At the height of the Me Too movement, when families across America were tuned in to the confirmation hearings of now Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a high school administrator in a district just outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee, announced over the intercom system, “the girls have ruined everything.” Athletic shorts would no longer be allowed to be worn at school by anyone, and the girls were to blame because they had been wearing their shorts far too short. “At the time, it felt extremely raw and emotional to be a woman in America,” remembered Kelly Spell, a Tennessee-based quilter. “I was really angry, and so were other women in our local community when we found out what had been said, especially to a group of impressionable young people.” With that, Spell emerged from a creative rest, and she began cutting out the letters to spell girls ruin everything. “It was the first social justice quilt I’d made, and I didn’t anticipate how big the quilt would become—I set it aside for months at first.” It wasn’t until the women’s U.S. soccer team went through their inspiring 2019 World Cup run that Spell began to work on the quilt again. “Humans have a long history of channeling their emotions into tactile objects; the repetitive construction of this patchwork quilt helped me clarify my thoughts around what happened.”
