Of all the pieces I was drawn to, I kept returning to Lola Pettway’s variation on the “Housetop” pattern. Immediately I am interested to know what order each block was made in, was there a plan, or did Pettway just pick up some pieces and start sewing them together. I’m drawn to what to me feels like safety within the housetop structure. Which I think is something to be said considering the structure’s name, the feeling I get from using a quilt, but also something to the history of quilting for Black women during enslavement as currency and as a way to buy safety from white mistresses. I think the housetop structures’ use of a single shape that echoes itself is interesting in conversations of generational practices and traditions, and falling into something because of things your parents have set up for you.I’m curious if there were other options for Pettway, what she would be doing instead. Would she have always found quilting and been a quilter or is her practice merely happenstance. I think this a question I often ask of myself and my own practice, especially in this time of reimagining the world without colonialism. And imaging black people and our history beyond what has happened to us at the hand of the white man. I think – I think that’s why I feel such a connection to this piece because, Pettway gives this really great quote where she says that her mother “had her quilting,” and that she’d rather quilt than piece because of the stretching process. Which made me laugh because I personally prefer to plan a quilt top and piece that quilt top together, to actually quilting whether that’s quilting it by hand or quilting it by machine. But when I am quilting or making anything really, I feel closer and connected to history, and to my history, and to my ancestors who have been making it for a long time before me.

As I sit with the Pettway quilt, I think what draws me to it, even more, is this feeling of intuition and a sense of safety and confidence that comes with that. For centuries Black and Brown people have only ever had ourselves and our intuition to rely on, and when it’s right, it’s right, in many ways even when it’s wrong it’s still right about something. But isn’t that the thing about it, it’s supposed to be this thing that protects us and keeps us alive. Each block in the quilt feels like a satellite to the center square that anchors the piece, much like families anchored by one person, a location, a tradition. And while that may not be what Pettway was originally intending with this piece, I think it is something that came across intuitively. Especially in the way that each block is a structure in themselves, the center squares are a color, surrounded by another color, but none of them feel exactly the same and none of them feel too different from another like they don’t fit within this whole piece itself. But I also think that that is one of the gifts of the Housetop structure. It allows for these pieces to kind of be built and express these different ideas about individuality and communalism without explicitly doing so in many ways. I think what this piece allows for me to do as a viewer, is to connect with the different parts of myself, or my family, or my friends, and to really step back and appreciate those in such a different way for everything that we have to offer each other as go through life and grow as people.

I want to offer this plan for a quilt that is made from a photograph of my great-grandparents and their son. The image is broken down into large areas of solid colors removing all detail and recognition to the figures, but for the family allowing a loose familiarity to remain intact.