Life Tapestries is an interactive workshop series that combines familial cartographies with hands-on craft. Participants explore their migration journeys to New Jersey through two intertwined mediums: quilting and weaving. I collaborated with the University of Orange to host and facilitate this series in the summer of 2025.

Students began by creating cartographic quilt blocks after learning about the history of pictorial mapmaking and the political cartography of Louis E. Jefferson. Pictorial mapping occupies a space between art and science, relying on codes, symbols, and visual storytelling. The connection between cartography and quilting is especially potent, as both practices share this symbolic language.

We then practiced “reading” realist and abstract forms of pictorial maps and quilts before designing quilt blocks that expressed our own familial migration journeys to New Jersey. Finally, we translated these symbolic designs into woven tapestries, carrying forward the colors, rhythms, and patterns that emerged in our quilt blocks. Below are excerpts from the workshop slides and materials.