Piecing Together: Zuri Quilting Guild's 10 Years of ‘Being Black and Beautiful in Nashville’

It all started a decade ago, when Judi Wortham-Sauls brought her quilts to Ray of Hope Community Church in East Nashville.

“We ended the service, and a number of us stood around ooh-ing and ah-ing, saying, ‘I want to do that,’ ” says Dr. Renita J. Weems. “All of us had memories and stories about growing up around quilts and fabric and sewing and textiles.”

That February, Wortham-Sauls taught a small group of women the basics of quilting Thursday evenings in the church’s basement. “From that we were hooked,” says Weems. “We were addicted. Obsessed. Crazy. Zuri emerged out of that.” 

Ten years later, Zuri Quilting Guild meets once a month at American Baptist College. One of the guild’s founders, Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas, instructs her fellow quilters to share how they came to quilting, and to use the opportunity to “capture the celebration of this decade that we have been black and beautiful in Nashville.” It’s a fitting request — “zuri” means beautiful in Swahili.     

Shay Gresham Howard, Zuri’s vice president, grew up around sewing machines. Her grandmother made drapes, and her grandfather was an upholsterer. As a child, she would take the bus to visit them and help out. She always had an interest in quilting, but didn’t know where to start. At 45 years old, she found Zuri. “The women in this room, we are of varying degrees of skill,” says Howard, “but each one has her own artistic signature.”

Those signatures range from pictorial wall quilts to scrappy bed quilts to quilted purses and baskets, featuring every color palette you can imagine. Patricia Davis-Scott is one of the members the group calls a “master quilter.” (When Davis-Scott brushes off this title, Weems chides her: “We do not believe in female false modesty. We don’t do any of that!”) 

Davis-Scott sits behind a black Singer, the kind of machine you often see banged-up at antique shops. Hers is polished to a shine. She came to Nashville by way of Florida, where she was the local guild president. “I felt like I didn’t belong, although it wasn’t that people weren’t friendly,” she says. “But when I would hold up my quilts, there was one lady who would say, ‘Oh my God, Patricia! Every time you hold up your quilts, it gives me a headache. It makes my eyes jump. They’re just so bright! Do you have navy blue or black in your palette?’ ”

There’s a clear aesthetic relationship between the modern quilts you can find on Instagram and the legendary quilts made in the isolated African-American community of Gee’s Bend, Ala. Davis-Scott researched the history of quilting before she learned the craft more than three decades ago, and she found that African-American-made quilts traditionally tended to feature bright colors and asymmetrical designs — which are now popular in modern quilting. “Most African-American quilters that I have met are less concerned with whether things match and more concerned with how it makes you feel,” says Davis-Scott. 

“The cornerstone of American quilting is African-American,” says Floyd-Thomas, “but when the author is tied to the cultural production, it’s glared at. ... When we come here, we can see instantly Patricia’s quilts and not only nod, but stand up. We screamed, yelled, cried, called her a master! In that affirmation, she realized that for three decades, she was being lied to. But yet she was teaching classes. Her patterns were being mimicked. [Zuri is] a recovery of that pain, and it’s a recovery of that loss as well.”  

Many members say the guild has helped them cope with personal difficulties. Prior to learning to quilt, Jeanne Wright made suits for her husband. After he died, quilting helped her find her way through grief, and Zuri gave her a support system. 

“With quilting, you’re taking these broken pieces of fabric in all unusual hues and colors and shapes, and you end up with such a beautiful product in the end,” says Rosalind Vance, one of the group’s original members. “Something about it is spiritual. [While learning to quilt] I was going through some things in my life, and quilting helped to bring the brokenness that I was feeling into wholeness, knowing that you could take all these many broken pieces of fabric and turn it into something that was really beautiful. In that process, that was what happened to me.”

For Floyd-Thomas, the metaphor extends to black culture. “So much of the black historical experience has been taking scraps and making whole cloth beautiful,” she says. “Taking refuse and making beauty out of it. Taking nothing and making something fabulous.” 

Zuri’s motto is: “Piecing together our past while keeping each other in stitches.”

“We’re not a religious organization, but something sacred happens every time we get together, and it is what the young people now call ‘black girl magic,’ ” says Floyd-Thomas. “In this room, you have intergenerational legacies. You have Nashvillians and new transplants. You have doctors, lawyers, community activists, medical experts. But when we get in this room, your status is marked by your love of this art. Your status is marked by how closely pieced you are with the legacy of quilting and the sister right next to you who keeps you in stitches.”