Inspo
Quilt patterns as a way of thinking.
This page is a starting place for understanding how quiltmaking ideas inform the sample square: color, piecing, repetition, stitched marks, borders, figures, and threads.
Library
Resources for learning more.
10 resources
video
Artist Bisa Butler creates quilted portraits of African American life
Craft in America Youtube. Segment from the EAST episode, PBS premiere Dec 19, 2025.
Colors and patterns collide.
video
Quilter Carolyn Mazloomi & the Women of Color Quilters Network
Craft in America Youtube. Segment PBS premiere Dec 27, 2024.
The importance of Black quilting traditions.
web page
Quilts That Embody the Legacy of Black America
Mary Lee Bendolph, Blocks and Strips, 2002, wool, cotton, and corduroy, Patrons'Permanenet Fund and Gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundatins, 2020.28.1
The legacy of Gee's Bend.
web page
Brown Sugar Stitchers Quilt Guild
Founded in 2000, Brown Sugar Stitchers Quild Guild is a vibrant, multi-generational community of 140+ quilters from metro-Atlanta and thirteen other states.
A look at what's happening around ATL.
written piece
The Meaning Behind Popular Quilt Blocks
The patterns we call traditional were developed over generations, passed through communities, and adapted as they traveled.
Common quilt patterns.
photo
The Meaning Behind Popular Quilt Blocks
Dawn Williams Boyd, “Piscean Dancer” (2016), quilting and appliqué embroidery (image public domain via Fine Arts Collection on JSTOR)
Joy in patterns.
web page
We Gather at the Edge: Contemporary Quilts by Black Women Artists
Myrah Brown Green, In My Akuabaa Form, 2000, cotton fabric and cotton batt, 95 × 86 in. (241.3 × 218.4 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Fleur S. Bresler, 2023.40.19, © 2000, Myrah Brown Green
A study on composition.
photo
From the Antebellum South to the Civil Rights Movement, Black American Women Have Long Told Their Stories Through Quilts
A group of women sewing a quilt on the porch of a property in Georgia, May 1939 R. Gates / Frederic Lewis / Archive Photos / Getty Images
One of the few older pictures I could find of Black quilters.
photo
Library of Congress
The image is attributed to Arthur Rothstein. It is housed at the Library of Congress within its Dust Bowl Photographs, 1936. It depicts an older Black woman sewing a quilt, while two young children stand by and observe.
The passing on of traditions.
written piece
The Black Diaspora Quilt History Project
The BDQHP is an intentional effort to digitally gather primary and secondary sources on African American, African, and African Diaspora quilt history drawn from geographically dispersed public and private collections.
A project to create documentation.
Piecing
Quilt blocks are often built by joining smaller pieces into a larger structure. In Rethreading, piecing becomes a way to think about how individual responses can hold their own shape while contributing to a shared record.
Repetition
A pattern can repeat without becoming identical. Repeated forms make relationships visible, while variation keeps each square tied to a particular experience.
Borders
Borders frame, hold, and organize a quilt. On this site, the border carries how a participant makes sense of technology and places one square within the larger archive.
Thread
Thread can join, mark, repair, outline, and carry movement across a surface. In the quilt square, threads point toward what someone wants to carry forward.
For the lab
The pattern is a relationship, not a decoration.
The Quilt Lab translates example survey inputs into a square so visitors can see how a visual rule system works. The goal is not to reduce a story to an image, but to show how different parts of a response can be carried, layered, and placed in relation.
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