On February 21, 2024, Ginny Robinson entered an auditorium in Raleigh, North Carolina, for an awards ceremony that was about to change her quilting life. She lives nearby, in Chapel Hill, so her husband and two daughters were there, too. The highly anticipated awards announcement for the Modern Quilt Guild’s (MQG) annual QuiltCon event was about to begin.
Ginny had one quilt in the show and knew she’d won an award, since the MQG emailed her beforehand to notify and encourage her to attend the ceremony, but they didn’t reveal which award she had won. When the awards for her category were announced and she didn’t win, Ginny felt a bit confused.
A few minutes later, that confusion quickly gave way to deep shock when it was announced she had won Best of Show.
The three independent judges for the competitive show—Brigit Dermott, Denyse Schmidt, and Stacey A. Watson—made a bold choice for the top award that not only surprised Ginny, but also surprised and elated countless MQG members and QuiltCon attendees, and simultaneously disappointed others.
This is a protest quilt. It was made by an artist whose day job puts her on the front lines of one of the most grotesque realities in America today. She is a teacher.
What We Will Use as Weapons: A List of School Supplies is the title for this provocative work of art that features school supplies hurling toward the center on the front and an assault rifle on the back. This long, narrow quilt is the actual size and shape of a door. An outline of a human is stitched through the layers. On the front, the person is meant to represent a shooter, and on the reverse side, a teacher.
Ginny has expertly appliquéd books, shoes, bowling balls, hammers, bookends, flasks, chairs, staplers, and other everyday objects on the quilt top. Thought bubbles with three exclamation points are meant to represent a much more obscure weapon: the words a teacher would use to defend themselves and their students.
The absolute brilliance of this quilt is that it isn’t about a school shooting. There are no names or photos of victims. There is no date. No blood. No school or town name. Rather, this work of art is about the trauma that exists before a horrific event. This is a story about how teachers and students grapple with this reality every day.
Ginny, and countless American teachers like her, are horrifically comfortable living in this in-between space—the time before a trauma could happen. Making this quilt was a way for her to process these feelings and even let those emotions go for a moment or two.
By depicting random school supplies, she is both honoring those things that she relies on to teach and inform her students, while also understanding that these same supplies might be the very objects she uses in self-defense, futile as they may be.
The list of school supplies is crowdsourced. Ginny took to Instagram to ask other teachers what they would use in the case of an active shooter entering their classroom. Sadly, she got plenty of answers. Her approach to collecting this data was very intentional. She spoke to a few of her colleagues at her own school about her process, but she did not ask them the same question she posed to her Instagram followers because she wanted to keep these spaces completely separate. She did not want to see supplies from her own school on this quilt.
It was yet another coping mechanism to try to put distance between this never-ending trauma and the place where she joyfully spends her days teaching.
A year has come and gone since that awards ceremony back in Raleigh. A new QuiltCon Best of Show for 2025 has been named, and most of the quilt world’s attention has moved on. But for Ginny, this past year has been fascinating and, at times, even a bit strange.
On the positive side, she has received numerous comments from teachers, parents, and random people who have been deeply moved by her quilt. She’s hugged quite a few people, and she’s been wrapped in virtual hugs from people who have sent her messages and emails. Many commenters applauded her for speaking out and giving voice to a shared trauma that lives among us. Some parents expressed their feelings of helplessness when they drop their kids off at school every day. Others told her they have chosen to homeschool their children, so they don’t have to face this trauma.
QuiltCon 2024 attendees examine details on What We Will Use as Weapons: A List of School Supplies. Photos by Breanna Briggs.
At the same time, some people, who are not well-versed in the wide diversity of quilts made today, have been perplexed by this quilt. They tend to associate quilts with warmth and comfort, and here is a quilt that is definitely not warm or comfortable. Those individuals have been startled at the jarring message of this art that is executed on soft textiles.
Ginny’s own school-age daughters are of course keenly aware of this quilt that was in the making for more than a year. They could see it hanging on the design wall in their mother’s studio. They understood that mom was making a quilt about guns and school. They, like countless other school-age children, live with this threat every day. It’s a part of the reality of their school experience. During Ginny’s time as a teacher, she’s had students ask, “Where would we go in the case of a shooting?” with the same nonchalant tone and emotion they’d use to ask where the bathroom is.
Ginny’s own students have also discovered her quilt. The school made a brief mention of the award during the announcements, but didn’t give much detail. A few curious students eventually searched for more information and then approached her to talk about the quilt. For some students, this quilt has helped them learn that quilts can be a powerful artistic medium and that, like Ms. Robinson, they, too, can use their own voice to express their emotions and concerns.
Reactions from viewers in other countries have been the most surreal part of the past year. A selection of quilts from each QuiltCon exhibition travels each year to venues around the world, and School Supplies was included in the tour to Canada, Japan, Australia, France, and the US. Ginny heard from folks in some of these countries who did not understand the quilt. Some thought the objects on the quilt were being thrown by unruly kids. It wasn’t until someone standing next to them explained the message that they began to understand, and when they learned what the quilt was actually about, their emotions were stirred.
For Ginny, the reactions from people in other countries was not unexpected. When there is a school shooting, news and images are spread across the world. The aftermath of those devastating events is tangible. But what about the moments before? What about those who live with the persistent threat day in and day out?
That concept was even more obscure for the international audiences to grasp. And that in and of itself was especially exasperating. Other countries don’t tolerate this kind of terror inflicted on students, and the fact that teachers in the US are expected to is surreal.
Hearing all these comments from around the world made Ginny think even more deeply about the quilt she had made and what it says about us and our world. She had to navigate the comments, take them in one by one, and add them to her own thoughts, her own experiences, and the personal consequences from having made such a powerful artistic statement.
While making this quilt, Ginny was guided by one persistent thought. She was pouring her energy and voice into the quilt, and when it was finished, she wanted it out of her house. She’s proud of how the quilt turned out and equally proud that she had the fortitude to make it. But she felt strongly it belonged elsewhere, and she was determined to send it to a museum. Ginny admits this might be the only artistic project where her manifestations actually came to fruition.
School Supplies is now part of the permanent collection of the International Quilt Museum (IQM) in Lincoln, Nebraska. It was acquired as part of the IQM’s Modern Quilt Guild acquisition program, where a couple of quilts from the QuiltCon exhibition are purchased for the collection each year. With some 400 quilts in the exhibition, the selections the IQM curators and directors make are never easy. And there is no guarantee as to which quilts they will choose. For example, there is no guarantee that the Best of Show will be acquired.
Ginny firmly believes having the quilt in this museum is the perfect home for the energy it holds. She wants it to sit there, in a box, wrapped in acid-free paper, and be taken out and refolded every few years. And inside that box lies her anger.
She feels that institutions like the IQM are unique spaces that are capable of holding this anger, this energy, and preserving these feelings for future generations. Ginny is hopeful that the horrific experience of school shootings will one day be eliminated. She believes humanity will find a way to end these tragedies. And when that happens, this quilt made by one teacher, in one town in America, will serve as a reminder of the horrible decisions within our society that allowed it to happen in the first place.
Along with School Supplies, the IQM also acquired a second quilt that Ginny made titled New Lovers’ Knot (2018). Knowing that this quilt would sit in a box alongside her protest quilt felt incredibly gratifying. As humans and as artists, we are all complex. We carry all kinds of thoughts and worries, happiness and sadness, and often, these emotions are tangled together.
New Lovers’ Knot (2018), photographed for Issue 23: North Carolina. Photo by Azuree Holloway.
So, while Ginny is proud to be known as the maker of this unforgettable Best of Show quilt, she’s equally glad that the museum’s permanent record will also reflect another side of her artistic voice.
Ginny Robinson also makes joyful quilts.
Teresa Duryea Wong is a writer, quiltmaker, and antique quilt collector, as well as a member of the International Advisory Board of the International Quilt Museum. Learn more on her website.
