No Rules Quilting // May 2022

Part of my fascination with quilts stems from just how much they can tell us. Any quilt can provide a glimpse of human life within a larger cultural context. They can even offer insights about things like race and class, because in the United States those signifiers determine the shape of our lives and our lives shape our quilts. As a queer quilt maker I take voice in a narrative that is often hidden, so it is very important to me that my quilts exist within their larger context. As I continue to explore the intersection of race/gender/sexuality/class/environmentalism and quilts I find myself a semi-frequent recipient of “a quilt is just a quilt” emails from fellow white quilt makers who bristle at my approach. I disagree wholeheartedly that a quilt is ever just a quilt. That statement feels like the product of a very narrow concept of what a quilt can be and I reject it fully.

In the US white supremacy runs like a thread through nearly everything. It is present in the foundations of our country’s legal and social systems and it remains an invisible force that influences the current of our change. Because of our colonization and international interference it has achieved worldwide reach. I have been learning to uncover white supremacy in narratives and systems since I was a teenager- guided by friends, teachers and books. I believe that learning to do so is a crucial step in making larger, systemic change possible. These days I can pluck the thread easily- it is rarely buried deep: scratch the surface of nearly anything with roots in the US and there it is. I am grateful to have learned to do this when my worldview was child sized. I can imagine that beginning such an awareness as an adult could be painful and I can certainly empathize with the desire not to. Of course it is impossible to separate the privilege of not knowing from white supremacy. In the US only white folks are given the option of staying ignorant well into middle age and beyond.

I have grown wary of pervasive dominant narratives, especially when the folks enforcing those narratives are predominantly white. Here in the US we have long had a very white, very narrow definition of what a quilt is and how one can be made. Sometimes non-white aesthetics have been incorporated- but almost always through the curation and discernment of white collectors. I am not saying that particular techniques, materials, or patterns are indicative of white supremacy, but that US quilt history is long and white supremacy has aided in keeping very specific opinions about quilts at the forefront. Those opinions have become solidified into an exclusive and rigid set of rules and I am in community with quilters who are dismantling them.  

I was already skeptical of pervasive dominant narratives when I began quilting as a teen. I chalk that up to being queer and realizing how many of those narratives called into question my right to be. I couldn’t accept them and survive so I learned to peer around them and listen to what was being drowned out. I dabbled at making quilts in high school, piecing together the mechanics mostly by tactical observation paired with trial and error. But I fully adopted quilt making as a practice a few years later when I couldn’t afford new bedding. Deciding to go the DIY route and make a quilt from things I could source for free felt like a worthy fuck you to capitalism and the minimum wage. The dominant narrative around quilt making in the US also limits choices in a way that warrants protest, but at the time I bypassed it almost subconsciously. I didn’t dig the aesthetic and I couldn’t afford to buy new fabric or current publications, so I never engaged. Since I didn’t have any quilt making friends I didn’t realize that such assumed freedom was an anomaly until years later when I started sharing my quilts on social media. When other quilt makers began messaging me about the permissions my work gave them I realized there were rules and that I was breaking them. 

Some of those deviations include eschewing square corners, allowing quilts to be organically shaped, freehand stitching, and, most significantly, sourcing fabric from worn garments and discarded linens instead of buying it brand new from fabric stores. While these ways of making a quilt are not often represented in the mainstream they are definitely not new. Most are plenty evident in historical quilts made by folks of limited means, as they represent common sense and frugality at work. But in our current quilting climate of overconsumption and production for the sake of filling time they seem downright radical. Looked at through the lens of our climate crisis, these practices can even become acts of protest against the devastating human and environmental cost of fabric production and the overconsumption of textiles in the US. Quilts, freed from rigidity, are such a beautiful and creative solution to so many human needs.

This way of approaching quilt making goes hand in hand with abolition. That is: abolition of the systems in the US and worldwide that uphold white supremacy. For me, engagement in abolition requires an understanding of how white supremacy has informed our dominant narratives, so I can learn to listen past them for other voices. In 2020 I organized an Abolition Quilting Bee. The quilts produced by the bee are now part of a small but ever louder narrative of quilts as objects of protest and vehicles for mutual aid. It is a narrative voiced in part by early abolitionists and gay activists and I had to look beyond the dominant narrative in order to find it and add my voice. Outside of the dominant narrative there are so many stories to be heard and in those stories are an expansive array of innovations, beliefs, and world views with which to build an alternative future to the one we are careening towards. That is what I mean by No Rules Quilting: that we must liberate ourselves and what we create in order to build a new future free from the systems of oppression and suffering built and enforced by white supremacy. 

Grace Rother