Why quilting is political – and why that’s not a bad thing

In the United States especially, quilts have long functioned as tools of protest, remembrance, and economic survival.

People often say, “Keep politics out of quilting.” Or better yet, I followed you because of your quilting, not because of your political views.

I get it, we want to relax, unwind and see pretty things.

But quilting has never been separate from politics, because quilts live where politics lives: in homes, communities, money, labor, identity, and whose stories get preserved. Quilts are material culture. They’re made in social systems. And social systems are political.

So when you ask, “How is quilting political?” the honest answer is: 

Quilting is political whether the maker intends it or not

and sometimes, quilting is political because the maker intends it very much.

Let me explain why.

What “political” means in quilting

When I say political, I don’t mean “party politics only.” I mean:

• Power: who is heard, who is erased, who is valued
• Labor: whose work is unpaid, underpaid, dismissed, or exploited
• Resources: who has time, space, fabric, safety, tools, education
• Identity: gender, race, class, disability, migration, queerness, faith
• Institutions: museums, quilt shows, publishers, sponsors, gatekeepers
• Memory: what a culture chooses to remember and forget

Quilts can be soft. They can be comforting. And they can still be political.

1) Quilting is political because it’s a language, especially for people denied a public voice

Historically, textile work was labeled “domestic,” “feminine,” and “private.” That’s exactly why it became powerful: when women and other marginalized people were excluded from voting, formal leadership, and public speech, needlework became a socially acceptable way to communicate ideas, build community, and fund movements.

Abolitionist quilts: fundraising + messaging

In the 1830s, women’s antislavery groups organized fundraising fairs and sold stitched goods—including quilts—to support abolitionist work. An early documented example is a quilt sold at an anti-slavery fair in Massachusetts in 1836, tied to the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. 

Check out this amazing post by World-Quilts

These quilts weren’t just pretty objects. They were:

• fundraising tools,
• conversation starters,
• moral arguments made visible.

2) Quilting is political because quilts record American history the official record ignores

Some histories survive because someone wrote them down in “approved” places. Other histories survive because someone stitched them into cloth.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt: mourning turned into activism

The AIDS Memorial Quilt (NAMES Project) is one of the clearest examples of quilting as political force. It used an intimate format, fabric memorial panels, to confront public denial and stigma, and to demand attention, care, and policy change during the AIDS crisis. 

Check out this fantastic post here on www.aidsmemorial.org (talk about IMPACT! WOW)

or here on www.craftscouncil.org.uk

The political power here isn’t subtle:

• it made mass death visible,
• it insisted on names and dignity,
• it created a public, traveling form of witness.

3) Quilting is political because it’s tied to race, survival, and economic justice

Quilt history is also labor history, who had access to materials, who quilted out of necessity, who was credited as “artist,” and who was treated as “craft.”

Gee’s Bend and Freedom Quilting Bee: art, civil rights era economics, and recognition

Gee’s Bend quilts became world-famous for their bold improvisational design, but that recognition sits inside a longer story about Black women’s lives in the US South and the struggle for economic survival and self-determination. The Freedom Quilting Bee (founded in 1966) is often discussed as part of that economic empowerment story. 

Check out the Smithsoniamag.com ‘Fabric for their Lives’

And the “politics” doesn’t stop when quilts enter the marketplace. Recent reporting has highlighted controversies about commercialization, cultural appropriation, and whether quilters and communities are compensated fairly when their designs are mass-produced. 

Read more here on www.apnews.com

4) Quilting is political because “neutral” is still a position

A quilt can be political even if it has:

• no slogans,
• no imagery of protests,
• no explicit message.

Because quilts always reflect choices shaped by context:

• What stories do we center on our walls and beds?
• What is considered “good taste” or “appropriate”?
• Who is welcomed in quilting spaces (shops, guilds, shows)?
• Whose work is collected, published, juried, sponsored?

Even the phrase “keep politics out” often means: keep uncomfortable topics out. That’s still politics just politics that protects the status quo.

5) Quilting is political because institutions police what is “acceptable”

When quilt shows or organizations reject work for being “too political,” it reveals something important:

The boundary is not about politics existing, it’s about which politics are allowed.

A recent example: controversy involving the Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) exhibition Color in Context: Red and the American Quilter’s Society (AQS), including public statements about works being censored/blocked from display at some venues. 

Read more here on the SAQA Website (Way to go SAQA – kudos to standing up for human rights)

Regardless of where you land on that specific dispute, it illustrates a bigger truth:

• quilts communicate,
• institutions curate communication,
• curation is political.

6) Quilting is political today: craftivism, community building, and public dissent

Modern quilting activism lives in many forms:

• mutual aid quilts and raffles,
• memorial quilts for local tragedies,
• climate and fast-fashion critique via mending,
• collaborative protest textiles.

“Craftivism” is commonly used to describe this blend of craft + activism. Recent reporting highlighted groups using fiber arts in visible protest and community solidarity, showing that textiles remain a living political practice, not just a historical one. 

Read more on www.theguardian.com

7) A Europe + Germany lens: political textiles aren’t “an American thing”

• Public art quilts and activism: Munich-based projects like Six Quilts by Philipp Gufler explicitly connect quilting to protest histories and queer memory. 

• German textile activism spaces: Berlin programming on activist needlework (e.g., community quilt-making tied to exhibitions about exclusion). 

• European quilt exhibitions featuring “time-critical statements”: The European Quilt Triennial in Heidelberg has explicitly framed quilts/textiles as vehicles for contemporary statements. 

So… why does this matter for quilters?

Because if quilting is political, then quilting is also powerful.

It can:

• hold grief without asking permission,
• preserve stories that don’t make it into textbooks,
• create community across difference,
• fundraise,
• protest,
• remind institutions that “decorative” doesn’t mean “silent.”

And it can do all that while still being beautiful.

Final personal statement :

Don’t get me wrong, I personally love hearts, fawns, butterflies, and all the gentle, comforting pretty colorful things quilting can be. That’s still me.

But there are moments when this is not enough. And for me, this is one of those moments.

Enough is enough.

I created the ‘Holding Hands’ pattern in June 2020, after George Floyd was murdered. That moment changed something for many of us, including me.

I did write a blog back then as well, here you can read all about it. I needed to make something that spoke about humanity, solidarity, and the simple truth that our lives are connected, whether we acknowledge it or not.

What is deeply unsettling is that we are once again living through a time of escalating cruelty, exclusion, and violence under the same political leadership.

Names change, headlines change, but people like Renee Good and Alex Pretty remind us that the harm is not abstract. It is real. It is ongoing.

This pattern is my way of saying that silence is not neutral. Making something beautiful does not mean turning away.

All proceeds from all of my Hands patterns are donated to National Immigrant Justice Center (www.immigrantjustice.org), because dignity, safety, and justice should never depend on where someone was born or which papers they carry.

I will always make space for beauty in my work, but I will also make space for truth.

Let’s hold hands! ALWAYS!

Ingrid xx