"My daddy was a Baptist preacher. I reckon you can tell that by how ornery I am. We didn’t have much luxury. I can say. But I remember the funniest day one time when I was still a young girl.
Mama was goin’ to help me start my quilts for my hope chest. She had got that old scrap bag out. We spread ‘em all out on the bed and tried to kinda put the colors together. But the scrap bag was really low. We sure hadn’t got anything new in a long time and it seemed at that time everybody in the church was usin’ all their own scarps and none had come our way.
Mama said, “Come on into town with me Saturday and we’ll just pick up a few pieces of brighter calico to spruce ‘em up a bit.”
Well come Saturday, true to her word, we went to town with Papa. Soon as he tied up the team he went over to the feed store and we went to the dry goods. We had picked three pieces of remnant blue and was just fingering some red calico. We was jest plannin’ on enough for the middle squares from that.
Just then Papa come in behind us and I guess he saw us lookin’. He just walked right past us like he wasn’t with us, right up to the clerk and said, “How much cloth is on that bolt?”
The clerk said, “Twenty yards.”
Papa never looked around. He just said, “I’ll take it all.”
He picked up that whole bolt of red calico and carried it to the wagon. Mama and me just laughed to beat the band. Twenty yards of red. Can you imagine?
A Baptist preacher, jest like any other man, likes that red. We had red for a long, long time."
~ The Quilters, Women and Domestic Art, an Oral History
2 comments:
Wow! That should be a "Show & Tell" tomorrow!
Stunning quilt - I have a copy of 'The Quilters' and love those stories.
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