The Kwanzaa Quilt, Pt. 1

I've wanted for a while now to make Kwanzaa a staple of my winter traditions. I started in 2016 just taking that week of December 26- January 1 as a time of personal reflection and open hospitality, since I didn't have a community or family to celebrate with and made a zine out of the fruit of that first year of meditation on Black Futures (see here).
This year I have a community to celebrate with and I am really excited for that experience. I am pretty sure that I am still going to want to have particular days for myself or close friends only, but a part of establishing traditions is having a community to reinforce the traditions and the values they arise from and that's something I've longed for.

Every year, I have assembled my own versions of the 7 symbols, rather than buying a kit somewhere. It was important to me for this celebration to be personalized by what I could find (and afford lol) and to not feed into commercialism that tends to surround the holiday season. The only thing I've bought that was specifically made for Kwanzaa and not altered or repurposed by me was the candle set (Mishumaa Saba) because it is difficult to find appropriately colored candles otherwise.

This year, I have decided to make a small quilt that will be the mkeka (the mat) on which all the other symbols rest. It took me a while to decide on a design because I needed something simple to make, as this is my first(ish) quilt. I do have an unfinished project for my nephew that I will be working on, as well, but that's another post. Eventually, I decided on the Endless Chain quilt block, a design that I found on the Quilter's Cache:

All of the fabric for the quilt top will be from the Uncorked Collection by Windham Fabrics. I bought them online already from The Fat Quarter Shop. I filled in the template with pictures of the fabrics that I wanted to use.

I will be making the backing from the same ankara fabric that I made my Black Panther premiere dress from Tess World Designs (Ghanian woman-owned, check them out!); it's not the same as the ankara in the pictures below but has a similar color scheme.

I washed all my fabrics last night and will be pressing them and cutting out the pieces tonight and I am super-excited about this project! More updates to come!