A small heap of fabric scraps is piled on the ground near the entrance of the A.P.E. Gallery in Northampton, Mass. On a this day, they're being used up by the textile artists here sewing colorful squares on machines (and by hand) in pursuit of a tall order they gave themselves — make a quilt in one day.
The design would reveal itself as they pinned the squares (and non -squares ) to a wall.
"We have no idea what it's going to look like until we get there," said quilter Joey Dehais who lives in western Mass. They said it could take one person six months to make a quilt.
"Partially it's just for fun," Dehais said, a way to get people in the door to see a traveling exhibit of quilts made for transgender people by transgender artists.
"Quilts have been used to celebrate people changing their lives," said Cordy Joan who started the Transmissions Quilts Project in Oakland, California in 2023.
In many cultures, quilts are given as a gift when someone is born or married. They're passed down in families.
"We're trying to do that for trans people," Joan said adding that the quilt is not a day-of gift, "it's not like with a name change or with a medical moment. It's just kind of — who might need a little love from the community right now?"
At the gallery entrance is a small quilt with the words "May these quilts shield us from cracking."
Someone requests a quilt to be made for a friend or loved one; the project describes it as a nomination process.
Then, a textile artist who is also transgender is found. They interview the intended recipient asking questions about preferred textures, or about significant objects in their lives.
"It's a two way interview," Joan said. "So it's a chance for the two people to get to know each other."
The quilts project is on tour this summer around the U.S. Northampton is the last stop in New England. An earlier stop was in Maine. Dehais has two quilts in the show.
"We were in Maine for a few stops before this and then New York and after this, we're sending the New England quilts to their recipients and heading to Oakland," Joan said.
Each show has a different set of quilts and a different theme. At the A.P.E. Gallery the theme was "performance art and quilts."
People passed through the gallery looking at the hanging quilts, "looking at us, making a new quilt," Joan said.
The quilt made in a day will be raffled off as a fundraiser, for transgender people seeking asylum, detained by federal immigration and customs enforcement.
