Stitching a Culture Together — 2011 ·

African American Quilters of Ohio

By Carolyn L. Mazloomi

Quilting has been popular in this country since its establishment, but documentation of African American quiltmaking prior to the early 1980s is rare. Stitching a Culture Together: African American Quilters of Ohio is an awakening to the unknown and uncelebrated contributions of African American quilters in Ohio.

Bright, bold, and beautiful, capturing the imagination with cleverly told stories and mesmerizing the eye with their beauty, African American quilts have been instruments of cultural transmission, chronicling family history, memorializing pain and tragedy, and celebrating significant events. Renowned quilter and quilt historian Carolyn. L. Mazloomi examines the spiritual, cultural, and historical connection between African American quiltmakers and their creations. She focuses on the quilters and their stories, revealing how each quilt is a highly personal statement and a reflection of the shared experiences of human beings. Some of the quilters are traditionalists, while others explore new directions by experimenting with techniques, technology, and materials considered unorthodox in the traditional quilting community. The quilts serve as a vehicle to expand understanding of African American culture and history.

With more than forty color photographs, Stitching a Culture Together showcases the remarkable range of quilts found in the African American quilt communities around the state of Ohio.

Carolyn L. Mazloomi’s most recent book is Quilting African American Women’s History: Our Challenges, Creativity, and Champions. She is also the author of Threads of Faith, Textural Rhythms: Quilting the Jazz Tradition, and Spirits of the Cloth: Contemporary African American Quilts, which received “Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year” from the American Library Association. In 2003 she was awarded the first Ohio Heritage Fellowship Award, an award that recognizes the state’s living cultural treasures.