Appalachian History

“I’m proud to see you,” said Aunt Cynthy. “Go in, ef you can get in for the children, or ef you are willin’, we can talk right hyar. I couldn’t miss the first good quiltin’ weather this spring. All winter I piece and patch, me and the gals, and when pretty weather comes I set up my frame right hyar under this beech tree.

“I’d rather piece as eat and I’d rather patch as piece, but I take natcherally delight in quiltin’. I’m an old woman, honey, and I tell ye, a woman can do her work better ef she has something pretty to her hand to take up whenst she air plumb worried out.

“Whenst I war a new married woman with the children round my feet hit ‘peared like I’d git so wearied I couldn’t take delight in nothing; and I’d git ill to my man and the children and what do you reckon I done them times? I just put down the breeches I was patchin’ and tuk out my quilt squar’. Hit wuz better than prayin’, child, hit wuz reason.

“I don’t reckon you want to see my quilts, do you? I reckon you’ve seen a sight better, but they are always new to me. Thar's hist’ry in ‘em, and memory.

“Now this Swarm ‘o Bees---I made that when my man and me were a-talking. [i.e. courting---see King Lear.] Thar's right smart of this speckled pink in hit, see. I put hit in because Tom ‘lowed I looked mighty pretty when I wore hit. A body's foolish child.

“I always liked this here Flower Basket. I made hit when Jack war the baby. He had a little green dress like this here base, and Tom and me ‘lowed he looked so sweet in that dress that I put ever’ bit an’ grain I could cut out of it in this here Flower Basket.

“We buried Jack thirty-five year ago, but I can see him, crawlin’ into ever’thing and always a laughin’ so a body couldn’t scold him, as plain as the day I begun to make this quilt.

“Here's my Radical Rose. I reckon you’ve heared I was the first human that ever put black in a Radical Rose. Thar hit is, right plumb in the middle. Well, whenever you see black in a Radical Rose you can know hit war made atter the second year of the war. Hit was this way, ever’ man war a-talkin’ about the Radicals and all the women tuk to makin’ Radical Roses.

“One day I got to studyin’ that thar ought to be black in that thar pattern, sense half the trouble was to free the niggers and hit didn’t look fair to leave them out. And from that day to this thar's been black in ever’ Radical Rose.

“This here Rocky Mountain I made atter Belle's man went West and couldn’t stay away. But atter he come back he talked a mighty sight about the Rocky Mountains and about the way the sun come up over them mountains in jagged peaks, like he said, ‘Thar’s the sun, and thar's the road a-trailin’ back.’ Lor,’ no, I didn’t draw hit off out of my head, I reckon hit war made before my time, but I made mine to remember Loge's goin’ and comin’.

“Thar's one quilt here my grandmother made. Hit's the Wilderness Road and I’ve got it in my head that she made hit up herself, because I know she rid to Kentucky horseback behind her man over the Wilderness Road.

“A body can take comfort in layin’ herself out on the quiltin’ of patch quilt. Hit's somethin’ to show whenst you are gone.”


“Patch Quilts and Philosophy,” by Elizabeth Daingerfield, in The Craftsman: an illustrated monthly magazine in the interest of better art, better work and a better more reasonable way of living, Volume 14, 1908

"The ladies would cook dinner, and maybe five or six of them would quilt. They would put up a quilt. I can't remember doing any of that, but I've heard, you know, my family talk about it, and then, maybe, they'd eat lunch and then a lot of them would stay for supper, and maybe they'd have a square dance at night.

"A neighbor across over here has [my quilting frame]. It sits up on the floor. I haven't used it, but I'm going to get it. I had trouble with my hand. I like to do that kind of work by hand.

"Maxine, my daughter-in-law, Larry's wife, liked [the wedding ring quilt pattern], so I said I'll make you one some day. So I made her one, and she said, well I didn't think you'd ever manage to finish it, and so, then after I got hers done, I said I'm going to make me one, but her's is prettier than mine is.

"Some of [the cloth] I bought, and a lady that I worked with, her son worked in a printing factory. He would bring home ends and pieces, and she would call me, and she says, ‘I'm going to come out to see you, and I'm going to bring me some quilting material.’ So whenever, she did. My van was sitting out here. So before she got ready to go, she said, ‘Well, go out and get it.’ So she just jumped in her car and backed it up to the van. I said, ‘Well put it in it.’ She had a whole trunk of the car full.

"They were big pieces, so I sorted it out and washed it and ironed it, and I have enough material to last a long time. It's been about four years [since I finished this one], and I have a niece in Alabama, two nieces, three nieces and a nephew, and I have done all them one but not this pattern.

"One I did, for the boy, I did just a nine patch. For one of the girls I did a star patch, and then the other girl I did the house on the hill, and for the other one I did a king-size but I just did four squares.

"And sometime when you have a chance to be out here and go in the community center, there is a quilt in the community center that we made back whenever they were thinking of using this community for a nuclear waste dump. Done as a protest. We just came up with the idea, and everybody done something, you know, about the community."


Irene Cook
Leicester (Sandy Mush), N.C.
Interviewed by Stephen Cain
Friday, July 31, 1998
UNCA Special Collections ; The Sandy Mush Chronicles Oral History Collection OH-SMC C66I7

source: http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/oralhistory/SMC/cook_irene/cook_irene_transcript.htm

related post: Winter's the Quilting Season
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