Quilt square ideas sought for UND community project

On Dec. 1, departments from across the University braved the cold, post-Thanksgiving weather to join a launch event for the UND Community Quilt Project, a campuswide effort to create a California king–sized quilt celebrating UND’s Year of Community. From now through January, departments across campus will collaborate to design 144 squares telling the story of UND. The squares will eventually be stitched together by Amy Bail, longarm quilter at Quilter’s JEM in East Grand Forks.

As part of this effort, the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences has been granted four 9×9 inch squares to contribute to the quilt. And we need your help! SMHS faculty, staff, students, and friends are encouraged to submit quilt square ideas either via the QR code or online. Dean’s Office staff will review the submissions and select four that best represent all aspect of our School (and are most transferrable to fabric square).

The quilt timeline is as follows:

• Jan. 13: All quilt sketches due to UND Quilt Committee.
• Jan. 28, Feb. 9, Feb. 23: Fusing workshops on UND campus.
• Feb. 21, March 24: top-stitching workshops.

Vice President for Inclusion and Equity Tamba-Kuii Bailey emphasized the project’s deeper meaning: making UND’s values visible in cloth. “Part of the vision for UND says that the University of North Dakota is a place where everyone knows that they belong, a place that embraces diversity of people, perspectives, and ideas,” Bailey said. With community members “from across the country, across the world,” he added, “we’re from different places, from different walks of life, but we come together, that we make up one community, one UND.”

Stacey Borboa-Peterson of the Hilyard Center, who chairs the UND Community Quilt Project Committee, walked launch attendees through the logistics of stitching a whole university into 144 squares. “There are 144 squares on this quilt. There are more than 144 departments on this campus, and so there isn’t a way for every department to get their own,” she said. “But that’s the beauty of this. It is going to provide an opportunity to come together as a community and create squares together.”

The finished quilt is likely to be displayed in the Memorial Union and at commencement ceremonies as a physical encapsulation of UND’s Year of Community.