I learned a great deal about the civil rights movement making this quilt. It was done for a Visions exhibit honoring Martin Luther King. The boy on the left is MLK and the boy on the right is Lyndon Johnson. Taking a class from Susan Shie I learned to write on fabric and look at quilting very differently. Doing my drawing on a piece of silk broadcloth I appliqued the boys using a blind stitch on my sewing machine. I fused the stripes. I ,also, fused the navy blue fabric cutting out the star shapes first and placing the stars behind the openings. I was having difficulty writing on the fabric. I wanted to make it easier. So I painted a medium over everything. Sounded like a good idea to me. NOT. Yes the writing was easier. However parts of the quilt top shrunk and the top no longer laid flat. After I finished jumping up and down and yelling … I had to solve the problem. The blue arrow points to one of the places where I cut the quilt top apart and removed the offending area. There was more than one place. I cut along the lines of the head and hat. Cutting the piece to fit. I laid a piece of muslin behind and zig zaged it back together. When it was all done. I quilted it with vergitated Aurifil thread. the quilting was done at angles. Then the border and ribbon were added.
So not only did I learn history …. I learned how to fix a problem.
