Sunday, January 19, 2014

Martin Luther King Day: "One Race Human" Quilt

I started to think about tomorrow being Martin Luther King Day and I remembered this quilt I made in the summer of 2006. I was my third art/portrait quilt and I was inspired by a t-shirt I bought that had the words "One Race Human" and the creativity burst out of me!! I thought about my own biracial daughter who was chemically relaxing her hair to be flat and smooth. (she is a natural curly haired woman now!!) I thought of people who change their eye color with contacts. I thought about being a hairdresser and many people wanting  the opposite hair texture as they were born with. I thought about all the pale girls of European decent who were trying to be tan in the tanning bed at the salon I worked at but didn't treat people with naturally dark skin very nice.

To make the quilt, I found three African-like prints and three to four Americana prints and I started on the left with the African fabric and 'morphed" to the Americana fabrics for the borders.

Technically I had a long way to go for nice bindings, straight borders and consistence free motion stitches but I still like this quilt because it represents how I wish people could all get along and not judge each other by our skin color, hair texture or how we talk. Happy Martin Luther King Day!

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