The fabric of a new nation, told stitch by stitch

Stefan Romero, creator of the America's Tapestry project, consults with volunteer embroiderers completing one of the 13 panels. (Courtesy photo)

Just in time for America's 250th birthday, the nation's founding story comes together in "America's Tapestry," on view June 19-Sept. 6 at the Muscarelle Museum of Art at William & Mary.

The project marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of the nation through 13 original tapestries which depict lesser-known stories of the American Revolution.

Virginia's segment of the tapestry, stitched at the Muscarelle, will join panels from the other 12 original colonies in an exhibition scheduled to premiere at the museum before it begins a three-year tour.

Each panel highlights a story specific to that state's involvement in the Revolution, communally stitched by volunteers from New Hampshire to Georgia, including William & Mary students.

"The 250th anniversary of the United States is a wonderful opportunity to dig deeper into specific experiences of the American Revolution," said David Brashear, the Muscarelle's director. "What makes 'America's Tapestry' exceptional is the way it reveals individual stories in a way that makes the struggle for independence feel more immediate and universal."

The museum, which houses one of the oldest campus-based art collections in the U.S., serves as a working laboratory for the university and the community through exhibitions and educational programming. As part of this exhibition, the museum will host a stitching showcase featuring volunteer teams and a panel discussion on June 21. Stitching workshops will be offered in the following weeks.

The project is supported by the Coby Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and was brought to campus by William & Mary's Office of Strategic Cultural Partnerships, led by Ann Marie Stock.

"No place is better positioned to mark the nation's 250th than William & Mary," Stock said. "As the Alma Mater of the Nation, we take seriously our role in sharing the complex story of our nation and doing so in ways that engage multiple perspectives. A project this ambitious, creative and crowd-sourced belongs here. By premiering 'America's Tapestry' at the Muscarelle, the Revolution's story comes home."

Scottish inspiration

The project is the brainchild of textile scholar Stefan Romero, who drew inspiration from a different work of art.

A costume designer by trade, Romero was working on a television production near Edinburgh when he stumbled on "The Great Tapestry of Scotland," a monumental needlework featuring 160 hand-embroidered panels that depict thousands of years of Scottish history. Completed in 2013 with work by more than a thousand volunteers, the tapestry is one of the world's largest community arts projects.

"I left that exhibit immediately asking myself, 'How can we commission something like this in America?'" Romero said.

That was three years ago.

"I started with no resources, no institutional backers and no partners, so I reached out to different organizations in the 13 original colonies who might have an interest, cold-calling and cold-emailing people from New Hampshire to Georgia," Romero said. "Given William & Mary's history of educating our Founding Fathers, they were at the top of my list."

He connected with Stock in W&M's Strategic Cultural Partnerships office. "Her response was, 'How can we help?'" Romero said.

Romero also reached out to the Embroiderers' Guild of America, a nonprofit dedicated to the study and promotion of needle arts. The group is headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky but has chapters across the country, including several in Virginia.

"The instructions from Stefan were, 'Tell us something about the Revolutionary War that people don't know,'" said Catherine Theron, past president of the Williamsburg chapter of the Embroiderers' Guild and state director for the Virginia panel.

An army of volunteers

Theron and her team of 119 volunteers created a tapestry that tells the story of the lead mines in Wythe County, which provided the material to manufacture musket balls for the Continental Army. Staffed by enslaved, indentured and immigrant labor, the mining community was a melting pot of people working in dangerous conditions.

An enslaved man known as Aberdeen stands proudly in the panel. After working seven years in the mine, Aberdeen defied his Loyalist master's orders and joined the Continental Army in exchange for a promise of his freedom after the war.

The 3D musket balls affixed to the linen panel were shaped from black felt, then covered with sequins and metallic thread. Theron estimates that each took 15 hours to make.

In all, her volunteers donated more than 1,500 hours to the project. The stitchers included William & Mary students, local needleworkers and some who came from Richmond, Virginia Beach, Fredericksburg and the District of Columbia to help. Even stitchers with no experience were welcomed. The Muscarelle gave them a workspace, with volunteers spending hours each week stitching.

"It was a massive undertaking," Theron said.

Like the Virginia panel, the other tapestries offer rarely seen views of the revolution.

The Georgia tapestry honors a Haitian militia unit composed of formerly enslaved and free soldiers. The North Carolina panel highlights the Edenton Tea Party, one of the first documented acts of political resistance by women in North America. Other panels tell the stories of lesser-known heroes in the fight for independence: Connecticut's Hannah Bunce Watson, the first female editor of the Hartford Courant; Henry Fisher, whose naval ingenuity protected the Delaware Bay from British incursion; and Pennsylvania's Rebecca Young, one of the first documented makers of an American flag.

Romero, who is not an embroiderer himself but is interested in anything that involves textiles, was stunned by the amount of work he had commissioned and the level of skill it demanded. "There's a huge learning curve to doing this," he said. "It takes so many skill sets."

All told, he estimates more than 2,000 volunteers contributed more than 30,000 hours to the tapestry, including a "very focused three-year-old who came with his mother," he said.

After the exhibit closes at the Muscarelle in September, the tapestries will travel to the other 12 original colonies, beginning with Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New Hampshire. Romero estimates the tour will take three years. There is no firm plan yet for a permanent home for the collection.

"They will then carry on a life of their own," he said, "as their stories reach new audiences."

Susan Corbett, Communications Specialist

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