Hutzell: Embroiderers stitch their place in America’s 250th anniversary tapestry

The needle slips between the twisted threads of Belfast linen, pulling behind it a thin bit of colored floss.

In and out. In and out. Over and over, 32 times, until the one-inch line becomes part of a Continental soldier’s blue-and-buff uniform, and the soldier becomes part of a 3-by-4-foot illustration of Maryland’s place in the American Revolution.

When finished, that inch, that soldier and all the artful needlework around it will become one-thirteenth of America’s Tapestry, an embroidered retelling of stories celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States.

One stitch at a time. One thousand and 24 stitches per square inch, sewn by 120 pairs of hands over 2,500 hours of volunteer work in Maryland alone.

“I’ve put in about 40 hours or so,” said Nathalie Smith, working in a glass-walled space at the Maryland Center for History and Culture in Baltimore. “I’m in the middle in terms of hours.”

There will be parades and fireworks this summer to celebrate the birth of the United States. Some things will feel bigger because the Declaration of Independence is hitting the two-and-a-half-century mark.

President Donald Trump has ideas, and Gov. Wes Moore created a commission to tell Maryland’s story. Someone renamed Baltimore’s Fleet Week, expanding it as Sail250.

People are planting offspring of Annapolis’ old Liberty Tree statewide.

In August, Thomas Carney will stand outside the State House as the first Black Revolutionary War soldier to get his own statue anywhere in the country.

None rivals America’s Tapestry for sheer volunteer spirit.

“Oftentimes, needlework takes place in a context that can often be behind closed doors,” said Stefan Romero, a textile artist who created and leads the project. “I really wanted to feel like this was an inclusive opportunity.

“We’ve had stitchers now from ages 3 to 93 come forward to volunteer on this project.”

The idea started in Scotland, where Romero saw the Great Tapestry of Scotland. It’s a composite of 1,600 panels sewn by 1,000 volunteers detailing Scotland’s history and impact.

A well-known fabric artist, Romero began pitching a similar project in the United States.

What would happen, he asked museums, archivists, colleges and embroidery groups, if we made a tapestry telling the story of the American Revolution from the viewpoint of the 13 original states?

Over two years, the stories tumbled in.

There were Haitian volunteers who fought at the siege of Savannah. There was the Wytheville lead mine in Virginia, where enslaved men, prisoners and Welsh immigrants dug raw materials for musket balls and cannon shot.

In Maryland, Romero enlisted the Maryland Center for History and Culture and the Maryland State Archives. From them came the story of George Washington resigning his military commission in Annapolis in 1783.

They put in the Maryland 400. Volunteers from places like Annapolis and Baltimore, they died covering Washington’s retreat after the Battle of Brooklyn. They gave Maryland its first nickname, the Old Line State.

And there’s Carney. A free man from the Eastern Shore, he fought at Germantown and in the Southern Campaign.

Romero enlisted emerging artists in all 13 states to transform the stories into colorful drawings designed for needlework. He traced all 13 onto the high-quality linen and sent them out in March 2025 to volunteers willing to begin stitching.

Fast.

Recruited through the Embroiderers’ Guild of America, members of the Constellation Chapter in Columbia — the state’s biggest — and the Hagerstown Chapter have done most of the work.

“We were the very last state to receive our panel,” said Mary Tod, a coordinator with the Constellation Chapter. “There were a lot of moving elements when they put this together.”

If there was a rush, it’s because embroidery usually isn’t done on a deadline.

Spending thousands of hours on a single project is a huge commitment. Normally, art like this is finished when it’s finished.

“The clock was ticking from the start,” Romero said. “Traction was very quiet at first. Without having institutional backing and without funding, it was very hard for institutions to see this as a viable project.”

The Maryland museum offered a glass-walled room on the first floor as space for the work. The artists, mostly women, agreed to work where people could watch them.

“I initially hesitated because it was going to be a lot of commitment,” Tod said. “It was left entirely up to us to come up with how we were going to do it. There was a great deal of freedom and a great deal of work.”

The deadline is May 20, and Tod will drive the work to Virginia. The finished panel will be trimmed and blocked, in preparation for the tapestry’s premiere June 19 at the College of William & Mary.

From there, America’s Tapestry will travel around the 13 contributing states, returning to Baltimore sometime in the summer of 2028.

Romero said the work ultimately will reside at Seton Hill University, near Pittsburgh. It’s the major financial supporter.

His goal wasn’t just to celebrate the Revolution with the project, although that’s the driving motivation. He wanted to promote needlework as high art.

“The reason we always think of needlework as a craft is because it is seen as women’s work,” Romero said. “However, it is not simply just a craft.”

Smith was at the Baltimore museum on a recent afternoon, focused on one square inch, pushing her needle through and back, back and through.

Maryland’s majestic Wye Oak was finished, a witness tree stitched in a brown yarn donated by a national wholesaler because it’d gone out of production.

Molly Ridout was depicted too, watching Washington resign his commission, but still waiting for her dress to be sewn green.

Smith was working on the area that surrounds Carney, whose figure was completed by another volunteer the day before.

“The features are one stitch, with one thread in the fabric. So it’s very, very, very tiny.”

One stitch at a time.

It’s how revolutions get made.