If you cut the legs off a worn pair of denim trousers and stitch them side by side, you have the beginning of a quilt. Minnie Skinner did exactly that in the late 1940s, and her britches quilt now hangs in Routed West at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., alongside nearly 80 other quilted objects made by more than 70 artists over 120 years.
Minnie Skinner (Alto, Texas), Untitled (Patchwork with Work Clothes), late 1940s. Photo: Kevin Candland.
Organised by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and showing on the East Coast for the first time until 17 January 2027, the exhibition follows the Second Great Migration, when around five million African Americans left the rural South between 1940 and 1970 for cities in the North and West. Many who settled in California packed a quilt among their belongings, and it kept them warm while also holding on to the memory of home.
Alice Neal (Oakland), Mary Bright Commemorative Quilt (with Dresden Plate, Monkey Wrench, Wild Goose Chase, Fan, Basket of Flowers, Star of Lemoyne, Nine Patch Blocks), 1955–56. Photo: Kevin Candland.
Alice Neal made hers in Oakland soon after her mother, Mary Bright, died in 1954. The portrait quilt uses leftover fabric from the dress Bright wears in the photograph that inspired it, the hat snaps off to reveal a silk cap underneath, and the nine-block pattern was the first design her mother ever taught her. Hattie “Strawberry” Mitchell was born into slavery in 1854. After a transatlantic trip in 1906 she began a quilt of repeating green and red leaf shapes copied from leaves she had gathered abroad, embroidering the place each one came from, so the finished piece doubles as a travel journal in thread.
Laverne Brackens (pieced 1990–91, Fairfield, Texas), Willia Ette Graham and Johnnie Wade (quilted 1992, Oakland), Untitled (Bars), 1990–92. Photo: Kevin Candland; Courtesy of Laverne Brackens.
The fabric choices will please anyone who has ever argued about what belongs in a quilt. Rosie Lee Tompkins, Johnnie Wade, Gussie Wells and Arbie Williams chose slinky satin and polyester double knits over cotton, and Tompkins made pillows from secondhand jeans as a nod to her childhood in rural Arkansas.
Much of the exhibition happens between generations. Lily Chiles made a 1991 quilt of the African continent with her grandchildren, who pieced it and embroidered the names of the countries. Four generations of one family are shown together, including Sherry Ann Byrd, whose striped Cultural Merger at Crossroads, USA moves to the rhythm of free jazz. Isiadore Whitehead drove a school bus, and her school community donated fabric that she turned into an entire bedroom, drapes included.
Gerstine Scott (Oakland), Untitled (Necktie Quilt), 1989. Photo: Kevin Candland. Courtesy of the Gerstine Scott Family.
The story carries on today. Roughly two dozen African American quilt guilds have formed since 1980, and Niambi Clay’s Education’s Promise (2025) takes its cue from a panel in Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series showing three girls at a chalkboard. Next time you reach for a pair of worn jeans, it is worth wondering what they could still become.
. . .
Further Information:
Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in Californiais on view from September 18, 2026, through January 17, 2027, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
. . .
Image Credits:
Lead: Emma Hall, (Sweet Home, Arkansas), Untitled (Double Wedding Ring), ca. 1940; Cotton; hand-pieced; 71 x 71½ in.; Bequest of the Eli Leon Living Trust, BAMPFA. Photo: Kevin Candland.
All further images as credited in captions.