Quiltmaker’s statement:
Fabric inspires me. I love to collect it and stitch quilts, bags and other objects from my stash of new and vintage cloth. But when the opportunity arose to collaborate with Suzanne Hesh and Alice Vinson to create a Migrant Quilt, I encountered fabric as something other than pretty designs and colors. To me, the discarded items of clothing from which we were to sew this unique quilt still contained vestiges of the spirits of the people who had worn them and later discarded them on their journeys north to what they hoped would be a better life in the United States. It was a humbling and emotionally-fraught experience to handle the shirts, jeans, bandanas and embroidered serviettes that were left behind, and then to deconstruct them and reconnect the pieces into the form of a quilt documenting the demise of fellow travelers whose dreams were cut short in the inhospitable deserts surrounding Tucson. I had never worked on such an evocative art object or been involved in such a meaningful act of consciousness-raising. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of the Migrant Quilt Project. (Peggy Hazard)