What is Welcome Blanket?
Welcome Blanket is a platform for engagement that transforms the abstract concept of immigration into a tangible crowd-sourced artistic action. We ask you to use your head, heart, hands, and histories to craft the country we wish to see.
Woven into the fabric of our country is a fundamental idea: our diversity, our multiple perspectives, and our personal stories make the United States great.
Handcraft makers (knit, sew, quilt, crochet, weave, felt, etc.) are invited to make Welcome Blankets. They include notecards with stories important to their families about immigration/migration/relocation to create symbolic and practical gifts of welcome for new refugees coming to the United States. These gifts are collected, catalogued, and displayed at art institutions and exhibitions. During these exhibits, we create spaces to amplify the message of welcome by hosting craft circles, performances, discussions, forums, and legal assistance for immigrants. After each show’s close, our 30+ partner refugee resettlement groups present these tangible gifts of welcome to our newest neighbors.
A New Hope: Wrapping the World in Welcome
Originally, the project was designed to recast the 2000-mile distance of the proposed barrier wall between Mexico and the United States into 2000 miles of handmade blankets. Representing the distance of the wall in lengths of yarn, participants across the United States and around the world created lap blankets and accompanying notes of welcome for new refugee neighbors. This craft-based response to the former administration’s policies quickly exceeded our goal with over 6000 Welcome Blanket packages made and gifted.
Our commitment to just immigration policy and welcoming our newest neighbors is bigger than a singular response to one president or administration. Taking part in Welcome Blanket is a tangible way to recognize and celebrate our global humanity and to uphold a foundational premise that immigration is vital for the continuing vibrancy of our society and growth of our nation.
Through this project, we have developed an international network of people sharing stories and symbols of warmth. The act of hand making (knitting, sewing, quilting,crocheting, weaving, felting, etc.,) a blanket and then writing down our individual immigration/migration/relocation stories shift the paradigm of our newest waves of “refugees” from “others” to “one of us.” It celebrates our complex individual and collective narratives. It stitches our individual histories to our shared future. Stitch by stitch, it knits us together.
Welcome Blanket connects people across time and space through our diversity, individual histories, and shared humanity. We are thrilled to announce our new goal as we continue our call to act on behalf of immigration and relocation: Let’s blanket the circumference of the earth (24,901 miles that connects us all) with 36,521 blankets and notes.
My hope is for Welcome Blanket to become a new American tradition and for every refugee family to receive this symbolic and practical gesture. Will you join me?
-Jayna Zweiman
How to Join in:
Everyone is welcome! All ages, skill levels, genders, ethnicities, histories, religions and geographies. If you care about welcoming our newest refugee neighbors in a hands-on collective artistic action, this is for you!
Make a Welcome Blanket. The design guidelines are 40” X 40”, easy to care for, and it should hurt a little to give away. All mediums and methods are welcome! It’s both a great individual and group project. We have joyfully received knit, crochet, quilted, sewn, woven, felted Welcome Blankets. If you need help getting started, knit/crochet/quilt versions of the “Come Together” Pattern are here, and thousands of examples of Welcome Blankets are up on our online gallery.
Share your story. With your gorgeous work, please include a story important to your family about immigration, migration, or relocation with words of welcome for the family who will receive your gift. Making a Welcome Blanket is an amazing way to build our collective American story and connect with one another. Here are some note templates to get you started.
Upload your submission here and then send! Please send your physical work to our host: Museum of Work and Culture!
Welcome Blanket
c/o Museum of Work and Culture
42 South Main Street
Woonsocket, RI, 02895
Please note: By sending or giving your piece to Welcome Blanket Project, you are permanently gifting and granting all rights with regard to the piece to the project. In particular, you are acknowledging that it may be posted on social media, licensed for materials (for example: books, t-shirts, catalogs) associated with the project and possibly exhibited at multiple locations prior to being gifted to a new American neighbor. The goals of Welcome Blanket Project include exhibition and publication. Many other options are being explored. The Museum would also love for you to fill out this release to make sure all “i”s and “t”s are crossed.
Yes, Welcome Blanket is a 501c3 with Tax I.D. #82-3710239.
Welcome Note
With your beautiful blanket, please include a welcome note. Anyone who contributed to the blanket is invited to welcome our new neighbor!
"Let’s not underestimate fiber’s power to evoke memories of a more congenial era, to celebrate the handmade and, not incidentally, invoke wonder and that rarest and most coveted of emotions: joy."
— The New York Times Style Magazine (full article)
