Seminole and Miccosukee Patchwork in the News, and How We Can Help

I have given several talks to guilds recently about my cityscape quilts. The talk mentions 'Seminole patchwork', which can be used to create the effect of decorative brickwork in modern city buildings. Here’s my slide on the subject. ("Quoin" is what decorative brickwork in building corners is called)

Since I started quilting in the 90s, one of my most-used books has been Cheryl Bradkin’s “Seminole Patchwork,” published in 1992 (Its cover is shown on the upper right of the image above.) Bradkin (who is not a tribe member) figured out how quilters can use Seminole’s piecing techniques to create wonderful complex-looking designs.

Called the “grandmothers of strip piecing,” the Seminole, and their related tribe, the Miccosukee, sewed strip sets, cut them apart, and rearranged them into bold, graphic patterns, starting more than 100 years ago, long before the quilt industry introduced rotary cutters and mats. They sewed on treadle and hand-crank machines.

They created long, colorful, intricate and precise patchwork bands, which were then stitched into clothing, especially skirts. Here's a vintage postcard depicting those skirts. 

Here are three skirts for sale on ebay. Along with patchwork, the skirts often include a lot of rickrack! 

Here's a more modern skirt for sale on a different site. 

 More about that history with incredible photos, is here. Another photo of a single, wonderful skirt is here.  The techniques were also used to make doll garments, sold to tourists.

So a month ago, browsing the news, when mention of the Seminole tribe came up on my feed. I clicked on it, and the photo stopped me in my tracks. A group of women, wearing the unmistakable pieced skirts, were holding protest signs. (See the photo here.) One sign reads: “Stay Out of My Swamp.”

They were protesting the prison in the Everglades, their home. The prison’s official name, "Alligator Alcatraz," is a brutality joke. Some visitors have reported that inmates are held with starvation rations, 24-7 bright lights, and inadequate medical care. Two-thirds of the inmates have no criminal record. Official accounts say a half-dozen inmates have died there. Many more are being deported to unknown places. 

The Seminole and Miccosukee have been protesting this facility from the very beginning, originally for its threat to the environment.

And this week, the tribe was in the news again. On Sunday, July 27, 2025, 14 miles from the prison, a fire destroyed Miccosukee family homes and a cultural center. Along with holding irreplaceable artifacts, the center is where tribal members learned sewing. “What we have lost there is a lot of history in terms of the patchwork and in terms of the kind of stitching and sewing that that has been done over the decades,” Curtis Osceola of the Miccosukee Tribe was quoted as saying in a report by a local tv news station, here. 

Another report, in the Naples Daily News, says the tribe is collecting donations to assist in rebuilding. 

Donations can be addressed to the Tiger Fire Relief Fund c/o Miccosukee Corporation, PO Box 440021, Miami, FL 33144, or dropped off at the Miccosukee Casino & Resort at 500 Southwest 177th Avenue, Miami, FL 33194.

I sent a donation, and have written to them to ask what more we can do, including possibly sending sewing supplies. I have not heard back yet, but will keep you posted. Watch this page for updates. 

Art Lessons from the Beyond (and the Louvre): Homage to Eustache LeSueur

Do you take loads of photos of museum art? And then they sit forever in your computer?
They make wonderful palette cleansers -- fast projects, low on stress, high on learning, as you study the art, figure out what the artist was doing, and what makes the piece so compelling. 

In a December blog post I showed a bejeweled tribute to a 1763 painting by Fragonard that I photographed in the Louvre five years ago. (Find that article here.) 

Here's the next piece of art I tackled, from the same Louvre visit, and more than 100 years older. It's called "St. Bruno being Carried Up to Heaven," by Eustache LeSueur, circa 1645. (This was one of 22 paintings that LeSueur, a celebrated painter and art professor(!), made about the life of St. Bruno.) (Who was St. Bruno? Born in 1030, he too was also celebrated, for rejecting worldly pleasures, and establishing a monastery in the Chartreuse Mountains of France.)

I was just taken with it -- first, the luminous blue and gold, and second, the drama, beauty, and optimism of his ascent, not to mention the weirdness of the underdressed rotund angels. 

The first thing I did was trace the drawing, which I do in my CorelDraw graphics design program, but could have done by hand with my lightbox.

With a painting that's out of copyright, and a photo taken by me, there shouldn't be any issues about using, tracing, or interpreting it. (It would be a different story if it were modern art and/or still under copyright, and/or I was using someone else's photo -- then I would have to seek permission.) Here's what my tracing looked like. 

Hmmm. That's a heckuva confusing clump. To understand it better, I cut everyone apart. Below is the saint, minus the arm of one angel under his arm on the right, and minus the front of another angel peeking out between his legs.

All of them were cut up here: 

Those two angels entwined with him were problematic -- especially since the top one is headless!

So I decided to banish them, fill out the saint to close those gaps, and then bring the two lowest angels inward, to just touch him. 

I did it all with raw-edge applique, and it's only about 7" square, so this was a one-evening project. I zigzagged everyone in place, surrounded them with quilted gold energy lines, crammed in two clouds, and all in all, had a wonderful time reveling in, learning from, and celebrating an intriguing work of art. Professor LeSueur is still teaching!