Double Wedding Ring
Zelma Dorris
1985
Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan
Cotton
104” x 91 1/2”
MSUM 7425.1
Photo by Mark Eifert, all rights reserved Michigan State University Museum

Detroiter Zelma Dorris, raised in a South Carolina family of generations of talented needleworkers, was taught that she" should always quilt with her needle pointing towards the north since that's where opportunities for blacks are." By the time Dorris was five she was threading needles and listening to her grandmother tell spellbinding stories about how quilts were used during slavery. The hems, she was told, were hiding places for important messages from slave to slave.

From, African American Quiltmaking in Michigan