IMPROVISING AND IMAGINATION

African tribes found that it was especially important to add and subtract from their previous ideas of quilt designing.  They felt that by creating a new design, they could incorporate a new story telling into the quilts.  They started to put breaks into the patterns to represent a rebirth in an ancestral power of those who wore the quilt and by those who created the quilt.  The African tribes also felt that by adding a break in between the patterns, that the evil spirits would be kept away because they felt that evil spirits traveled in a straight line, and by having a break withing a certain pattern, the evil spirit would be deterred.  This idea of improvising was also brought to the United States and African Americans also used improvisation in European American patterns. Below are two different quilts that have different pattern breaks from the African American influence on European American quilt making.

The Wedding Ring Quilt is an example of African American improvisation of European quilts.

The Diamond Strap is another example of African American influence on an European American quilt.