized a community quilting initiative to uplift the spirits of impoverished Black women in rural Alabama who were wives of federal workers. Clement Bond herself didn’t know how to quilt, but her designs reflecting on the economic and social challenges Blacks faced came to life through the support of her community. The powerful symbolism in Clement Bond’s “Black Power” endures today: featuring a clenched fist holding a red electric wire, it promoted the improvement work that Tennessee Valley Authority workers were doing in the region and has since become the singular most recognizable symbol for Black solidarity.

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By the 1960s, quiltmaking had expanded beyond the domestic sphere and was increasingly recognized as a powerful vehicle for social and economic change. In 1966, with the support of Episcopal priest and civil rights worker Father Francis X. Walter, a group of African American women in Rehoboth, Alabama, founded the Freedom Quilting Bee to bring economic opportunity and civil rights to Black craftswomen in the South. Many Black workers in the region faced eviction and layoffs after registering to vote, yet the quilts they created from old dresses, overalls, and flour sacks became symbols of resilience. Their bold, minimalist aesthetic caught the attention of New York art circles, where they were hailed as avant-garde.

This shift in recognition sparked a larger movement within the arts, bridging the gap between traditional craft and contemporary art. The legacy of these quiltmakers lives on, not only in museums and galleries but also through the hands of contemporary artists who continue to use the medium for activism and storytelling. As quilting experiences a major resurgence—fueled, at least in part, by the pandemic and the social and political reckonings of recent years—artists like Zoë Buckman, Bisa Butler, and Sonya Clark are pushing the limits of quiltmaking while honoring the generations of talented women who fought for themselves, their communities, and the craft at large. 

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If I could return to my twelve year old self, a little girl unclear of what she wanted and afraid of the transition ahead, I would tell her to look back before she looks ahead. To think about the millions of women who trusted in the determination required to thread a needle, slept in the cold while blanketed by their dreams (literally!), and through small but vital acts of resistance, graced my generation with the power to choose.

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Recommended Reading:

• The Surprisingly Radical History of Quilting, Smithsonian
• The Subversive Power of Quilting, Hyperallergic
• Quilted Portraits that Evoke the Racialized and Gendered History of Craft, Cultbytes
• The Social History of Quilt Making in America, University of Lynchburg
• Fabric of Change: The Quilt Art of Ruth Clement Bond, Museum of Arts and Design