Do You Know What Semiquincentennial Means and What it has to do with Quilts?

It was a typical summer day in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.  There was a light breeze and Founding Father Thomas Jefferson recorded a high temperature of 76 degrees.  A high-pressure system was rotating off to the Atlantic and a low-pressure system was pushing in behind it.  Sunny skies and light winds.  A wonderful, sunny, summer day.

Jefferson was in Philadelphia with other delegates for the Continental Congress.  He had been there since June.  And while we tend to think of everything concerning the United States independence happening in one big swoop on July 4^th, it didn’t.  The revolution had actually begun in 1775, with not so much as the idea of breaking away from England, but reconciling with our British counterparts.  By June 1776, delegates to the Continental Congress realized reconciliation was not possible.  The colonies and England were at an impasse.  On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee introduced a resolution “that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states.” They appointed a Committee of Five to write an announcement explaining the reasons for independence. Thomas Jefferson, who chaired the committee and had established himself as a bold and talented political writer, wrote the first draft.

Here’s a fact about first drafts.  They’re never perfect.  Even my little blog usually undergoes three re-writes. 

The announcement of independence was technically not really an original concept.  Jefferson borrowed freely from existing documents like the Virginia Declaration of Rights and incorporated accepted ideals of the Enlightenment. He later explained that “he was not striving for originality of principal or sentiment.” Instead, he hoped his words served as an “expression of the American mind.”  He presented the first draft to the Continental Congress who promptly edited it.  Jefferson claimed they mangled it. 

Independence was declared by the Continental Congress on July 2, 1776.  It took until July 4^th for the delegates to ratify the Declaration of Independence.  John Dunlap, official printer to Congress, worked through the night to set the Declaration in type and print approximately 200 copies. These copies, known as the Dunlap Broadsides, were sent to various committees, assemblies, and commanders of the Continental troops. The Dunlap Broadsides weren’t signed, but John Hancock’s name appears in large type at the bottom. One copy crossed the Atlantic, reaching King George III months later. The official British response scolded the “misguided Americans” and “their extravagant and inadmissible Claim of Independency”.

History tells us we weren’t cowered by England’s rebuttal.  From 1775 (before independence was declared) until 1783 we fought – most of the times under the bleakest conditions.  Finally Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown.  The British went back to England, and we set about making a new country.

Fifty Years Later

John Quincy Adams was now President.  He wrote that it was a day when “every heart was bounding with joy and every voice was turned to gratulation”.   In towns and villages around the country, celebrations began with the ringing of village bells, the display of the National flag and the salute of 50 guns.   Parades included veterans of the war.  In the town of Flemington, Revolutionary War veterans “were given badges of broad white ribbon, stamped with the American Eagle, and the words and figures ‘Survivors of 1776,’ [which] were affixed to the left buttonhole of their coats.”  

And while the country celebrated, Thomas Jefferson – the man who wrote the original draft of the Declaration of independence — and John Adams – the man who eloquently defended it in the Continental Congress– quietly passed away within two hours of each other. 

Centennial Celebrations

Philadelphia, the place where the Declaration of independence and our Constitution were written, hosted the largest celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the Declaration.  Ten years in the planning, the Centennial Exposition cost more than $11 million and covered more than 450 acres of Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. President Ulysses S. Grant opened the exposition on May 10, 1876, and over the next six months more than 10 million people viewed the works of 30,000 exhibitors.

All across the country, other towns and cities celebrated the Declaration of Independence’s birthday with parades and picnics.  And quilters back then were not so different than we are today – they made quilts.  This quilt from Connecticut celebrated the event:

Vendors from other countries sold or gave away bandannas with flags of their respective countries printed on them.  Some women took these and made them into quilts like this one:

Bicentennial Celebration

Plans for the 200^th birthday of the Declaration of Independence actually began in 1966.  Congress created the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission on July 4, 1966. Initially, the Bicentennial celebration was planned as a single city exposition (titled Expo ’76) that would be staged in either Philadelphia or Boston. After 6½ years of tumultuous debate, the Commission recommended that there should not be a single event, and Congress dissolved it on December 11, 1973, and created the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration (ARBA), which was charged with encouraging and coordinating locally sponsored events.

Once again, coins were minted in honor of the occasion.  Cities painted their fire hydrants red, white, and blue.  Jewelry was made to commemorate the occasion.  Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip joined President Ford and his wife Betty for a state visit to the White House. 

Bettye Kimbrell created this this quilt in 1975 for a competition sponsored by the National Grange to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the United States. It has a patchwork design made up of twelve blocks that look like Betsy Ross’s 1776 flag with its red and white stripes and thirteen white stars on a blue background with alternating white squares filled with hand-stitched outlines of eagles and stars.

The People’s Bicentennial Quilt was made in response to the nostalgic quilts and other celebrations of the Bicentennial that continued to present American history through rose-colored glasses.  The makers, a group of women from California, decided to celebrate the freedoms won in the 1960s and 1970s as a means of presenting history to the public from multiple viewpoints.  Blocks on the quilt include celebratory times like the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but makers also depicted slaves being sold on the block, Chinese workers on the railroad, Japanese internment camps of World War II, and women fighting for suffrage and fair labor practices.  Organizer of the project, Gen Guracar, wrote that by making a quilt, they were participating in a long tradition of women who had recorded their lives in their quilts.

By the time The Declaration of Independence’s 250^th anniversary rolls around, as quilters, we have to ask: Are quilts celebrating this event a thing of the past?

Not if Stacey King has anything to do with it. 

An Idea for Semiquincentennial Quilt

June 2024 found Stacey attending a quilt show.  Her husband had tagged along and since he was looking at all things quilty, he decided fair play was for Stacey to go to a history lecture with him.  Not sure exactly what to expect, Stacey was ecstatic when the lecture by Cynthia Stewart was one on quilts celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  Captivated by them, the stray thought flitted through her mind:  “I wonder if we could do that for the 250^th anniversary?”

Intrigued by thought (which would not leave her alone) she asked an internet quilting group she sewed with through The Applique Society called Threads Across the Miles, if such a thing could be possible.  Could a group of quilters make a quilt celebrating the document which had held our country together for so long?  Could all those quilters make this idea work, coming from different states and different quilting backgrounds?  The group had one answer:  Talk to Anita M. Smith.

Anita M Smith is the President and Founder of The Applique Society.  She thought Stacey’s idea was a wonderful one and one she thought the members of TAS could handle.  However, Anita’s enthusiasm for the idea went a bit deeper than a quilt which would celebrate the Declaration’s 250^th birthday.  Back in 1996, when Anita first conceived the idea of TAS, she was convinced the group would make a quilt which would not only draw all types of applique artists together, but the quilt would also get national attention (at the least) and international attention (at the most).  Anita took the idea of the Semiquincentennial Quilt (Semiquin for short) to TAS’s board.  They overwhelmingly approved it and put Stacey in charge with Anita as support.

At this point, you may be thinking the hard part was over.  An idea – a good one – was hatched, Stacey had the backing of the board and the support of its president.  The Applique Society has over 500 members, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to take care of this project.

According to Anita and Stacey, it really wasn’t.  Once they floated the idea via email to TAS members, the response was good.  Each of the fifty states would be represented and members had a chance to sign up for the state they wanted to design a block for.  The Applique Society would accept two blocks for each state by different designers and choose the best block.  And while TAS does have over 500 members, they don’t have members in each state.  So some members agreed to take on more than one state.  By the time the deadline for block designs approached, TAS had 70 different designs submitted.  According to both Anita and Stacey, the enthusiasm for the Semiquin project was over the top.  Members were excited and Stacey, confident that TAS “has the best appliquers out there,” knew the quilt would come together beautifully.

A committee of three TAS board members took on the task of choosing out of the 70 entries, the 50 blocks needed. This was all done anonymously. Who made the blocks was kept hidden and the committee chose what they thought best represented the state designed.

Block designs were farmed out to members of TAS who agreed to applique them. Meanwhile, an idea was hatched for the borders.  Each border would represent a part of the United States – the North, South, East, and West.  Anita asked prominent applique designers to come up with the patterns for these.  Karen Glover and Heather Mantz designed the Northern border, Kathy McNeil designed the West Coast border, Judy Craddock designed the East Coast border, and Dena Rosenberg designed the Southern border. 

If you remember, I mentioned TAS has over 500 members, and this membership is not solely limited to the United States.  The Applique Society is an international quilt group.  Part of the caveat Anita made with some of the designers who came up with the border patterns was they did not have to applique them. Some had very heavy schedules and time to applique the border was not available.  This is where the international TAS members stepped up.  Applique artists from Belgium and Canada wanted to stitch the borders.

Behind the Scenes

Don’t think for a hot second that once Anita and Stacey requested designs for the blocks and the borders, they sat back and relaxed.  As the block patterns came in, Anita found out she had additional work to do.  Stacey and Anita had designed the quilt layout based on the Fibonacci ratio sequence:  A simple sequence of numbers where each number is the sum of the two proceeding it (e.g. 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 – for more information go here: https://sherriquiltsalot.com/2023/04/12/quilting-with-fibonacci/.  Each state was given a specific block size, with the states which had the most TAS members having larger blocks.  As the patterns came in, Anita discovered some blocks were larger and some were smaller than the requested measurements, and some patterns needed to be “cleaned up” – the design lines needed to be thinner to accommodate accurate applique.  For two months she worked as many as 6 to 14 hours a day in order to have the patterns ready to send out to the appliquers by the first part of March 2025. On the March 11, the first set of patterns with a core background fabric went out to all the designers, followed by the 4 border patterns with core background fabric in the next few days.

Meanwhile, Stacey handled communications between the pattern designers, the appliquers, and the TAS board and TAS membership.  As more emails flew across the United States (and beyond), she realized one thing:  Each block held a story.  And these stories were part of the heart of the quilt.  Stacey asked each pattern designer to write their stories about the block patterns and send them in.  These stores – all of them – will be on the back of the quilt, behind each block the story belongs to.  For both Stacey and Anita, the Semiquin Quilt became more than “just another quilt.”  Stacey found herself overcoming the fear of doing something different.  Both women looked at the project under the scope of the question-and-answer “How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.” 

“But sometimes every step was a new elephant!” Stacey told me.  She was thankful for Anita’s support, and they learned the quilt pattern process as they worked together.

Anita was viewing the quilt through a different perspective.  She is an immigrant. She and her family came to the United States in 1956 to escape the poverty and ruin after the war in Europe.  She looks at America and the Declaration of Independence a bit differently than some of us.  Natural born citizens almost take for granted the grit and determination it took to form our country and frame our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.  Anita never takes those for granted. “I love America,” she told me.  It is her desire the Semiquin quilt become a big deal – not just for those quilters making the quilt, but for everyone who looks at it. “I want it to impact people.  I want the stories (behind the patterns) to show a love for beauty and the hope of America – not the problems.” 

Slowly, with the same grit and determination those 55 Continental Congress delegates had, the TAS quilters are making the blocks, using the applique method of their choice.  The best fabrics are chosen, the finest stitches are sewed.  By November, the finished blocks should be in Anita’s hands.  She will piece the blocks into the quilt center.  In January 2026, the borders will arrive, and she will add those.  It will be quilted and bound.

And Then What?

Once the quilt is completely finished, Anita and Stacey hope it can tour the country, and be shown in the cities which have celebrations planned for the 250^th birthday of the Declaraton.  It will also (hopefully) make a trip to the International Quilt Show in Houston.  Their ultimate dream goal is to have it shown at the White House.  And in the end, when the celebratory year is over, they hope it will go to live in a museum, such as the International Quilt Museum. 

As the completed applique blocks begin to trickle in, waiting for the time Anita will piece them together, Stacey (who also designed the 250^th Logo for Semiquin for the Applique Society quilt), reflects on what this quilt means to her.

“It’s like holding hands with those quilters across the years – 50, 100, 150, 200, and 250 – who made quilts to celebrate the Declaration of Independence.” 

Quilting truly is the thread which connects quilts and quilters across the nation, the world, and the decades.  Just as we cannot take the Declaration of Independence for granted, we can’t take the quilters – and the quilts they made to celebrate – for granted.  All of those quilts took time and resources and skill. 

If you would like to chart the quilt’s progress, as well as have access to the patterns, all you need to do is join The Applique Society at https://www.theappliquesociety.org.  For $25 a year, you can be a part of this wonderful organization which promotes applique, offers many online resources, and has monthly meetings via Zoom with internationally known speakers.  The Semiquin patterns are free to TAS members until July 2026. Then the patterns will go back to their original designers.

Until Next Week….

Love and Stitches,

Sherri and Felix