Idahoans deliver a message to Congress — on quilts | Opinion
Quilts representing all 50 states are scheduled to be delivered to members of Congress this week as part of the “Quilting for the Constitution: Peace by Piece” effort organized by the Women Building Peace Coalition.
Idaho will be well-represented, with five quilts — one for each member of Idaho’s congressional delegation, and one extra for good measure.
“We’re communicating to our policymakers some of the thoughts that we have about what’s happening in our nation right now,” one of the Idaho organizers, Cindy Wilson, told me in a phone interview.
The Quilting for the Constitution project started organically earlier this year, Wilson said. A woman in Provo, Utah, felt she needed to do something to express her thoughts about what’s happening in the nation, so she put together a “quilt-in” in a public park and invited other women to join her.
She set up some sewing machines and tables, and invited people to cut out quilt squares and write messages to their congressional representatives on squares, and then they were sewed together as a quilt.
In a matter of weeks, the idea spread to Idaho and all of the other states.
Local organizers, including Wilson, held a quilt-in on April 19 at Cecil D. Andrus Park in Boise, and the response was tremendous: More than 260 people stopped by and wrote on quilt squares.
“There was a really special feeling at the park that day when all the people were coming by and quietly sitting down at these picnic tables we had set up there and writing their message,” Wilson said. “They would think about it, then they would trace it out on a template, and then write it on their quilt square. And it was kind of magical seeing that come together in that way.”
Messages on the quilt squares
Some of the messages on the squares are “Keep the rule of law,” “Protect the Constitution,” “Jesus was an immigrant,” and this from an 11-year-old participant: “Be a role model for future generations.”
“I just love that there are quite a few children who participated,” Wilson said. “One did a beautiful quilt square that has mountains on it, and it says, ‘Protect our public lands.’”
In Idaho, squares came from all over the state, from Peck and Kellogg to Mullan, the Magic Valley and Melba.
Quilts or at least a square are coming from all 50 states.
The plan is to do a quilt-in Tuesday, May 6, in Washington, D.C., near the National Mall and Capitol building, where all of the quilts will be on display and the final quilts will be sewn together.
Then starting Wednesday, organizers will deliver the quilts to each member of Congress.
Wilson said they’re hoping to deliver directly to each of Idaho’s delegation personally: Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, and Reps. Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson.
Wilson said some of the messages are personalized for the lawmakers.
Quilts have a long history as political messaging
Wilson noted that quilts and quilt making have a long history in the United States as a form of political expression, including in the abolitionist movement, then during the suffrage movement and again in the 1960s during the civil rights movement, according to the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
In the early 1980s, the Boise Peace Quilt Project began with one quilt to express solidarity with the women of the Soviet Union against nuclear weapon proliferation, according to the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska.
The project grew to dozens of quilts, including the National Peace Quilt, which was circulated among U.S. senators, according to a 1985 article about the project in The New York Times. At least 55 senators, including John Glenn, Strom Thurmond and Lowell P. Weicker Jr., accepted the invitation to sleep under the quilt to “inspire in slumbering lawmakers a dream of peace that they will carry into their waking life,” according to the Times.
So the Quilting for the Constitution project follows a rich history of quilts as political messaging.
“I feel this is a way for people who may not want to communicate in another manner, but they want to have a voice,” Wilson said. “They can do it in a way that’s very thoughtful, but also, through quilting, it’s very creative and it’s very personal. It’s your own personal statement that you’re making.”
Quilt messages are not partisan
Wilson said the messages on the quilts are not overtly political or partisan. You won’t find, for example, a “Dump Trump” square.
“We were very specific in the kind of messages, that they should be proactive, peaceful and just having to do with protecting rights and constitutional principles,” Wilson said. “So I guess it’s political in that way, but it’s more just to uphold the rights we have, uphold the Constitution, maintain our democracy.”
It’s sad that a simple message of upholding democracy, the rule of law and the Constitution can be construed as partisan, but such are the times we’re living in.
My big question is, “Will Idaho’s congressmen listen?”
To borrow an invitation embroidered on the National Peace Quilt in the 1980s, may Crapo, Risch, Fulcher and Simpson accept their quilts and ‘‘rest beneath the warmth and weight of our hopes for the future of our children.’‘
This story was originally published May 6, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
