They would put up a quilt

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

“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

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