Radical Threads

Current Issues

These quilts reflect some current events…

We all know the answer to this one
Liberty Votes by Mail because it should be everyone’s right!!
BLACK LIVES MATTER – Inspired by Jason Bean photo in Reno Gazette Journal
Kit gave this quilt to Nathaniel Phillips, a black lives organizer in Reno.
Can’t wait to see all the places this quilt will go!
Fannie McQuirter Etheridge and Kit Miller after finishing “Teargas”
TEARGAS is the first political quilt Kit made based on a current issue. Her quilting mentor, Fannie McQuirter Etheridge, helped her create this quilt. Kit made it for herself and gave it to Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto because she loved it and wanted to put it in her Las Vegas office.
Note from quilter, Kit Miller about LADY LIBERTY. “This quilt was based on a New Yorker cover by B. Blitt, representing children hiding from harm – family separation and jail — in Lady Liberty’s skirts. Like everyone I know, I am outraged that Trump’s government is taking kids away from their families, and keeping children in detention. We have become a monster state. I was very moved by the drawing. It was fun to make Liberty, drape beautiful green fabric, and imagine her big feet and hands. I decided to add two children that at the time we knew had died in ICE detention – Jakelin and Felipe, both Guatemalans. I made Liberty’s arm framing them protectively – I couldn’t stand the idea that she could only be a metal statue. I thought about who to give it to in Congress. I decided to give it to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, because she comes from New York, and because people all around me were talking about her and her bravery and leadership. So I took the quilt to her office and left it with a male receptionist (on the left as you walk in). I never heard back if she got it.”
MINE. It was unbelievable that in the spring of 2019 male lawmakers in several states denied women their right to abortion. States all over the country have restricted these rights lately; this is on top of the Hyde Amendment, Congress’s 40+year prohibition against low income women’s access to abortion. Women’s access to reproductive rights — even birth control! — is in danger. Despite it all, Planned Parenthood continues to be a great resource for all women, and men too. 
Oakland Women’s March 2020!
Congresswoman Barbara Lee meets quilt guru Fannie Etheridge – it doesn’t get any better than that!

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