From an intimately colorful scrap quilt to the massive AIDS quilt, artists and everyday people have used the memory quilt as a means of both preserving life’s precious memories for future generations and dealing with grief/hardship in the present, as well as engaging difficult issues at the community and global level.

Work with fiber artists Lauren Kingsland and Heather Kerley to create a memory block of your own while learning techniques such as hand piecing, machine and hand appliqué, managing repurposed fabrics, and adding freestyle embroidery, text, and other mixed media and digital elements and creating text using needle and thread.

Each week a brief story of the history of quilts of remembrance across different times, cultures and peoples will provide background and context. We may look at an individual creation or at full-blown exhibits such as the long running, biennial showcase Sacred Threads. We’ll look at quilts created to commemorate people, communities, events and causes. We will explore the questions - What is memory and what do you want to memorialize?

Register here through the Smithsonian Associates Program.

Wednesday, April 26, 2022 - 1:00 p.m. to Wednesday, June 14, 2023 - 3:00 p.m. ET