A Pentagon Garden
Don Beld and Bernice Foster
Los Angeles, California, 2011
Cotton; hand pieced and quilted
Gift of Don Beld IQM 2012.016.0011

Don Beld meant for A Pentagon Garden to be a memorial space, much like a cemetery. He was inspired by the layout of military cemeteries founded during the Civil War. In those cemeteries, designers arranged the burial plots in concentric circles. Each of the 184 Nine Patch blocks in this quilt contains the initials and age of one of those who died in the Pentagon building or on American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. Beginning at the bottom center of the quilt, Beld arranged the blocks in concentric circles beginning with the youngest victim, first on the left side of the quilt and then on the right, ending with the oldest victim at the bottom center. In all, the quilt has 2,977 pieces, the total number of people killed in the terrorist attacks on 9/11. As a result, it becomes a space where all who died are symbolically gathered and where survivors may pay their respects.

Lattice
Maker unidentified
Probably made in Denver, Colorado, dated 1917-1918
Cotton; embroidered, machine pieced and quilted
Sue Reich Collection, Gift of the Robert and Ardis James Foundation
IQM 2021.021.0002

Do you see the blue and gold stars embroidered on this quilt? The blue stars honor men from Denver, Colorado who served in World War I. The gold stars memorialize those who served and died.

Often when someone dies, their community gathers in living rooms and at funeral homes, in places of worship, and cemeteries to pay their respects, support the grieving, and share memories of the one they have lost. On this quilt, the names of Denver residents surround the names of the soldiers killed in action, much like mourners circle the grave at the cemetery. 

In addition, each person named donated a few cents for their name to appear on the quilt, which was also a fundraiser, possibly to support the Red Cross’s field hospitals for wounded and dying soldiers. 

United in Memory 9/11 Victims Memorial Quilt, Panel 10
Made in United States, 2002
Cotton; machine pieced, tied
Gift of the Robert and Ardis James Foundation
IQM 2015.072.0010

United in Memory 9/11 Victims Memorial Quilt, Panel 85
Made in United States, 2002
Cotton; machine pieced, tied
Gift of the Robert and Ardis James Foundation
IQM 2015.072.0085

United in Memory 9/11 Victims Memorial Quilt, Panel 97
Made in United States, 2002
Cotton; machine pieced, tied
Gift of the Robert and Ardis James Foundation
IQM 2015.072.0097

United in Memory 9/11 Victims Memorial Quilt, Panel 104
Made in United States, 2002
Cotton; machine pieced, tied
Gift of the Robert and Ardis James Foundation
IQM 2015.072.0104

United in Memory 9/11 Victims Memorial Quilt, Panel 106
Made in United States, 2002
Cotton; machine pieced, tied
Gift of the Robert and Ardis James Foundation
IQM 2015.072.0106

Covid Memorial Quilt, Panel 3
Made by Madeleine Fugate & Wendy Wells
Los Angeles, California, 2020
Cotton and various materials; machine pieced, tied.
Collection of Covid Memorial Quilt

As of July 2021, more than 609,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the United States.

Thirteen-year-old Madeleine Fugate founded the COVID Memorial Quilt in April 2020, when the cumulative deaths due to the disease were rapidly rising in the U.S. She began this memorial quilt project to provide a public way for people to honor those who died from the virus. She writes in 2020:

"I think it's very sad what is happening to the world with this virus. . . . When you watch the news, it's just about the numbers and how they keep going up. They have gotten so high that we don't think of those numbers as people anymore and I want to change that. They aren't just numbers. They are people who died and they deserve to be remembered. Behind every number is a person who had a family and friends who loved them."

AIDS Memorial Quilt
Block 4460
Living Well Project at the University of Hawai’i
Hawai’i, 1996
Collection of the National AIDS Memorial

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is the world’s largest contemporary folk art object. Today, the quilt has nearly 50,000 blocks, which commemorate more than 105,000 people who have died in the AIDS epidemic. Each panel is approximately the size of a human grave, sometimes made from the victim’s clothing, and includes expressions of survivors’ grief. In 1987, when the AIDS Quilt was displayed for the first time in Washington, D.C., the deeply personal nature of the memorial panels and the enormous size of the overall display, made the rapidly increasing number of lives lost to AIDS something people could see, rather than an impersonal statistic.

San Francisco gay rights activist Cleve Jones conceived the AIDS Quilt in 1985 at the end of a candlelight march. At the time of the march, over 1,000 people had died of AIDS, mostly gay men. Jones asked marchers to write the names of victims they knew on placards and tape them to the San Francisco Federal Building. He recalled the event later in an NPR interview:

"[There] was gentle rain, no speeches or music, just thousands of people reading these names on this patchwork of placards up on that wall. And I thought to myself, 'It looks like some kind of quilt,' and when I said the word 'quilt' I thought of my great-grandma.… And it was such a warm and comforting and middle-American traditional-family-values sort of symbol, and I thought, 'This is the symbol we should take.'”

The United in Memory 9/11 Victims Memorial Quilt and the COVID Memorial Quilt in this gallery are just two of the many quilt projects inspired by the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

The Living Well Project at the University of Hawai’i created this block for the AIDS Memorial Quilt. It includes the names of many victims of the AIDS epidemic who were Indigenous people of Hawaii. A total of 82 names appear on the block.

This block shows how individuals with shared backgrounds and experiences may join in a healing activity of making a quilt that honors members of their community. Most AIDS Quilt blocks are assembled from eight 3-foot-by-6-foot panels to create a 12-foot-by-12-foot block, and each panel is devoted to the memory of a single victim of the AIDS epidemic. This block is an exception because it commemorates multiple individuals in each panel, uses coordinating fabrics, and anchors the design with the Living Well Project medallion. The result is that this block calls special attention to the impact of AIDS on Indigenous people.

Joss Crazy Quilt Kimono III
Carol D. Westfall
New Jersey, circa 1995
Joss paper; hand stitching
A gift from the estate of Carol D. Westfall: beloved wife, mother, grandmother, teacher, multi-media artist, and friend to many. www.carolwestfall.com
IQM 2017.050.0004

Carol Westfall, a multi-media artist, made a series of Joss Quilts. About them she writes:
The Joss Quilts function as mourning cloths. In Chinese culture, joss paper or sticks are burned in memory of ancestors to provide security in the afterlife. These quilts memorialize my ancestors and I hope will provide for their well-being in the hereafter.

Joss paper, typically made from course bamboo paper, is cut into rectangles and often decorated with seals, stamps, or engraving. Joss paper with gold or silver foils, called spirit money, when burned, supplies ancestors’ needs in the afterlife. The underlying belief is that burning allows the offering to cross from the natural world to the spirit world.

Tucson Sector 2018-2019
Reilly Zoda and Gerry Murano of Tucson, Arizona for the Migrant Quilt Project, 2020
Migrant clothing and various materials; machined pieced and quilted
Collection of the Arizona History Museum

Between October 1, 2018 and September 30, 2019, officials recovered the remains of 137 migrants in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. These are a fraction of the at least 3,200 migrants who have died since the mid-1990s in harsh desert conditions after crossing the international border from Mexico to Arizona. Volunteers collected the discarded denim used in this Migrant Quilt Project quilt from sites in the desert where migrants often rest along established trails.

The Migrant Quilt Project is a grassroots organization that shows compassion for migrants from Mexico and Central America who died in the southern Arizona deserts. The project also brings attention to U.S. trade and immigration policies that contribute to the conditions that many migrants flee and that block access to all but the most perilous regions of the border. Using migrant clothing, naming each migrant who died, or inscribing desconocido/a—“unknown”—when the remains are unidentified calls attention to each person’s humanity and assures that each one is counted.

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Since 1492
Susan Hudson (Navajo/Dine)
Navajo Reservation, Sheep Springs, New Mexico, 2017
Cotton, leather, beads, buttons, yarn; machine and hand sewn
Collection of the artist

While quiltmakers often sew clothing of the deceased into memorial quilts, Susan Hudson (Navajo/Dine), a textile artist, stitched examples of clothing that represents all Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) from the “past, present, and future.” Hudson is also an activist who works to stop racially motivated violence, murder, kidnapping, sex trafficking, rape, and forced sterilizations of Indigenous people, which has been happening in the Americas since European contact in 1492. In some regions of the U.S., Indigenous women are 10 times more likely to die of murder today than the rest of the general population. In addition, a 2016 report states that more than one-third of Indigenous women have been raped and more than one-half have been sexually assaulted during their lifetime. Hudson says, “I made this quilt to bring this epidemic to the forefront and to educate people. To let people know that we are human beings and our lives are precious.”

As dire as the statistics are, in her quilts Hudson focuses on living beauty and human stories rather than data points. She says,

"We might not know the names of all the MMIW, their tribes, clans, families, or what year and date they took their last breath. I want them to know that they are not forgotten. I will keep talking about them. I will keep honoring them until I take my last breath. Their stories, your story, or Herstory will not be forgotten.”

CAKEwalk, from Another Country Quilt Cycle
DARNstudio (David Anthone + Ron Norsworthy)
Roxbury, Connecticut, 2020
Paper matchbooks, recycled felt, cotton thread; hand stitched
Collection of the artists

Each of the matchbooks in this piece is a tiny cardboard memorial. The front of each has the imprinted logo of a place, business, or community where an unarmed person of color lost her or his life at the hands of law enforcement. The back displays an alphanumeric code comprised of the deceased’s first and last initials and the date of her or his death. The incendiary nature of matchbooks and the other materials is symbolic. The artists write:

The use of matchbooks bound . . . by cotton thread sewn in connecting crosses—creating the overall effect of a net cast over the surface of the matchbooks—serves as a multilayered metaphor for the traumatic, dehumanizing effects of chattel slavery . . . and the enduring oppressiveness of systemic and institutional racism after the abolition of slavery in America.

CAKEwalk takes its name from competitions in which enslaved Black Americans performed exaggerated dances caricaturing the gestures, dances, and social customs of white Plantation owners. Owners awarded a cake to the winner, unaware of the clever way the dances mocked them and performed enslaved people’s navigation of racial inequality. Today, cakewalk means an easy task or victory, to which the artists respond, “Navigating racism is no cakewalk for Black people.”

Story Cloth
Hmong maker unidentified
Possibly made in South Carolina, circa 2006-2007
Cotton blend; embroidered, hand pieced
Gift of the Robert and Ardis James Foundation
IQM 2019.048.0001

This embroidered Story Cloth narrates the genocide, dislocation, and oppression of Hmong people by the Pathet Lao communist party in Laos beginning in 1975. In 1961, under the authorization of President John F. Kennedy, the CIA recruited Hmong who lived in the northern hill regions of Laos to participate in the United States’ covert military operations against the spread of communism in Laos and Vietnam. In 1975, the communists prevailed and the U.S. withdrew from the region, airlifting only a minority of senior Hmong military officials and their families. For siding with the U.S., the remaining Hmong suffered many atrocities including genocide.

As depicted on the quilt, the Pathet Lao arrived in Hmong villages with tanks, set homes afire, and executed Hmong by bludgeoning or gunfire as they attempted to flee for refuge in Thailand across the Mekong River. Survivors testified of encountering many dead bodies of their people as they fled through the jungles. Beginning in 1980, after new legislation paved the way, thousands of Hmong immigrated to the U.S. Today, more than 250,000 Hmong reside in the U.S.

Remembrance Project Banners
Social Justice Sewing Academy
Various locations, United States, 2021
Cotton; machine pieced and quilted
Collection of the Social Justice Sewing Academy

The lives of the ten people of color named in these Remembrance Banners ended because of events of domestic, community, racial, or gender violence. The majority of these deaths occurred during encounters with law enforcement. Similar to the AIDS Memorial Quilt, each block includes the victim’s name as well as their portrait, words, or interests and her or his role as a member of families and communities. Also similar to public displays of the AIDS Quilt, local and national activist organizations display the banners at activist events to testify of the victims’ human dignity and their tragic end.

Remembrance Project Banners are a project of the Social Justice Sewing Academy (SJSA). Founded in 2017, SJSA is a youth education program that bridges artistic expression with activism to advocate for social justice. Through hands-on workshops across the country, SJSA empowers youth to use textile art as a vehicle for personal transformation and community cohesion to become agents of social change. Volunteers who assist the SJSA in their education programs made these blocks for the Remembrance Project Banners.

Top then bottom, left to right

Sierra Robinson
Noelani Robinson
Blocks by Toby Schwartz, 2020

Sierra Robinson and Noelani Robinson were murdered in a case of domestic violence.

Tanna Gardner
Block by an anonymous quilter, 2020

Tanna Gardner was a mother of two children and had just finished her Accounting degree when she died on Mother’s Day. While she was celebrating her graduation, another car pulled up beside the one she was in and fired into it, killing her and wounding others.

Elijah McClain
Block by Vivien K. Partridge, 2020

Elijah McClain died at age 23. Police officers stopped him while he was walking down the street, possibly dancing to music. He was unarmed. Officers pinned him in a carotid hold. McClain vomited and said he could not breathe. Paramedics injected him with a sedative and transferred him to an ambulance where he suffered cardiac arrest.

Ray Shawn Hudson, Jr.
Block by Melinda Miller, 2021

Maya Rivera
Block by Deborah Gronich Tate, 2021

Ray Shawn Hudson, Jr. died on his 5th birthday, along with his mother Maya Rivera (24) and father Ray Shawn Hudson, Sr. (28). Their bodies were burned and discarded on private property. The suspect is an acquaintance of Hudson, Sr.

Christian Madrigal
Block by Jennifer Jow, 2020

Christian Madrigal died in police custody at age 20.

Taja Gabrielle DeJesus
Block by Alisa K, 2020

Taja Gabrielle DeJesus was a 36-year-old trans woman of color who was fatally stabbed.

Natasha McKenna
Block by Katie Gillies, 2020

Natasha McKenna was a 37-year-old African American mother living with mental illness. She was in police custody and was restrained while being transferred to another facility. She resisted and was stunned four times with a Taser before going into cardiac arrest.

Philando Castile
Block by Marissa Friesen, 2020

Philando Castile was a 32-year old African American man. His car was pulled over by officer Jeronimo Yanez. Castile legally carried a weapon, disclosed this to the officer, and did not reach for it. The officer shot Castile seven times at close range.