Stitch by Stitch: Activist Quilts from the Social Justice Sewing Academy
Founded in 2016, the Social Justice Sewing Academy (SJSA) is a youth education arts program that combines art and activism and encourages young people to amplify their voices through craft. Using the fiber arts as a vehicle for personal transformation and community cohesion, SJSA supports youth as agents of social change within the longstanding tradition of textile-based craftivism—early U.S. flags, wartime knitting circles, Civil Rights protest banners, the AIDS Memorial quilt, among others. SJSA actively promotes dialogue through the lens of contemporary craft and empowers participants to become civically engaged artists that actively confront pressing issues in their lives and in their communities.
An integral component of SJSA’s model is the way in which it bridges generational, racial, and socioeconomic divides by sending youth art blocks to embroiderers across the world for completion. These volunteers in turn send the finished blocks back to SJSA for inclusion in a community quilt. Through this important outreach, the issues facing SJSA participants are introduced into the households of traditionally affluent people with the hope of cultivating awareness, dialogue, and action.
Stitch by Stitch: Activist Quilts from the Social Justice Sewing Academy presents the collective work amassed over 4 years of relentless dedication that included over 200 workshops, roughly 3,000 hours of embroidering from over 1,000 volunteers around the world, and an astounding 1,700 hours dedicated to piecing, pattern design, long arm quilting, and binding. The fourteen quilts on display at Fuller Craft stand together as a powerful collection highlighting the social justice issues impacting young people in marginalized communities.
An integral component of SJSA’s model is the way in which it bridges generational, racial, and socioeconomic divides by sending youth art blocks to embroiderers across the world for completion. These volunteers in turn send the finished blocks back to SJSA for inclusion in a community quilt. Through this important outreach, the issues facing SJSA participants are introduced into the households of traditionally affluent people with the hope of cultivating awareness, dialogue, and action.
Stitch by Stitch: Activist Quilts from the Social Justice Sewing Academy presents the collective work amassed over 4 years of relentless dedication that included over 200 workshops, roughly 3,000 hours of embroidering from over 1,000 volunteers around the world, and an astounding 1,700 hours dedicated to piecing, pattern design, long arm quilting, and binding. The fourteen quilts on display at Fuller Craft stand together as a powerful collection highlighting the social justice issues impacting young people in marginalized communities.
Community Quilt Process
Quilting is an age-old process, practiced in many cultures throughout the world. In America, its origins were strictly utilitarian, recycling discarded materials to create warmth and protection from the cold. The word quilt is defined as a warm bed covering made of padding enclosed between layers of fabric and kept in place by lines of stitching. Historically, this process might draw together a community to create and complete a quilt. Such is the origin of the Social Justice Sewing Academy’s process.
Throughout the creation of our quilts, we are focused on community. The creation of a SJSA quilt is the living definition of the quilt itself, layers of community that come together to create. The quilt top is the students and young people across the country using their voice and personal expression to create the message we all see. The quilt back is the collection of organizers, sponsors and volunteers that support the community outreach and stand behind the organization providing foundation. The stuffing is comprised of donations and materials from fellow artists and vendors, collected to create the quilts. The stitching is the international community of volunteers that embroider and embellish our work, echoing and amplifying our artists’ messages and bringing it all together. And finally, the piecing and binding is the volunteer sewers and longarm quilters that provide the final assembly and finishing touches to complete the quilt.
Quilting is an age-old process, practiced in many cultures throughout the world. In America, its origins were strictly utilitarian, recycling discarded materials to create warmth and protection from the cold. The word quilt is defined as a warm bed covering made of padding enclosed between layers of fabric and kept in place by lines of stitching. Historically, this process might draw together a community to create and complete a quilt. Such is the origin of the Social Justice Sewing Academy’s process.
Throughout the creation of our quilts, we are focused on community. The creation of a SJSA quilt is the living definition of the quilt itself, layers of community that come together to create. The quilt top is the students and young people across the country using their voice and personal expression to create the message we all see. The quilt back is the collection of organizers, sponsors and volunteers that support the community outreach and stand behind the organization providing foundation. The stuffing is comprised of donations and materials from fellow artists and vendors, collected to create the quilts. The stitching is the international community of volunteers that embroider and embellish our work, echoing and amplifying our artists’ messages and bringing it all together. And finally, the piecing and binding is the volunteer sewers and longarm quilters that provide the final assembly and finishing touches to complete the quilt.
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Step 1 | SJSA Workshops Students and young artists are invited to design and create quilt blocks expressing their passion, pride, concern, anger or sadness about social justice issues of their choice. Through one-on-one and group discussion, topics are selected and design decisions are made. Using a scale drawing of their message, an individual raw-edge appliqued block is created using fabric and fabric glue (products donated by a community of fellow artists and vendors). Step 2 | Embroidering the message Social justice applique quilt blocks are then sent to a community of embroidery volunteers around the world, including the US, Australia and Canada. Each volunteer will embellish and embroider the quilt blocks, following the young artists’ design requests and adding their own personal style, with the intention of amplifying their messages. Step 3 | Piecing the quilt top Once the blocks have been embroidered and returned, another community of volunteers will sew the blocks together to create the quilt top. The quilt top is then layered on top of a backing fabric and a layer of batting, creating the “quilt sandwich”. These layers are basted together with long stitches and prepared to be quilted. Step 4 | Longarm quilting The longarm quilter takes the quilt sandwich and mounts it on a large machine frame for the final quilting step. Longarm quilting sews through all of the layers, permanently joining them and providing an overall stitched secondary design to the quilt. The final step is the binding of the edges of the quilt, a process that finishes all raw edges and creates the outermost edge of the quilt. Step 5 | Sharing the message Completed SJSA Community Quilts are displayed and showcased online and in galleries, museums and publications to advocate and further amplify the messages, bringing awareness to social justice issues youth care about. |