To raise money for my dispersed relatives, I asked friends and family to sponsor a patch on a fabric photo quilt I would make for my relatives. The funds went toward a bank card to fund food, clothing, gas and other basic needs of my family. While I solicited photos as well, I never was able to get any from other relatives. The few that I had in my possession could never represent the lifetime of memories that they had lost in their homes.

But the technique of using quilts to raise money came directly from my research. And I knew that learning how to quilt was important in understanding other intrinsic ways in which quilters create community.

I used what Hoffman describes as 'reconstructive anthropology' or learning by doing (McLean, 20) to explore quilting, using similar processes and techniques to create a quilt. Through this experiential learning, I could further explore the tactics of the quilter that I'd previously identified - fragmentation, condensation, and juxtaposition - and discover new ones.

I had picked the fabric before I got the instructions and materials list for the class I took. As I scanned bolts and bolts of fabric arranged in color blocks, the bright yellow background of the figures caught my eye. The African women, wearing brightly patterned fabrics themselves, danced, walked with children, lifted infants to the sky. I imagined that some were in fighting stance, while others prayed. Yes, these were the women that I wanted to grace the top of my first quilt.

I bought matching red, green and blue fabrics. The red outlined little huts in a deeper red, that faded to a tone-on-tone pattern when you stood back far enough. The red came to symbolize the blood of the village.

The green, with small beige circles, came to symbolize the land, the earth.

The blue, with light blue wavy lines, represented the water.

These elemental symbols of life, growth, nourishment, and protection, came to represent the homeland of the African women, the land they nurtured and tended and that in turn sustained them and their communities. For me, the women represented my mother, my sisters, my girlfriends, my mentors, and my angels that had guided me, protected me and showed me the way to survive and thrive in my life. They showed me in various stages of my own life - as mother, as dancer, as protector.

I bought yards and yards, thinking that I wanted to make three quilts of the same fabrics, for each of my children. I laughed. Here I hadn't started the one yet, and I was already planning for two more.

But as I found out, the beginning quilting class I was taking was making a tabletopper, not a quilt. And the design called for four classic quilt patterns using different techniques - St. Louis Block, Four in Nine Patch, Hole in the Barn Door, and Sweetheart Block. So I picked out some fat quarters as it called for in the materials list. I picked a bold red, orange, brown and tan floral batik pattern like poppies, along with another African print of black and beige, a mossy green, and plain beige. None had the calico, floral designs of more traditional quilting prints. But even in this beginning class, I had my own idea of what my quilt should look like and it was awash in attitude.

The African women were still in my mind as I began my first class. Since I wanted to preserve the women, I had to find a design that allowed for them to remain intact, with the complementary fabrics around them. I showed my instructor the original piece of fabric that I wanted to work with to get her suggestions for creating a quilt. Since the figures of the African women will be medallions centered in a larger design, I had to work from the size of the final medallions to create a design. A final square of 6 or 6 ½" will work, I thought. My teacher sent me off to look at some books to get some ideas for a design. I thumbed through several, taking down their titles to examine them further after I ordered them online. I also wanted to return to some of the African-American quilt books that I have at home. I really liked the idea of bringing some of the African aesthetics of design into this piece with the African theme. So the idea of using a strip technique was appealing.

I played around with my African fabric and leafed through Signs and Symbols: African Images in African American Quilts by Maude Southwell Wahlman (Tinwood Books, 2001) for some ideas. I really liked a strip design that looks like a Kente cloth design.

As Wahlman suggests in her introduction, several traits distinguish African American quilts from the Anglo-Amrican tradition: an emphasis on

1. vertical strips,
2. bright colors,
3. large designs,
4. asymmetry,
5. improvisation,
6. multiple patterning, and
7. symbolic forms (7).

As my fabric selection and feelings about the design already confirmed an African design tradition, I got some blank paper to sketch out the idea. I resisted using the grid paper I bought, even though eventually I realize I will probably have to transfer the design to something more formal in order to get the exact measurements down. I liked the idea of having the orange red as one long strip through the design. I played around with diamond, handprints appliquéd and then finally settled on a simpler strip patch to frame the medallions. I used my daughter's colored markers to color key the design and when I'm done, the design looked like the Kente cloth idea I was trying to achieve.

After measuring and making calculations in class the next week based on my design, my teacher had finally sent me home, suggesting that I cut out pieces as I envisioned them, piece them together and examine the result.

From January 12, 2005, until March 19, 2005 I worked on and completed the tabletopper and the African women quilt. But the final quilt does not look like my original sketch. Each piece presented its own challenges and learnings.

In the tabletop design, for example, I had not purchased a light fabric as called for in one of the blocks. I had quickly picked out a batik at the quilt shop that would work. That bit of serendipity added a bright element to the design that had been missing. On the Sweetheart Block, we were to practice different appliqué techniques. I couldn't find a satin stitch on my new sewing machine, even in the instruction booklet. So I tried out a variety of decorative stitches on a scrap, then settled on a stitch that looks like a string of pearls. The circular balls mirror the dots that are also prominent in the African cloth and the bright batik I had found, carrying that theme into the stitching and adding a bit of textural interest. Improvisation became one of the key characteristics of quilting that I used, even within the traditional patch designs. In the moment, I came up with creative solutions that made the piece stronger in the end.

In the African women quilt, I changed the size of the color blocks and found an additional African symbol fabric to use in between the larger strips, rather than the orange-red hut fabric I originally had picked. The bold red diamonds against a black background frame each of the strips added an additional strong graphic element to the design.

I faced additional challenges as I sought to back, quilt, and bind the design. Each solution required improvisation, working with and against traditional methods. It also required patience, to be willing to wait on the inspiration coming forth from the design, rather than forcing a solution onto the fabric. Later on, I discovered the diamond pattern represents birth, life, death, and rebirth in African cultures. The diamond shape also resembled the "Ojo de Dios" or eye of God through which God sees the supplicant asking for health or long life for children. The ojo is also said to keep away evil spirits.

Out of these two quilt projects, I experienced fragmentation as a tactic as I attempted to fit my quilting activities into my evening hours with my children. My quilting was constantly interrupted by the dailiness of my life. Once, when I pulled out my machine, my oldest daughter pulled out her scrap bag and began cutting and piecing a quilt top of her own. Her fabric finally overwhelmed my fabrics on the table, so I put aside my quilt and helped her complete the design on the table. My quilting activities were constantly juxtaposed against other activities and ideas as my children offered their own ideas on how I should proceed.

I identified an additional quilting tactic, improvisation, as I worked to find solutions throughout the construction of the two projects. As I thought about how improvisation came to be played out in each of the designs, I found that it was different from the fragmentation of time I'd identified earlier. Instead of time being fractured, with improvisation time is pierced with insight, with creativity, with just the right suggestion at the right time that forced the projects to go a different direction.

4: Improvisation - A Stitch in Time

In the dailiness of women's lives, women are continually interrupted. Dailiness is by definition never a conclusion, always a process (Aptheker 44). This tactical operation seizes the advantage of the moment to piece together a discourse.

Leon suggests that improvisation in quiltmaking comes from an African-American aesthetic that favors individualism and creativity (71). The artist, says Leon, works within prescribed boundaries that both regulate and yield to the creative process. In the digital story quilt, kairos or a break in time, characterizes the improvisational move. In the moment as the digital quilt top is composed of the many individual patches, the voice of the storyteller penetrates the official narrative, virally infecting history with subaltern voices.