I made the decision when I started my “Victims” quilt series to limit the work to mass shooting events in which more than ten people died. To date, that totals 286 victims of major mass shooting events since the Columbine High School shooting on April 20, 1999. However, those 286 still represent a small portion of the victims of mass shootings, which is why I created “Bullet Holes.”
For “Bullet Holes,” each strip of white fabric represents a year from 1990 to 2018 (with rows left for 2019 and 2020, should they be needed). The dark bands separate decades. Each hole represents one person who died during a mass shooting in that year. There are 754 holes in the quilt currently with more that still need to be added for shootings that have happened in the latter half of 2018. Only one year, 2002, claimed no victims.
