On July 4, 2004, the TimesDaily of Florence, Alabama ran a feature by Cathy Wood Myers titled “Material Things” about the quilts, which were then nearly finished in the organizer’s home in Tuscumbia, Alabama.
What the story covered
The article described close to 550 hand-stitched squares from around the world, with national flags from Italy, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Israel and Canada among them. Some squares honored individual victims, and one portrait of a rescue dog took an estimated 150 hours to stitch.
It explained the design: the two largest quilts shaped as American flags with a state design on each star, flag-style quilts for the New York fire and police departments, and a Pennsylvania quilt cut in the shape of the state. The project had started with a call for squares on online cross-stitch boards two days after the attacks, with guidelines to keep the squares consistent in size and color.
Then came the work: deadlines extended into late 2002, months of joining squares into strips, and a Florida quilt shop that machine quilted the largest pieces at cost, paid for by donations. For many stitchers, the article noted, making a square was a way to do something with their grief.
The quilts lacked only their binding, cut from fabric printed with the Pledge of Allegiance.
Source: Cathy Wood Myers, “Material Things,” TimesDaily, July 4, 2004. See all coverage.