Stories in the Seams: A People's History of Black Quilts and Their Makers highlights how quilting has served as both art and archive across generations. The forthcoming book by Sharbreon Plummer brings together historic and contemporary textile works that reveal how stitched forms can carry memory, identity, and creative innovation.
The volume explores quilting's roots in the cotton economy of the 18th and 19th centuries, while also showing how Black makers transformed fabric into a space for expression and resilience. After Emancipation, quiltmaking remained an important source of skill, income, and community, evolving alongside changing materials, techniques, and social realities.
Among the featured works are pieces by the Quilters of Gee's Bend, Ruth Clement Bond, Viola Burley Leak, and contemporary artists such as Bisa Butler, Basil Kincaid, and Faith Ringgold. Their quilts range from geometric precision to narrative compositions, turning textile into a powerful visual language.
With richly documented examples and historical context, the book presents quilting as a living tradition shaped by craftsmanship, symbolism, and artistic reinvention. Its release is set for October 6 through Chronicle Books.
As interest in textile storytelling grows, projects like this may help bring quiltmaking further into the global conversation about art, heritage, and cultural continuity.
