LECTURE: Reading the Cloth

Wesley Hall discusses how to read the history, symbols, and narratives embedded in African American quilts.

For generations, African American quilts have done more than keep us warm. They have carried scripture, history, and memory in cloth. In this lecture, Wesley Hall shares how to read those stories, beginning with the famous story quilts of Harriet Powers, revisiting the enduring legend of the Underground Railroad "quilt code" and what it teaches us about how symbols take on meaning, and ending with the memory quilt, where a single family's life is stitched into something they can hold. Attendees will come away with a new way to look at any quilt, including the ones passed down in their own families. Quilts and images will be shown throughout, with time for questions and a reception to follow.

Wesley Hall is a quilter based in Atlanta with more than 15 years of experience, specializing…