HarlemLIVE

Quilting has become a form of art, giving people the ability to express their emotions and deep feelings through it. Each quilt is unique and permits a person to express his or her feelings freely and independently. After her car accident, Cassandra Graves, acquired a serious head injury, and she used quilting as therapy, to get through her hardships. Her head injury did not allow her to read more than two pages at a time, so the only way that she was able to follow something (without reading it) was through pictures.

One day while she was in Barnes and Nobles she stumbled upon the crafts section. While she was looking through the books she saw a quilting book, which explained quilting through pictures. She began to quilt, and soon she became extremely good at it, quilting whatever came into her head.

She was able to relate quilting to her personal life. She was inspired by many different events, such as her daughter being in the hospital, and not having any idea why she was sick. Experiences like this contributed to her quilting.

Ms. Graves made a quilt dedicated to her daughter to brighten up her hospital room and to make her daughter feel better.

Another quilt that she did was of a woman crying. When you look into the eyes on the quilt, one can sense turbulance, because that was the way Cassandra's mind used to be. This quilt had Afro Centric material to show that Ms. Graves is African-American. It's not settled or finished which symbolizes that she is still evolving, though it is not yet known what she is evolving into. The tears signify that you never realize how much you treasure something until you lose it. This relates to her because she had to change the way that she lived to deal with her disability.

Ms. Graves feels as though she is still learning how to quilt, and that there are people who are better quilting than she is. She says all that she does is see a picture in her head and puts it onto a quilt. She felt as though she had to quilt, or she had to leave the world. Quilting was her method of telling people what she felt inside. Through quilting she tries to inform people of what it feels like to cope with a serious head injury.

The quilt that she particularly loves is The Never Again Quilt because she was able to tell the youth that the word "nigger" was a derogatory term that was given to the African-Amerian by slave masters to show that the blacks were worthless. She feels that "the only way you can know where you're going, is to know where you came from."