There is a point in the process of creating a quilt when a seam doesn’t line up, two corners don’t meet or a line of stitching is crooked. The creative process can start with a burst of energy and the initial euphoria of an idea can carry you along very far, but at some point you realise this is the moment where you need to stop and take out your seam ripper. Sometimes that feels too hard, so you push through regardless, hoping that by the time you’re done your quilt, no one will notice the wonky seams, that maybe you can ignore the problem and in the long run all the other pieces you’ve sewn together, all the colours and stitches you add in, will hide the mistakes. Or you give up, dissatisfied with the way your idea turned out and the quilt ends up as another unfinished project on your shelf.
While I was making this quilt I was thinking about my sister and her family. A year ago they came to The Netherlands in very painful traumatic circumstances. Their employers then fired them without cause while they were on sick leave with PTSD and then tried to get them to sign an NDA with the promise of paying their (still reduced) salary until the end of their employment contract if they would promise to not say anything (hush money?!). This happened after they had asked some very pointed questions about abuse happening at the highest level of the organisation.
Now they are standing up to their former employers together with many others who have come forward with similar stories to ask MCC some very important questions. Each colour, shape and stitch of this quilt was made with that in mind.
I also thought about the many people who have been reading and following this petition who quilt, who understand the process of lining up seams, finding the right thread colour, know the feeling of letting go of their pride and backing up, unpicking seams to start again, who have felt how creating a quilt takes a long time, needs stamina and endurance and have also felt the satisfaction of hours of slow hand-stitching leading to something truly beautiful.
I thought about how power and responsibility in leadership can turn abusive when people are not able to listen, when structures of an organisation become so rigid that thousands of people can hide behind thinking someone else will surely make the right decision. I thought about transparency, the beauty in seeing clearly through policies and reasons for ways of doing things, how the intersection of an organisation and the people working for it becomes something more when there is transparency. I thought about how even one person breaking away from a rigid web of abusive practices can create change.
My daughters watched me quilt and had many questions. We talked about the red and the pink - the pain in the world that MCC workers are trying to heal. How the circle of people and the work they do alleviates some of that pain, slowly reducing the bright red to lighter pink. We talked about the green of hope and good, the different thicknesses of the lines created by people standing together, about the direction of the hand-quilting, the pain from pushing a needle through fabric and how a bit of protection (a thimble) makes a big difference. We talked about what it means to stand up to someone who is hurting you, how hard it is to speak up. How difficult it is to sew a curved line, but how changing direction can become something beautiful. I encouraged them that each person can say something from their heart when they see someone doing wrong. For me that is this quilt.
