Green: Nature's Embrace

This stole celebrates the green stripe from Gilbert Baker's Pride flag, representing nature. Baker chose green to assert something that shouldn't have been controversial but was: queerness is natural. Not disordered, not deviant, woven into the fabric of the living world. For centuries, the word "unnatural" was the weapon of choice against gay people. Baker's green stripe was a quiet rebuttal.

The design wraps the wearer in a quilted landscape of rolling hills, stone formations, and wildflowers. I wanted the surface to feel like terrain, something you could almost read with your fingers as topography. The fabrics are all from Swanson's Fabrics, chosen for their texture and the way greens shift between warm and cool across the palette.

Construction

The key structural element is the gore, a triangular insert borrowed from fashion construction. I used the gore shape over and over throughout the stole, and these inserts create movement and flow, letting the fabric drape around the body instead of hanging flat. When the wearer moves, the stole moves with them.

The piece has a clean pillowcase binding, which I learned from the quilter @ssparrowinflight. Pillowcase binding gives a finished edge without visible stitching on the outside, the whole perimeter looks seamless, which lets the landscape imagery run right to the edges.

Nature and Queerness

I made this stole shortly after completing the University of Guelph's Horticulture program, and that experience shaped this piece more than I expected. Spending two years studying plant systems, how they adapt, how they reproduce in ways that defy simple categorization, how ecosystems depend on diversity to survive, made Baker's green stripe feel more urgent and more true. The natural world is radically, relentlessly diverse. This stole is a small attempt to wear that truth.

Another piece in my Colours of Pride series, where I am exploring each colour's meaning through wearable quilts.