Colours of Pride
In 1978, Gilbert Baker sewed the first Rainbow Pride flag in San Francisco. The original had eight colours, each carrying a specific meaning. Two, hot pink (sexuality) and turquoise (art/magic), were later dropped for practical reasons. The rest became the most recognized symbol of queer liberation in the world.
This series is my attempt to sit with each of those colours, one at a time, and make something wearable from them. Not wall quilts. Capes, ponchos, stoles, things that wrap around a body and move with it. Each piece uses the colour's original meaning as a starting point, then follows wherever the fabric and the stitching want to go.
The series is ongoing. I'm working through the Progress Pride flag, which adds black, brown, light blue, pink and white to Baker's original palette.
The Quilts
Red: Cape of Life
The first in the series. Red represents life in Baker's flag and echoes the red ribbon worn in support of people living with HIV. A bold teal stripe runs through this cape, a deliberate interruption, because life is never one colour.
Orange: Healing Wings
Orange represents healing. This quilt takes the form of wings and wraps around like a hug, because there's nothing more healing than that. The back is an upcycled sari with an incredible metallic sheen, quilted with fluorescent thread in a giant zigzag. Sixth in the series.
Yellow: Gay Apparel
Yellow represents sunlight: the importance of being seen and living openly. This bright poncho takes us back to the 1970s when queer elders first started marching in public for the right to be themselves and proud. Fourth in the series. Poncho, 150 × 150 cm.
Green: Nature's Embrace
Green represents nature. This stole wraps the wearer in a quilted landscape of rolling hills, stone formations, and wildflowers, a reminder that queerness exists throughout the natural world. Fashion-inspired gore panels create movement and flow.
Blue: Harmony
Blue represents harmony. Nine "wonky pineapple" blocks, each made from familiar parts but assembled in its own distinct way, come together to form a giant star. The idea: we're all made of essentially the same pieces, each finding our own way to create a harmonious whole. Back is hand-dyed fabric by Bex and Luke.
Purple: Spirit Cape
Purple represents spirit. This cape was created as a gift for a Two-Spirit friend and is the fifth in the series. The progress flag lining features fabric by Carrie Okemaw (Manto Sipi Cree Nation / Anishinaabe community of Berens River First Nation), and yellow elements woven throughout symbolize the power and resistance of Two-Spirit people.
Hot Pink & Teal: Lost Colours Cape
A tribute to the two colours dropped from Baker's original 1978 flag. Hot pink represented sexuality; turquoise represented art and magic. They were cut for practical manufacturing reasons, fabric availability, cost. This cape brings them back. The backing is found fabric from a local thrift shop.
About the Flag
Gilbert Baker designed the original Pride flag with eight colours in 1978 for San Francisco's Gay Freedom Day Parade. Each stripe carried intention: hot pink for sexuality, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art/magic, blue for harmony, and purple for spirit. By 1979, the flag had been reduced to six stripes, hot pink was dropped because the fabric was hard to source commercially, and turquoise was removed to create an even number of stripes for display.
The Progress Pride flag, designed by Daniel Quasar in 2018, added a chevron of black, brown, light blue, pink and white stripes to the six-colour rainbow, centering the experiences of trans people and people of colour within the queer community.
I chose to work from Baker's full eight-colour original because those lost colours deserve to exist in cloth again.