Members of Bib & Tucker Sew-Op pose with a 2016 March Quilt.Arts in Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham will partner with Bib & Tucker Sew-Op for this year’s The March Quilts project.
AIM will host two workshops at the UAB Women and Infants Center, from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Friday, Feb. 17, and Monday, March 6. The workshops will take place in the center’s second-floor atrium.
This is the third year of The March Quilts project. The March Quilts is a community art project that sheds light on a theme of human or civil rights through open sewing sessions where members of Bib & Tucker Sew-Op facilitate the making of quilt blocks. Participants gather and discuss aspects of the theme and then create compositions that express their feelings about the theme. Blocks are appliquéd or embroidered, and all materials are supplied at the sessions. No sewing experience is necessary.
Volunteers work on squares for The March Quilt project. The theme this year is the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Loving v. Virginia, which knocked down that state’s anti-miscegenation laws, setting a course for the rest of the country. It also happens to be the 50th anniversary of the movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”
In its first year, the project collected more than 460 blocks made by the community and turned them into three quilts. The theme was the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches. One quilt hung in Selma and the other two in Montgomery for the week of March 25. The second year’s theme was gender pay equity, with special focus on the story of Lilly Ledbetter.
A show of quilts from all three years is set to take place on Loving Day, June 12. For more information or to stay connected to the project, visit the Bib & Tucker Sew-Op Facebook page or the group’s website for the events. A full list of sewing sessions is online at www.bibandtuckersewop.org.
Through a collaboration with the Alys Stephens Center and UAB Medicine, UAB Hospital is one of the first hospitals in Alabama to have a formal Arts in Medicine program. AIM focuses on the needs of the whole person, mind, body and spirit. AIM includes both interactive and passive arts experiences, which can include bedside and workshop activities or performances and visual arts installations in public spaces.