Hi Im Eric Ford for Made Here.

George Floyds murder shocked a community of New Hampshire quilters into action.

They stitch his last words into quilts.

Their encounter with his pain, over the weeks of creating the panels, becomes a prayer as they share the completed quilts with the world.

Director Chris Owen from Wilton, New Hampshire shares this story with his film Stitch, Breathe, Speak: The George Floyd Quilts.

You can watch this film and other great made here films streaming on vermontpublic.org and through the PBS app.

Enjoy the film and thanks for watching.

It was definitely like one of those moments where kind of the hair stands up on the back of your neck When they were actually all in one place for the first time.

I was really hesitant to go up on that mountain Because I get really tired of being the only Black person.

You always have this edge of concern.

Like, who to trust.

You have to be really careful.

And I just wasn't sure.

I can't breathe.

I can't breathe I can't breath.

We witnessed the terrible incident of George Floyd on tv And just the horror of that mome And it was absolutely heart wrenching.

George Floyd, what's his name?

George Floyd, what's his name?

But here we saw this man struggling for breath.

And another man whose expression on his face were I'll never forget them.

Because he didn't care.

He did not care.

I can't breathe.

I can't breathe I can't breath.

These words are not a current event.

I know that the people around me here were looking at it as a "now".

But I wasn't.

I called Mark and I said "we have to do something."

I knew that there was a demographic of people in the churches in New Hampshire who wanted to be allies but didn't know how.

And that I felt like this might be a way.

He proposed an idea that he had using the last words of George Floyd.

Mark mentioned a quilt.

Well I come from a long line of quilters.

And it just spoke to me that this was something that we could do.

And I thought it was a beautiful idea but I don't sew I don't quilt.

Sometimes I can't even hold scissors these days.

But I'd read the words.

She saw it almost in stanzas as a poem.

And she offered to break it down into different sections.

They spoke to me in two levels.

Not just the pain he was going through as his life was being thoughtlessly and cruelly snuffed out but in there are the same words and thoughts that people like myself and Mr. Floyd feel every day in most of our interactions.

Just how life is every day.

When I ... you know When I first had this idea I thought to myself, the first thing I thought to myself was Is this exploitative?

Are we exploiting the last words of a man who died in agony?

I set about designing the quilt putting the words down and by the time I got to the end of the Well I couldn't even get to the end.

Cause I was in tears.

The original conception was a spectrum of emotions.

We start with the reds and the panic.

And then it continues on through the blues and purples of him losing consciousness.

You can't like draw a picture of it, there's no pattern.

A square that has lines in it that blends into another fabric that has lines in it.

This just goes just right here, I got a line, look, I got another line.

Look, I made a flower.

Everything had intention.

There's not a detail that was, oh we'll put this here and we'll do that.

Everything had a specific intention.

What I love about this is how the words are expressive.

This is a faucet.

And there's water droplets in there.

And I think that's just amazing.

Reading the words actually seeing them, actually working with them to me it's powerful.

Words are powerful.

So this word that's at the top of our quilt, the word "mama."

There was a elderly African American man.

He was talking about the way George Floyd had, had called out to his mother and was, you know, brought to tears with the pathos of that, of Mr. Floyd calling out to his mother in his last last breaths.

Sometimes I'd be working on it and I'd find myself crying.

Just of all I was trying to say and all it was saying back to me So this is a really special quilt to me.

There's even a cross in here.

Just sort of imagined him down here with a knee on his neck and just looking up and saying, you know, I'm going.

And maybe seeing that cross and moving to a new life.

But one way or the other he would go to this beautiful home.

Are there any particular words or phrases that really touched you?

It's my face and begging "Please" Please And everything that he could feel, Every body part, immense pressure everywhere on his body as his life is just mercilessly being taken for no reason than his face.

Just his face.

You don't even get to control your face.

Something that ... no control over.

And somebody thinks it's a reason to treat you like you're not human.

No trial by jury.

Just one man decided he wasn't worth it.

Just discarded for his face.

For me, breath has been central to this whole project.

Being created in the image of God is is being given breath.

This notion that we could deprive each other of that breath is another way of talking about depriving each other of of our connection to the holy.

Our connection to God.

Well I have seen it at this stage I believe, yes.

We had a total of nine congregations Working and investing time, thought, love, hope.

All the things that we wanted to come from making these quilts.

Thank you so much for everything, Laurie.

We all lived with those words for so long.

Part of our intention was to make sure that the discussion that was going on was not just gonna you know, fall off the cliff with the end of the news cycle.

In the middle of the quilt project I was actually having a meltdown Someone came in and said "Well, Harriet, all lives matter" And then someone came in and told me that George Floyd was nothing but a criminal and I was having I was enraged.

I was so angry.

And I was hurt.

That process of slowing it down and living with that moment for that length of time was a kind of spiritual reckoning It was a kind of spiritual practice.

My grandmother hated white people.

And so she used to say "Spit in the mud, Jesus and wake those people up."

That's in John, right?

Chapter 9 That's also in Mark, Chapter 8 ...

I can't remember the verse.

Umm Where Jesus, you know he spits in the mud and spreads it over the blind man's eyes.

After he spread the mud he told this man to go wash in this pool and don't go back to your village.

In this quilt project where we're looking at these words tha people seem to think are a current event and never happened never paid attention to them or they have their sort of ephem But then they can go eat something and have a bottle forget about it the next day.

But these words are "spit in the mud, Jesus" is the response.

Like, what?

What?

I don't get this.

Have you not known of the four hundred years?

Spit in the mud, Jesus.

Don't go back to your comfortable village and eat some scallops and lemon and then forget about it.

Thank you for coming to this Blessing of the quilts.

All the time that we were working on this my daughter and I, we would talk.

We'd talk about George, we'd talk about the words but we talked about what could happen with this quilt.

The value was in getting it out so that other people could see it.

Bless this quilt, O Lord the work of human hands.

Bless this quilt, O Lord the work of human hands.

Give it life Give it life Each stitch, O Lord carries the intention of our hearts Each stitch, O Lord carries the intention of our hearts Give it breath Give it breath Breathe life into its purpose, Lord Breathe life into its purpose, Lord Fill it full with our desire for justice Fill it full with our desire for justice For if it breathes it will speak For if it breathes, it will speak Telling its story of pain Telling its story of pain That we might be rescued by love That we might be rescued by love That we might be rescued by love And together, heal.

I complain all the time about outrage and amnesia.

But while you're working on the quilt, you're not having amnesia.

So for a bit there, people were really thinking about this.

And that wouldn't have happened without Reverend Koyama.

This would be the time to go up and see the quilts.

Try and maintain social distancing if you can.

We put them inside and had people coming inside.

And there was a quilt with George Floyd on it.

The sun was setting and the sun shined right on his face.

And it was just ... very startling.

What struck me is, he's here.

He's here.

He was present with us.

My personal feeling is we need to feel that pain.

We needed to start to understand Because we need change.

And the only way we can have change happen is to understand the pain and agony of where we were before.

So I saw George Floyd's face, and I understood what it represented.

And I was just like - this is really nice.

I kind of wanted to wave you ove cause y'all weren't in the circl I find it beautiful.

I find it great because I feel like the energy has kind of fallen a little bit.

And we need people to still come out here and give give that that good positive energy and stuff.

That quilt, hopefully it can change people's minds.

Hopefully it can affect people o Just make 'em feel it, make 'em understand how important this is in the future.

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