By Michaela Wang ‘21, Feature Editor

Marchers sew through city streets, binding the empty stretches between cobblestone and concrete. From above, the image of protest blankets communities in quilt, stitching together patches of concern and beliefs. The distinct heights, sizes, and colors adds depth to the picture, painting color in a once untouched canvas.  

At times of crisis and instability, young Americans return to the hands: a call of attention, a grip of the pen, a pace of the fingers on a keyboard. A left hand sits atop a sewing machine and a right follows fabric along the needle. Stitch by stitch, social justice can be served.  

Before the American Revolution in the 1760s, women were confined to needle arts as a form of education, but this repression birthed a new political tool. In defiance of British taxes on textiles and other products, women in the colonies eschewed British-made clothing by creating homespun cloth. During the Abolitionist movement, they formed bands of seamstresses to create a chamber for political advocacy and personal connection. While rich old women practiced the political act, lower-class newlyweds relied on these profitable products while their husbands were away at war. Following the Civil War, as reformist movements including temperance spread over the country, women of various ages organized sewing bees to sell quilts often tailored with political messages, whose sales could support those causes.

Communication is crucial in a developing society; it is an art in itself, and when the underrepresented feel compelled to speak out, they often use art as a medium for change. Founded in 2017, the Social Justice Sewing Academy (SJSA) pieces together youth voices, textile art, and the value of community in a 21st-century sewing circle. Through a series of hands-on workshops in schools, prisons, and community centers across the country, SJSA empowers youth to recognize the power within their own voices, using art as fuel for “personal transformation and community cohesion”. Many artists explore issues such as “gender discrimination, mass incarceration, gun violence and gentrification”, utilizing imagery to narrate stories in cloth. The quilts are then sewn together to be displayed in museums and galleries.

While an anonymous artist stitched the infamous quilt “Rest In Power Trayvon,” they discovered their own identity and social responsibility amidst a troubled society. Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old unarmed teen, was shot while walking through a gated community where his father lived. His death illuminated black alienation and showed how dominant races profile and police marginalized groups. The artist then recognized the lack of communication in the privileged spaces they worked in: “For 13 years, I quilted the same traditional patterns and followed industry standard, spending thousands of hours refining my craft in the company of quilting mentors. [But] no one spoke about Trayvon’s death, the protests, or the acquittal of his murderer and I felt like I needed to do something to change that. The ‘Rest In Power Trayvon’ quilt is the first time I mixed my passion for quilting with social justice art, a mix that has made the Social Justice Sewing Academy what it is today. When I combined quilting and social justice I gained a completely new understanding of what it means to quilt with a purpose…his life is not forgotten.” The Academy encourages activism in its creators, and sparks conversation among the viewers.

The meaning of stitching has evolved throughout history, with every century sewing further and further into a more accepting society. These activists use textile as offensive shots, choosing the soft touch of cloth over weapons and violence. The voices, the stories, and the bravery blanket in one dimension, where a needle and a thread swim above and below the surface of fabric.