After a countrywide call for entries that honor books taken from library shelves, 35 quilts were made and will be on exhibit for the duration of the month-long celebration.
Some of them serve as examples of Maya Angelou’s memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which details the abuse and discrimination she experienced as a kid, and Toni Morrison’s examination of the racism ingrained in our society’s ideals of beauty, The Bluest Eye.
In 1999, O.V. Brantley, a retired lawyer for Fulton and DeKalb counties, learned herself to quilt as a stress reliever and went on to co-found the Atlanta Quilt Festival.
It has a special display every year. It has been dedicated to quilts inspired by the late U.S. Representative John Lewis for the last three years. Brantley had a direct response when asked why the organizers chose to highlight books that were banned this year: Freedom. We fervently defend our freedom.
“Celebrating banned books felt like a natural choice because my quilting friends, the Sunday Quilting Group, are also book lovers,” she noted.
Brantley stated, “We don’t believe that people should ban books.” People should read what they wish to read, in our opinion. From there, we just made a statement regarding books that were prohibited.
For the display, Brantley created two quilts. One depicts Nikole Hannah-Jones and has a crossword puzzle layout.The 1619 Project, which retells the history of America to show how slavery shaped the nation. The book also served as the inspiration for Michelle Willis’ quilt. It depicts the White Lion, the vessel that delivered the first Africans into slavery in Virginia, a British territory.
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s feminist story about reproductive rights, serves as the inspiration for Brantley’s other quilt.
Brantley remarked, “The thought of that book makes me shudder.” I attempted to make my quilt, Never a Handmaid, resemble the book cover, which depicted the red and white uniform that women were required to wear. My red and white quilts have earned me some notoriety. It goes without saying that I was pulled to a book with a red and white cover.
Good Trouble Quilts (IngramSpark, $65.99), the festival’s first book publishing, which includes 200 pages of color reproductions of the John Lewis quilts, was also released this year.
The quilts were really lovely when we finished the display. Brantley said that it seemed a shame to let them leave and vanish into people’s closets, never to be seen again. The book signing and official launch are scheduled for August 1. Everyone adores John Lewis, so we believe it will be a classic and collectible.
A juried display of 102 quilts in five categories—art, traditional, modern, African American heritage, and miniature quilts—is the festival’s main draw. All quilters are welcome to submit to the festival, despite its focus on preserving and promoting African American quilting and other textile arts.
There will be lectures, including one on utilizing AI to design quilts, and workshops for all skill levels on Fridays and Saturdays of the festival. Willie Pettway will speak at another lecture about his upbringing in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, the birthplace of the renowned Gee’s Bend quilters.
Brantley has worked to create a welcoming environment at the Atlanta Quilt Festival. The juried show has a 95% acceptance rate.
For the past six years, I have been working to persuade African American quilters and others that their creations should be seen. We accept quilters of all skill levels, from novices to experts. She stated that the only strict regulation we have is that blankets longer than 60 inches cannot be brought in.
And I don’t mind telling you that I’m really proud of it because many of our quilters, like myself, have gone on to achieve amazing things, such as having their quilts acquired by the High Museum. Having one or more of your quilts acquired by a museum is the ultimate goal of quilting.
Visit atlantaquiltfestival.com to learn more about the Atlanta Quilt Festival.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s contributing editor and book critic is Suzanne Van Atten. At [email protected], you can get in touch with her.
