Celebrating black history month

I’m in the lucky position of having a number of African fabrics from Nigeria. I haven’t chosen any of these fabrics, they have all been mystery bundles from Miriam (Quilt Africa Fabrics) who sells awesome wax fabrics from her local markets in Nigeria. We don’t get fabrics like this here. These fabrics are just amazing: huge prints with big repeats, vibrant colours, florals, geometrics, high value contrast…. They are just right out there.

“Interconnecteness” a quilt to celebrate Black History Month 2021 by Sue Griffiths

I also want to celebrate all the people in the world who dream impossible dreams and then somehow make it happen, and we are all the better for it. So I’ve chosen nine figures who have inspired me in some way, five women, four men, from America, Australia, England, and Africa. Some of these people are important historical figures, some are contemporary, but they all had a dream and worked to make that dream a reality.

I know there are many wonderful people, but these are mine:

Dr Catherine Hamlin who, with her late husband Reg (a New Zealander) work in Ethiopia to eradicate fistula.

Katherine Johnstone, a mathematician, who did the math to get men on the moon

Rosa Parkes, who stood up for justice by sitting down

Harriet Tubman who used her freedom to help others get theirs

Harriet Beecher Stowe who used the power of the pen to waken the conscience of a nation

William Wilberforce who didn’t just accept his society, he worked indefatigably against the injustice of slavery.

Seretse Khama who had the wisdom, political nous and humility to be a great leader and the father of his country Botswana, and he married the woman he loved despite the political fallout.

Martin Luther King who took on the establishment and inspired his country

Nelson Mandela who stood up against an unjust system and still retained his warmth and humanity.

I also found fabulous quotes from so many people, too many to put on the quilt. I had 16 but used 12 and I could have used so many more. The common theme is to do with making a dream come true., seeing a vision of a brighter future and then making it happen. It’s inspirational to see that each person contributes in their own way. Catherine Hamlin is a doctor, Katherine Johnston is a mathematician, Harriet Beecher Stowe was a writer.

The design process

I decided I wanted to do interlocked snowballs to represent the interconnectedness of humanity with the idea that ‘no man is an island’ (John Donne) and ‘in Christ there is no east or west, north nor south’ (St Paul) etc. so I worked out a plan on EQ8 so I could print the portraits on A4 or letter size paper. I made sure that the photos I used were free for personal use. (Handy tip: when doing a Google search, go to settings, advanced search and check ‘creative commons licence’).

I digitally altered the photos so each photo was not black and white or sepia but rather each was a different colour. I tried to get all the heads the same size, but some images were poorer than others and some were already cropped close to the head. I then set up fabric sheets ironed to freezer paper and printed them on my inkjet printer.

The next step was the quotes. I played with fonts and layout trying to get each quote to fit inside a 6 inch square with the corners cut off. I printed them on my scan’n’cut just to try it out, but on the whole I think using the computer printer would have been just as easy.

I then laid out the images on my design wall and I wasn’t sure I would get the definition to make the interlocking rings jumped. So I decided to add quarter inch trips around each snowball block and where one print intersected another print.

Given that I’d already cut the squares to 6 1/2 inches, I drew on the seam lines with a fine pen and then used those lines as a guide for sewing 3/4 inch strips. When I ironed the strips over, I had my 6 1/2 inch blocks ready to be snowballed. Once I’d added the corner triangles and cut the waste, I had my snowballs with a neat quarter inch strip around the central image. I had to be careful with the corner triangles as each depended on the surrounding blocks, not on the ring that went around that particular block. If you look you can see each corner triangle is different on any one block. First time, I did them wrong! Oops.

I then made the secondary blocks. For this I really needed my design wall and I had every block numbered by row and column. It wasn’t hard, I just had to be careful. So I made the central panel, then I added the rings around the edge as those secondary blocks were different - they had a black rectangle, not a black square. If you look carefully at the fabrics, I’ve actually got 7 repeats of fabric. Because the patterns are often big, i was able to get two completely different looking rings from carefully cutting the one piece f fabric.

In the edge quotes I decided to add black corner triangles to the snowballs to make it look like the rings were floating on the black background.

The final edge isn’t a full block, it’s just strips to finish off the interlocking rings. Then I added the black border and the illusion worked (Phew).

This quilt has been such a pleasure to make and I’m really happy with the result. In a world where we get a lot of negative news, it is so great to think on all the positive stories we have and all the people who have worked to make a better world.