Show us the Colors of Your Pride!
As with most of the endeavors of the Shibaguyz, our mantra of "If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing!" held true here. We started with the They/Them Pullover crochet pattern to speak to Shannon's non-binary gender expression and the Progressive Pride Flag mini quilt project was a way for us to talk about the need for more inclusion of BIPOC and TGNCNB folx in Rainbow Pride Flag and the community as a whole. Both were projects created as a way to express our own Pride and it kind of snowballed from there into three different quilt designs during the past year. Also true to our modus operandi, we started working out the designs for all of those quilts at the same time. Soon, one of the designs started consuming our minds and became almost an obsession. Piece by piece, the blocks grew. Block by block, our vision expanded… as did the project! The patterning experiment became a wall hanging, the wall hanging became a lap throw, the lap throw became a queen sized quilt for our bed which brings us to this pattern release: the Colors of my Pride quilt pattern! Before we dive into the new quilt pattern, let's add some context to the content and take a brief look at the history of Pride flags. A brief glimpse at the History of LGBTQIA+ Pride Flags The history of the banners we wave to represent us in the LGBTQIA+ and TGNCNB community is as deep and as colorful as the members of our community itself. Without writing a tome on the subject, we would like to give you an overview of the flags and colors that influenced us in the creation of the Colors of My Pride quilt.
Beyond the Rainbow The LGBTQIA+ community is not a monolith, and neither are the colors of our Pride! In addition to the incarnations of the Rainbow Pride Flag, there are individual flags that represent the communities we each identify with. There are flags hoisted for the lesbian, bear, agender, transgender, and non-binary communities, as well as flags that represent the leather, pansexual, intersex, and genderfluid communities. And that’s just a few! Regardless of how we feel on the inside or how we represent ourselves on the outside, each of us celebrates our Pride differently and we certainly express our Pride with colors that go beyond the rainbow. The Project: The Colors of My Pride Quilt Our quilt, The Colors of My Pride, is a combination of colors from across the wide range of vibrant Pride flags that speak to us the most; the colors that we feel represent us best. We worked with Karla Overland at Cherrywood Hand Dyed Fabrics to pick our very specific colors that best represented our Pride. As we encourage each of you to do with your own Colors of My Pride quilts, we chose colors from different flags and pulled the ones that had the most meaning to us to include in our blocks. Our choices were very personal to us… as yours will be to you. For our The Colors of My Pride quilt, we included the six colors from the Rainbow Pride Flag since that is the first flag that either of us remembers flying as a banner at marches, plastered on our vehicles, worn on our bodies, waved in defiance, and painted on our skin for the better part of 30 years. However, in more recent years, we have come to feel that the representation of the colors from the More Color, More Pride Flag is more inclusive and even further encompasses our community, so we included the black and brown stripes from that flag. Shannon is non-binary, so we also brought in the soft blue and pink from the Transgender Pride Flag and added a lavender stripe to represent those of us who feel we are outside of (or fluid within) the gender binary. And the soft pink for the framing of the blocks? We had asked Karla of Cherrywood Hand Dyed Fabrics for a soft pink that was just barely there. We wanted something that would subtly frame and complement each of our blocks and would provide an overall unifying color when the blocks were assembled. For us, the pink framing of the vibrant blocks represents the overall LGBTQIA+ and TGNCNB community and our unity regardless of where we are and how we represent ourselves. Again, all these color choices are very personal to us and represent OUR LGBTQIA+ and TGNCNB Pride… if those colors speak to you, then use them for your own quilt but, if you feel like other flags and other color combinations represent your place within your community, pick the colors of YOUR Pride and make your quilt your own. The Colors of My Pride Quilt Color Choices How many colors? Which colors? That’s up to you. The blocks themselves are created using a Scrappy Wonky Log Cabin block construction with 17 pieces built from the center out. We used a total of 11 colors repeated starting with either of the three color sets. Don’t worry… in the quilt pattern, we break down the different color sequences we used. You can follow those exactly or substitute in your own colors that represent your Pride!
If you have never made a quilt before or if you are newer to quilting, you’re going to love how forgiving this method of construction is. No… really… time after time, folx in our scrappy wonky quilt classes who were intimidated by matching corners and perfect lines are thrilled with how they can sit down and, with a basic machine that sews a straight line, create something glorious and stunning. Experienced quilters will love this style of construction both because of the freedom of expression it offers and the modern esthetic it creates. Most experienced quilt makers love the sense of play in the creation of these blocks and the resulting randomness is always a thrill… new or experienced! Click on the button below to be whisked away to the Creative Spark website where you can reserve your spot in the live class OR you can pre-order the recording to watch after the live class. Either way, purchasing the class comes with a copy of the pattern AND you have access to the recording for one year after enrolling. That way, even if you can't join us live, you can still participate, ask questions, learn at your own pace on your own schedule, and discuss your quilts with others in the class via the Creative Spark platform. It's the best of all worlds! A final word… or two…
On this, the 51st anniversary of the riots at the Stonewall Inn that sparked the fire that became the modern LGBTQIA+ rights movement and, ultimately, the reason we celebrate Pride Month in June, we are proud to be a part of this vibrant, diverse, exciting community of people. We stand in the shadow of those first transgender Black and Latino women, lesbians, and sex workers who threw the first bricks at Stonewall. We stand on the platform that those folx and so many more before and since have built so that we can be out and proud. Without them, we would not be where we are today… period. Now it is our time to speak out and use our own platform of creativity and education to express ourselves and make it possible for others to stand tall and proud. Whether you make this for yourself to show the color of your Pride or if you make it for someone else to show them your love and support, we hope you think of those who have come before and all of those of us who are still fighting every day just for our basic human rights as members of the LGBTQIA+ and TGNCNB community. Whether you make a Colors of My Pride quilt as a silent encouragement for yourself or as a way to shout out to the world, whether it is a personal journey or one of support for others, we hope you find the same strength and power in the creation process as we have. STITCH ON! S&J
5 Comments
Kerri Hunter
6/8/2021 04:33:25 am
Love the improv you guys create, 😀
Reply
Darla
6/8/2021 04:37:34 am
I love your work. My favorite holiday in the book is Valentines Day.
Reply
Sylke
6/9/2021 08:52:27 pm
Too hard to just pick one.. I love each as they approach!
Reply
Toni Heckler
6/10/2021 08:20:24 pm
I love Christmas.
Reply
Janet Myers
6/11/2021 04:00:40 am
Love the heart quilt
Reply
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorShannon and Jason Leave us a tip to help us do what we do!
Archives
February 2022
Categories
All
|