01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Quilting Gathering Brings a New Tradition to a Classic Form
Laughter mixed with the steady hum of sewing machines as Candace Thomas addressed a room full of quilters inside the Durham Convention Center in Durham, N.C. Hot irons resided at the front and back of the room to keep a rainbow's worth of fabrics flattened and at the ready.
'You want to get a length of fabric that's about a half-inch wide,' Thomas instructed. 'You can make a tube, turn it inside out, roll your edges like you would do a purse strap. Whatever shape you like.'
The couple dozen women eyed Thomas's instructions as they refined their altar boxes, decorated containers roughly the size of a shoe box that can hold a doll or special memory. One of Thomas's boxes contained a copy of a poem her mother penned in 1948.
'It's like teaching a cooking class for family,' said Thomas, who started quilting as a high school student in California after watching her aunt sew.
Thomas taught over Juneteenth weekend at the Kindred Spirits Quilting Conference, which brought together African American quilters from across the South. Kimberley Pierce Cartwright, a longtime member of the African American Quilt Circle of Durham, was the one who conceived of the idea for the three-day conference, which featured workshops like the one Thomas headed and a pop-up quilt show where spectators could admire and purchase quilts. The first conference was held in 2023; after this second edition, Pierce Cartwright plans to make it an annual event around each Juneteenth.
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