White Privilege

I am in a small group of eight women who get together monthly, challenging ourselves to learn new techniques and processes from each other. We call ourselves the Loose Threads. Here is a photo of a few of us at our July meeting. Gingerly, I am hand stitching, gingerly, due to a fractured left elbow (it has almost healed completely, thank goodness.)  Thanks to fellow Loose Thread, Carol (of Giraffe Dreams) who took the photo.

WHITE PRIVILEGE,  36" x 36"

"White Privilege" is made entirely of fabrics having a print of either a writing script or a children's theme. Snowballs blocks with children's prints run on the diagonal, progressing in time from vintage (lower left) to contemporary (upper right,) 

On the snowball blocks, I did big stitching with black perle cotton to emphasize the hexagon shapes. I made all of the pinwheels from the little triangles left from the snowball blocks. I put the pinwheels into blocks of four with a black perle cotton tie in the center. 

I used all nine children's print fabrics in my stash, of which only two showed children of color. Hence the name "White Privilege."

The numerous script fabrics vary from antique-looking scripts to contemporary, and include a crossword puzzle, a Japanese script, a script that looks something like hieroglyphics, and a faint cursive script surrounded by tiny birds sitting on telephone wires.

In my forty year career, I worked with children and youth of all ages, mostly in the inner city. They were my inspiration for this piece.

"White Privilege" was exhibited in venues all over  the Twin Cities in an exhibit called "Cycles" put together by Minnesota Contemporary Quilters. The exhibit ran from June 2016 through May 2017.

Details of White Privilege:

                      Upper right:

                     Lower left:

~Andrea