The African American Quilters of Baltimore

[Music] welcome to piece by piece and exhibit by the african-american cultures of Baltimore what follows is an interview of several of our members we've been meeting for over 25 years to share inspiration to share techniques and to just give basic support to anyone who is interested in the history and appreciation of their african-american clothes well my grandmother was a quilter and so was my mother and I used to watch them quilt and I had to help my mother quilt what really got me started with I thought a quilt that friend of mine had made while she was laid on and I was really surprised that the coop was not a utility close I had been used to seeing utility cooks my mother had made for my sister and I and my grandson until they might end my granddaughter and I was surprised to see the closest lady made was art I started quilting after decades of sewing beginning as a child turning into a career I was a 40 year home economics teacher and it evolved into quilting somewhere along the way I was thumbing through to Baltimore Times and there was this announcement for a post-show or put workshop at that Benjamin Banneker Museum in Annapolis so I went down and at the end of the workshop you walked away with a pen or a quilt block and you had to bring a picture and the facilitator had all of this fabric and all of this stuff and it was just amazing and I started sewing at a very young age my mother used to thread the needle and I would do my little sewing for dog clothes and as I got older when our neighbors let me use her a singer treadle sewing machine and a couple years after that I had a great aunt that treated me to my first sewing machine it was a new home portable and only did straight stitch and zigzag stitches but I loved it well I was always interested in textile from a little girl a lot of times when my siblings and my cousins would be out late I would watch my aunts oh and I'd lean on her machine until I got sleepy she would often find me under commissioning me but I was just fascinated by it I preferred to do that to sports I'm still a terrible athlete my grandmother quilted she lived in rural North Carolina and she made beautiful utilitarian quilts I always loved them if I became an adult and she started giving them away I managed to wrangle one of those for myself and I always thought that one day I'll I'll make a quilt I have a background in fine arts I've always loved the arts and I started wanting to work in textiles and the thought of making a quilt just to honor my grandmother a friend beer hall and Yvonne Evans was quotas and they kept after me to quilt with them and all it took was one quilt and I got hooked on it I've been quilting ever since that gave me a lot of inspiration and so that's how I got into quilting and now hopes anything it could be a way that was carved on the altar and I each time I listened me left a meeting in spark wondered you more and better my focus is partly from the things that I enjoy looking at in the environment and I'm also influenced by my quilt sisters for example one of the quilts I'm featuring and this year's show is called cowboy components and which is a novelty quilt one of my field sisters Elizabeth wait made a presentation on novelty quilts she also gave us a challenge to make a novelty quilt I accepted the challenge and I enjoyed it and the first class I took was by Miss Lola Jenkins and she used this technique hog thread art and so I've been incorporating that in my food so I use that and I'm a youtube junkie so lots and lots of classes videos on YouTube that it just blows my mind different magazines I see different blocks or quilts in different magazines or when I go to course shells I see quilt that have been made by other members and I fall in love with them and then I go online and started looking at patterns that were done by other people and I just fell in love and started from that well one of the things that that I'm proudest all right if I ever finish the project was one that I stumbled on which was a challenge from another Gil and that girl had had challenged us to make a block of a block of the month they would do a block of the month and they had a civil war block and they had a teacup block well I wanted to win the tea cup so I put one of each into the to the drawing and I won the Civil War and said so you don't have to dispute who won it anymore I did my inspirations from all of my interests and I feel like I have well let's just call an eclectic interest one interest is collecting proverbs and quotes so some of my quilts are Proverbs and quotes I love to do portraits of people that have inspired me [Applause] oh it means everything to me because when I first started closing I was only making clothes my patterns and after I got into a aqv I started doing my own patterns and quilting on my own really got to show you when i doing i was invited to whatever their meetings and I was surprised to learn about also cooking equipment that you could buy and it would help you and make a new club it was really it was really remarkable and I just got and and the members were so helpful I started quilting and turned into a love and turn back I just love it to death alpha it's been inspiration to show and tell in particular I'm just blown away by just the creativity the ingenuity quote it's a great learning experience but when I mean I just go home wanting to cope in clothes for these long years I started with the original member that helped create this group barber Piatt Ella and she actually got me started and with this group it was a lovely group because by me being new to quilting they were members when I asked the question they will show me how to do something I was actually learning how to do quilting by hand which was great and then I got into these lovely machine and just went crazy about doing machine quilting as loom ease operation the women of color quilters Network I've been able to learn so much about technique and about inspiration that I've been able to exhibit and be published since then so I'm thrilled about my connection [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: damien taylor

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Id: wgP0pDAakN4

Length: 10min 9sec (609 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 09 2017