A Brilliant Tapestry: Reflections from the Kindred Spirits Conference

“At the heart of Kindred Spirits is the reminder that the process of making art is as important as the art itself. For African American quilters, quilting can be a vital practice of self-care, a way to engage in healing and restoration while creating art that matters.” 

-Kimberley Pierce Cartwright On Space and Time: Quilting Afrofuturism

Kimberly McCrae and Kimberley Pierce Cartwright at the 2025 Kindred Spirits conference. Photo by Jeanette Stokes, 2025

By Kimberly McCrae

I’d like to share a story with you. I can go off-note a bit for this one. We’re just talking now, because we are “family”. From this point forward, my story cannot be told in completion without the mention of each of you who are in this room. You are now a part of the fabric of my story and I am a part of the fabric of yours.

Let’s start with a definition of ‘quilt’. A quilt, by definition, is a covering with two or three layers and filling inside, to provide padding. I’m sure you all, being the experts, already knew this. Keep this in mind, we’ll be returning to it, directly and indirectly again and again, even after we leave this shared cultural space.

Both my mother and father have deep roots in NC. My mother was born in Plymouth, where everyone is family. My father was born and raised right here in Durham. I remember when my father talked fondly about the old Hillside High School over by Lawson Street and Fayetteville Street and the many families he grew up with in MacDougal Terrace when it first opened up to tenants. His grandmother had six daughters. All of who I am today was directly pulled from these statuesque women born of a Cherokee mother and an African father. 

My great-aunt, Rosalee Streeter (affectionately called Aunt Sister) was the first person from whom I received a quilt. Aunt Sister was in her 60s when I was a child. I remember traveling to NC  (Lumber Bridge and Durham to be exact) as a child and visiting with family. Aunt Sister lived in a double-wide trailer back behind a cornfield in Lumber Bridge, NC, just outside of Raeford. She worked at the Turkey Plant along with hundreds of other poor Black people in the 80s. Aunt Sister was my grandmother’s oldest sister. My grandmother, Seoller, was a twin and lived in the community behind the VA (Veterans Administration Hospital), which was cut off from Durham when the Durham Freeway was fully constructed. Her twin, Aunt Oceller, lived right up the dirt road from Aunt Sister. That dirt road holds her husband’s name to this day…Hector Baldwin Lane. 

These dynamic women found ways, both consciously and unconsciously, to keep returning to each other. Aunt Zenner, the baby, lived up the street from my grandmother in the Crest Street Apartments. Aunt Mener and Aunt Reather both lived off of Roxboro Road, near Cornwallis Apartments. These women proved to me that multiple truths could exist at one time: They didn’t always get along with each other, but no outsider could touch or step to one of them without expecting some retribution from another. They seemed to have paired up so one always lived close by, sometimes walking distance from the other. 

When my grandmother passed away, Aunt Sister moved first around the corner and then across the street from Aunt Zenner, almost as if posting up in grandma’s stead. Their beautifully flawed humanity, coupled with their fierce love for one another, was a formidable force to reckon with, and I felt bad for outsiders who didn’t know better. Each bragged of having a shotgun, which none of us cousins saw, but I think we all trusted they had them. And each had a tongue and a wit that was sharp like a knife but also could soothe, save, and seduce. They each represented, for me, a kind of beauty that was timeless, and as a child, I could see myself embodying this type of independence well into my winter years. I didn’t realize until I was grown just how much of them is in me and how much I love that they are woven into the way I think, move, talk, dress, engage in relationships, interact in community…they have always been a major thread and have also provided some of the padding in the way my life has been stitched/pieced/crafted together.

Now,my mother could sew, knit and crochet. I have some of the most fabulous creations she made with her own hands, so I was accustomed to getting handmade items, but Aunt Sister, as I said earlier, was the first person from whom I ever received a quilt. 

Close-up of Rag Rug method by Cookie Washington, photo by Jailyn Neville, 2025

Something about the intricacy of that quilting has always taken on a different meaning for me. The colors and patterns that I would have never put together. The way the material was often clearly strips of a former garment and she had taken the time to sew them together…She took the time to put this masterpiece together to herald the coming of my youngest daughter, Tarja. I don’t know where she got the fabric she used to construct this beautiful treasure. What I knew was, I felt chosen… special… blessed! 

Aunt Sister was well into her seventies when she hand stitched that quilt. I understood the sacrifice in those time-worn hands quilting day and night until it was complete. My daughter is now twenty-six years old and I still have that quilt. It’s been through some things and needs to be restitched in some areas now. It is still a vivid memory, for both me and my daughter, of Aunt Sister, her creative spirit and her desire to leave a memorable impression…the elder honoring the new life that was to emerge. 

I remember when Aunt Sister passed away, family members were fighting over her possessions. One of the things that came up the most was her quilts. People had been eyeing them for years and several people staked claim to the various ones she had stored in her house. I kept quiet because she had made one for me. I don’t think I had fully processed the magnitude of the gift until I saw how coveted her handiwork was.

 photo by Jailyn Neville, 2025

Since time before time, Black people/Black womanhood has been quilting, preserving and designing life in ways that leave room for imagining how it could be maintained and sustained. With an understanding that people (and thereby tomorrows) can be quite fickle and unpredictable, some, like Aunt Sister, weave forevers out of the scraps they can salvage. Out of things in which others may see no value. 

Yesterday, we celebrated Juneteenth, the acknowledgement of the formal end of a time where family structures were carefully quilted together by children, the desire for freedom, underground railroads and future planning as the threads that stitched hope into the fabric of our being. A time when preserving family history happened through storytelling, stitching together clothing and creating means of thriving in spaces where survival was a commodity. There’s not been a time, here in the United States, that Black people have not been quilting (figuratively and literally) as a means of declaring not only our existence but also a way of building proverbial time capsules to keep our stories from being lost, stolen or erased. We’ve been the covering and the filling, while being cast as the extras in a story in which we have always been the leading cast.

I never asked Aunt Sister her ‘why.’ I was too busy enjoying and marveling at the beauty and genius of her creations in the now. It kept me and my baby warm. She kept us warm. The colors are bright and vibrant. She was bright and vibrant. Even in its time-worn state, the quilt has a clear pattern, texture and its own ‘lane’ in the grand scheme of the history I’ve lived. It never occurred to me that Aunt Sister came to this path because part of her story led her there. I wish I had taken the time to find out from her how her mind stumbled upon the patterns that only resided there and were never written down and what they meant to her…what they may have been saving her from or leading her to as she journeyed forward through life. If we are willing to sit quietly and listen, quilts tell us a story. Of their creator…of their own history…of the many people who existed in this realm to make room for them.

Our stories have never been written for haphazard consumption. We can be frivolous with them if we want, but there is an ancestral presence that will pull back the veil at times to remind us of the sacrifices made for those stories to live. Quilting has been practiced for thousands of years. There is a sacred nature in knowing that this gift has been here for generations far before us and will continue long after we are gone. What new blessings are being woven into the tapestry today that will be uncovered in the future? I see it as both an art in the manipulation of layers and patterns of fabric but also an art in the way that it manipulates and places people in proximity to each other. A quilt can start a conversation. A quilt can be the start of a life changing twenty-second hug. A quilt can serve as a connection between generations who may have never even met. I have grandchildren now, who can receive the gift of Aunt Sister through the preservation of her creative genius in her quilt. 

Through the sharing of the story of the origin of the quilt…through the sharing of the stories that automatically begin to spring forward when I pull at the thread that is that quilt. There is forward-thinking that goes into doing the kind of work required to construct a covering that will last for generations. 

photo by Jailyn Neville, 2025

What is covering you today that has made its way forward through generations to be here for you? 

What are you building today that will be a covering for generations coming behind you? 

For what or whom have you softened the landing with he padding that is an inherent part of the quilt you’ve gifted to the world? 

Now, we may be talking about actual quilts or maybe we’ve shifted the conversation to some other less tangible things. 

What values are embodied in your dedication to quilting? 

What is your ‘why’? 

What things will future generations know about you because you took the time to quilt your today for preservation tomorrow? 

What might future generations find out about themselves in having access to you through

your timeless art? 

Let’s take a moment to breathe and allow our bodies to feel and process the multiple truths that can come up for us in asking these questions and waiting for an answer. 

photo by Jailyn Neville, 2025

Sometimes self-care is more about just allowing ourselves to be rather than always doing. It is an act of self-love, self-preservation and communal care when we take the time and intention to craft our stories through words, clothing, quilting…we have always been people who found ways to make our stories live. 

There was a time when writing and reading could cost us our lives so we have perfected the art of storytelling by alternative means. The art of keeping ourselves alive through unconventional measures. We are a people who find, create and nurture joy. When Black people engage in activities that assure that our stories will continue to exist, this is one of the greatest acts of self-care, communal care and revolution. 

Sometimes, just walking in our gifts and staying committed to our “why” will begin to shift the dynamic to make way for a future that may be less preferred by some but must be made room for because it has made room for itself. We can’t predict what will happen, but we can be assured that in being true to our purpose and our values we and the generations after us will continue to curate space for us, our stories and our values to live. In that space we will be reminded to breathe, on purpose, and to allow love to come on in and sit with us in those moments when we forget to love ourselves. 

Sometimes quilting is our way of speaking without making a sound. For those whose voices have been denied room to be raised, I want to offer you a moment to speak into the room those wishes, hopes and dreams you are building into the legacy you desire to leave in this world. 

Remembering and holding dear what has been spoken here will serve as reminders that sowing into those who are coming is part of self-care. It is a multi-generational ‘Amen’ and ‘Ashe’. We are reminded that caring for ourselves is not selfish; that no one is coming to save us so we must continue to save ourselves; that we are a people of such extraordinary value that there have always been attempts to erase us and sometimes it’s an inside job but we keep planting seeds that come up in the most unexpected but necessary times/places.

Those who have come before us made a commitment to live that made way for an opportunity for us and our talents to come forth. In the coming forth, we begin to activate portals that present pathways that can only lead to multi-generational realities…many truths being present in any one moment. Love must have space at the creator’s table so that hope can emerge. Hope is always in the room. We must give it room to spread out and show up in our stories, for only a people fueled by hope could still thrive under such unlikely circumstances time after time after time.

One thing we can ask ourselves to keep us connected to the deepest most meaningful part of who we are and how we shape our realities, in this lifetime/lifeline and the next, is what is the thing I, my gifts, my presence can bring to make this what we will need or a future worth living for?

photo by Jailyn Neville, 2025

I believe that Octavia Butler’s work is so phenomenal in our today because she stayed aware of what we inherently bring to the world embodied in our Blackness and memorialized it in her writing so that in the 21st Century and beyond we would remember who we’ve always been. 

This act of self-definition is an important part of self-care. It’s vital to control the narrative of not only who we are but who we are not. That we are not a people of chaos. We are not now nor ever will be lost or devoid of our culture and heritage. There are parts of our past that are passed down in our stories…some are transferred in our DNA. 

Some things we may need to dig for to retrieve, but they are there and have always been there. We get to decide how, when and what parts are presented to which audiences and we get to decide how we will continue to carry this selfness, this Blackness into the future we are shaping today.