Flying with Presidential Hope

Photo by James Moskow

Photo by James Moskow

Photo by Mindy Seltzer

A little over a month ago, while still high, elated and slightly disbelieving that we had just elected Barack H. Obama as the next President, I was at home reading the NY Times on line.

The phone rang.

It was Dr Carolyn Mazloomi, Independent Curator, Writer, Artist and all around qult goddess. She had been asked by Roland Freeman to help him select 44 "master art quilters" for a special quilt exhibit in honor of the President-Elect.

Roland Freeman is a big deal. He is guest curator of

"Quilts for Obama: Celebrating the Inauguration of our 44th President"

is founder of The Group for Cultural Documentation and a long time advocate for African American quilters and their work. Many may remember his ground breaking book on African American quilters "Communion of the Spirits" and he is a 2007 National Endowment For the Arts' National Heritage Fellows. Mr Freeman, also received the 2007 Bess Lomax Hawes Award.

After I got back up off the floor.... I listened to the requirements. I had twenty-eight days to make my quilt.

YIKES!

Oh! And, she also said not to tell anyone yet, until all the other quilters were notified and the rest of the details were worked out about the show. So, of course, the very minute I hung up the phone, I snatched it up again and called my mother.

I was sobbing and shaking so much with excitement at having been asked, I could not get the words out. She started to panic that something was wrong with my children. I managed to say, "the babies are all fine...." (The "babies", by the way, are 26, 26, and 27.)

Finally, I got the story out. She was happy, proud, and supportive. (Thanks, Mom.)

So I set to work…. Forty-eight hours later I had a design.

I got my original design blown up at my local FedEx-Kinkos store on Orleans Road in Charleston, SC. There it was in my hands – forty-six inches – well under the maximum allowed. Two days later, I was emailed that, no, the quilts could not be any bigger than thirty-six inches. So, back to the FedEx-Kinko's store. If Kinko's ever goes out of business my quilting career is over.

Thanks Kinko Friends!

Next, four days shopping for fabric. Had to order two pieces of fabric; one of them was wrong.

Selecting my fabrics was a great deal of fun and really challenged me to focus and stay on task. I also managed to buy only what I needed and not to go crazy increasing my fabric stash by yards and pounds of fabric. Finally, I had all the fabric I needed save for the fabric for the outside circle.

I trekked up to Summerville, SC, to People Places and Quilts, one of the best indie fabric stores in the country. Of course, they had the "absolute-perfect-most-beautiful-must-have-been-woven-just-for-me just-for-this-project" fabric.
But they only had two fat quarters of it. For those who don't know, a fat quarter is twenty-two inches wide by eighteen inches long. I needed one and a quarter yards!

I bought the two fat quarters and went home.... I spent about six hours that night searching online fabric stores looking for a matching fabric. I thought I found it, ordered it, it came, and, of course, it was not the same; it was too light.
I decided to do a Scarlett O'Hara; I would think about that fabric tomorrow when I could stand it better.

So things were clicking along. I may have let it slip to just a few friends along the way that I was working on this secret project. OOPS!

My friend, Sam, helped me with geometry, A LOT, and fed me dinner more than occasionally. His adorable son, James, helped me pick the font for the words on the outer ring of the quilt. Thanks, James!

With the appliqué of the main design done, I turned my attention back to the outside circle where the appliqued words were going to be. All I had were those two fat quarters and a dream....

I, also, had boundless determination and my ass against the time wall.

I must have spent ten hours over two days trying to figure out how to make it work. I must have looked at every piece of red, purple, black, or print fabric that had any of those colors in it that I own. And, I own a LOT of fabric.

Magic happened and somehow, I got it done.

I have my quilts professionally quilted when I can. There is a lovely couple, Patricia and Leon Hopkins, who live in Summerville and who do a fantastic job of quilting. For this special project they did it in a twenty-four-hour turnaround.

I got it back and spent the entire weekend zig-zagging the letters onto the quilt. I stayed up all night Saturday night, did not go to church on Sunday (forgive me Jesus), and just kept on stitching and stitching and stitching....

Finally, Sunday night the letters were on. The outer border went on and finally all that was left was the letter beads.

I had this great idea once I decided that my quilt would be round, that I wanted the word "HOPE" written in as many different languages as I could find that could be written using English letters. I used black letter beads with white letters. Late in the game, I had to order four more packages of black letter beads from a company called Gelstuff.com and I was helped by the nicest man named Tim. (Thanks Tim! Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday.)

I put out a call to my wonderful friends and family.... They asked their friends and suddenly I had 35 different languages. I narrowed it down to 29.

Some of the highlights are:
tumainin in Kiswahli
ti d`ochasm agam in Gaelic
tesfa in Ethiopian
themba in Xhosa
re ba in Tibetan
ukuethemba in Zulu
amal in Arabic
siihasin in Navaho

As I finished the last word, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was 1 AM Friday morning. All that was now left to do was to sew on my label and the hanging rod. I decided to sleep.

Tuesday, I was still on schedule, so I decided that I would have a quilt blessing party Friday night before I put it in the mail Saturday morning. People were invited that helped me and supported me and who also love Barack.

I put the last stitch in the quilt label Friday afternoon at 3:30 PM. The party was being held at Sam's house at 6:00, so I jumped in the car to take the quilt over. I rushed back across the highway to my house got dressed and got ready for my close up....

I got back to Sam's house to receive my guests. I have a big circle of great friends and supporters. At 7 PM, I unveiled the quilt.

Applause! Applause! Applause!

They liked it! they really liked it!

People were so kind and full of wonderful comments.

My dear Harriet gave my quilt a Shamanic blessing.

Sweet Kenda, a newly minted Celebrant also shared a blessing,

and even Sam, my dear atheist friend, shared a Jewish blessing.

It was wonderful. I loved my party and felt so embraced by everyone that was there.

Thanks to beautiful Doreatha and Trish who came to share thier blessings as well.

I am pleased with the end result of my quilt and it arrived safely in Washington, DC on time.

The title of quilt is

The Hope of a New Day Begun

This quilt depicts the new leaf of Hope held gently between two hands that symbolize all Americans.
The quilt is constructed of all cotton fabrics, it is machine quilted with cotton and metallic thread. The hands, leaf and all the letters on this piece were machine zig-zagged.
Individual letter beads were sewn on to spell out the word "HOPE"
in 30 different languages.
The quote on the outer ring of the quilt;
"Full of the Hope that the present has brought us..."
Is from the Black National Anthem, "Lift Every Voice and Sing"