Roe v. Wade

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 On June 24, 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned by the US Supreme Court leaving access to an abortion up to individual states. Many states have still opted to protect reproductive rights, and the right to an abortion, while others have totally banned abortions. It's a right that was fought for 50 years ago and is now gone. There have been many demonstrations and pushes to protect 

One of my quilt friends, Maria Shell, decided to make a Reproductive Rights Community Quilt called The United States of Uterus, and asked individuals in each state of the United States to make a block. She asked me, and I was happy to contribute. The quilt is still in progress but she has all the blocks she needs. I look forward to seeing the completed quilt.

I decided to make a design that I could screen print on fabric and then do some stitching on top. I designed the image in Photoshop and sent it to my friend, Stefanie Dykes at Saltgrass Printmakers. She made a silk screen for me and then taught me how to print it on to the fabric. I only needed one block but I ended up printing many blocks.

It took awhile to come up with just the right thing I wanted to say to represent Utah. I wanted it to be inclusive of everyone with a uterus. "My Uterus, My Rules" was my ultimate decision. Figuring out just the right fonts was challenging too. I wanted the words to sit inside the shape of the state of Utah. I added a simple drawing of a uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes to fill some of the space, and hopefully contribute to the message.
Original silk screen




Printing the blocks. You can see a number of blocks on the drying racks in the background. I experimented with red ink, but ultimately thought black ink was best.




Lots of hand dyed fabrics were printed



Ultimately, the rust colored hand dyed fabric was my favorite. I started doing seed stitches in the middle thinking I could get away with just stitching part, but decided it would look best with stitches across the entire state.

Finished block. About 12" square-ish, giving plenty of space for the block to be trimmed as needed.

Added November 27, 2022: I want to use the remaining blocks to make my own Roe v. Wade/Reproduction Rights quilt. I've been playing with blocks on my design wall. 
A quilting friend, Yvonne of Jetgirl Quilting, published a tutorial for making four flying geese blocks at one time and I thought they would make nice arrows for the quilt. I made a whole bunch before I knew what I was going to do.
I decided I didn't like using multiple blocks with the same saying, so I narrowed it down to just one printed block, and I've played with it multiple ways, but it's not quite right yet.
Maybe I need to design more silk screened blocks for it?
First attempt with one printed block.

Decided I didn't have to be so square.
I could just add bits to make the rows of the arrows flow more.
It felt a bit too wild.

Back to something more "squared" but some wonkiness.
We'll see where it goes from here.

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