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Bets Ramsey
Quiltmaker
Nashville, Tennessee, United States
Tennessee Quilt Search
Bets Ramsey was interviewed for the Quilt Treasures Project in her Nashville, Tennessee home on January 25, 2008.
For more information on Ramsey collected as part of the Quilt Treasure Project as well as additional resources, visit her artist page at https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=artists&kid=1-111-1.
Bets (Miller) Ramsey, was born on June 9, 1923 in Chattanooga, Tennessee and lived the first years of her life in Rossville, Georgia. When she was a young girl, her family moved to Oak Park, Illinois. The Frank Lloyd Wright houses that she walked by every day, a middle school art teacher, and the close proximately to the offerings of nearby Chicago were all influences on her art and career.
After learning to sew as a young girl, teachers in a strong high school Home Economics Department taught Bets a great deal about design and working with fabric. When she became a high school senior, she and a friend started a sewing business making clothing for others. It was also in her teens that Ramsey started her first quilt, in a Grandmother's Flower Garden pattern; she completed a third of the quilt, then set it aside. Years later, when she became interested in quilts, Bets' mother presented her with the unfinished quilt. Bets then completed it, almost thirty-four years after it was started.
Soon after Bets finished high school, she and her family moved back to Rossville, Georgia and she enrolled as an art student at the nearby University of Chattanooga. She completed her art degree in 1950 and the next year married Paul Ramsey. The couple then moved to Minnesota to allow Paul to finish his Ph.D. and they began a family that eventually grew to include four children. Paul Ramsey's career in academia led the family to move many times, including stops in Alabama, New York, and California.
As her children were growing up, Bets juggled caring for her family, creating art and teaching art classes to children in her home. While living in Elmira, New York, Bets began making wall hangings and exhibiting her work. She was soon accepted as a member of the York State Craftsmen. When the family moved to California, Bets' reputation as an artist preceded her and, before she even arrived, she received an invitation to exhibit her work. While in California, she continued to exhibit and sell her work, and was active in the San Francisco Women Artists Association.
After living in eight houses in thirteen years, in 1964 the family moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, Bets' home for more than 30 years. Shortly after arriving she began teaching at the University of Chattanooga and at the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga.
While teaching at the university, Bets was encouraged by her department chair to go back to school and get a master's degree. In 1972, she enrolled at the University of Tennessee to study crafts and, for a seminar on the history of crafts, Bets selected quiltmaking as her subject. She quickly began studying quilts in earnest, reading every quilt-related book she could find. After receiving her degree, Bets was offered a job as the visual arts director for the senior centers of Chattanooga and taught a variety of crafts at senior centers throughout the region.
Bets became a member of the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild and was a founding member of the Tennessee Artist-Craftsmen's Association. During this period, she curated several craft exhibits in local museums and galleries, along with exhibiting her own work throughout the region.
In 1974, the Whitney Museum's touring exhibition, "The American Pieced Quilt" traveled to the Hunter Museum. Bets was asked to develop a program that could be held at the Hunter Museum in conjunction with the exhibit and she created the Southern Quilt Symposium. The response to the symposium was so positive that it became, for seventeen years, an annual event that included exhibits, presentations, and workshops and which attracted participants from around the world. Bets was its director for its entire run.
In 1983, Bets and Merikay Waldvogel initiated the Tennessee Quilt Survey. Collaborating with volunteers and traveling around the state on weekends, the pair documented over 2,000 quilts. The documentation project resulted in a publication, The Quilts of Tennessee, co-authored by Ramsey and Waldvogel, and an exhibition that toured to six Tennessee museums.
For seventeen years, beginning in 1983, Ramsey wrote "The Quilter" column for The Chattanooga Times. The column included instructional writing, stories of the quilts that were discovered during the Tennessee Quilt Survey, and reviews of quilt publications and exhibitions.
Bets' involvement in quilt study moved from regional to national after meeting Sally Garoutte at a Chattanooga art gallery and discovering their shared interests in quilt research. She became, with Sally, a founding member of the American Quilt Study Group and served on AQSG's board of directors from 1983-1989.
After her husband passed away, Bets moved to Nashville in 1998. With a new home studio, Bets made her own artwork her top priority activity for the first time in her life. Her artwork flourished, with many exhibits including a retrospective of her forty years as a fiber artist.
In recognition of her voluminous and multi-faceted contributions to the study and making of quilts, Bets was inducted into the Quilters Hall of Fame in 2005.
In 2008, Ramsey was interviewed for the Quilt Treasures project. You can find her interview here.
Miller family outing, 1920. Umbrella Rock, Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. Lee, Bets' father, is the third from the left.
Image courtesy of Bets Ramsey.
Bets Ramsey and friends in the fourth grade, 1932, Oak Park, Illinois.
Image courtesy of Bets Ramsey.
Bets Ramsey making church banners, 1982.
Image courtesy of Bets Ramsey.
Ramsey family photograph, 1974, Elkmont, Tennessee.
Image courtesy of Bets Ramsey.
Bets Ramsey at her 70th birthday party with her five grandchildren and two cousins.
Image courtesy of Bets Ramsey.
Bets Ramsey: Mini documentary
Timeline
6/9/1923 | Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. |
1928 | Moved to Oak Park, Illinois. Attended Whittier Elementary School and Oak Park-River Forest High School. |
1950 | Graduated from University of Chattanooga with B.A. degree in art. |
1951 | Married Paul Ramsey, Jr., Professor of English |
1955-1957 | Taught children's art classes, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. |
1957 | Moved to Elmira, New York. |
1959 | Made first wall hanging. |
1960-62 | Member of York State Craftsmen. Exhibited in YSC Craft Fairs. |
1962 | Moved to Stockton, California. Solo shows at Haggin Art Museum, Village Allied Arts Center in Sacramento, and New York Public Library. |
1963 | First place, textiles, San Francisco Women Artists' Exhibition at San Francisco Museum. |
1966 | Moved to Chattanooga. Taught fiber arts at Hunter Museum of Art and art at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. |
1970 | Began Master's degree in crafts at University of Tennessee, Knoxville. |
1971 | Wrote seminar paper on history of quiltmaking in America. |
1972 | Received degree. Began teaching quiltmaking at Hunter Museum and UTC. |
1974 | Whitney Museum exhibition, "The American Pieced Quilt," shown at Hunter Museum. Began Southern Quilt Symposium as accompaniment. |
1975 | Second SQS, "Old and New Quilts of the Region" workshops, lectures, and exhibition. The annual event continued for seventeen years. |
1980 | American Quilt Study Group founding member. Presented paper, "Design Invention in Country Quilts of Tennessee and Georgia." |
1980-1998 | Wrote "The Quilter" weekly column for Chattanooga Times. |
1983 | SQS "Quilt Close-up: Five Southern Views" with five essays in catalog. |
1983-1987 | Conducted Tennessee Quilt survey with Merikay Waldvogel. |
1986 | The Quilts of Tennessee published. |
1987 | Old and New Quilt Patterns in the Southern Tradition published. |
1988 | AQSG paper, "The Land of Cotton: Quiltmaking by African American Women in Three Southern States." |
1991 | Southern Quilts: A New View published. Exhibition toured to museums in five Southern states. |
1992 | AQSG paper, "Art and Quilts: 1950-1970." |
1996 | Southern Quilts: Surviving Relics of the Civil War published. |
1998 | Moved to Nashville. Curated quilt exhibitions for Travellers' Rest historic home. |
2003 | Forty year retrospective, East Tennessee State University and Belmont University. |
2005 | Inducted into Quilters Hall of Fame. |
2008 | Quilt commissioned for Tennessee Governor's Residence. |
Bibliography
Books
Catalogs
Book Reviews
For The Chattanooga Times (a partial list)
Reviews of Exhibitions (a partial list)
Essays
Articles Relating to the Artist
Illustrated Work
Artist Statement
By: Bets Ramsey
Artist's Statement
My love for fabric, needle, and thread began at an early age. First I sewed for my dolls, then for myself, planning and making my own clothes in elementary school. As an eighteen-year-old, I began a successful design and dressmaking business with a friend that ended only when we left for college.
With an art degree, marriage, and children, I explored several forms of art, arriving at fabric collage in 1960. That was it! I discovered that the same search to express truth and beauty and meaning in life could be applied to cloth as a medium as well as it could to paint, and the sensual quality of cloth's fibers and textures added an evocative element to my compositions. Thus I became a fiber artist. Along the way I have tried to share my enthusiasm and encourage others by teaching, writing, and preparing numerous exhibitions, and to honor the needleworkers and fabric-makers of the past.
Bets Ramsey
Credits for materials drawn from the Quilt Treasures Project
Marsha MacDowell, MSU Museum - Quilt Treasures project director, web portrait curator, and interviewer
Mary Worrall, MSU Museum - Web portrait curator and MSU Museum project manager
Justine Richardson, MATRIX - Consultant
Simon Perazza - Videographer and video editing
Website design and production: Alicia Sheill and Dan Jaquint, MATRIX
Project archiving and digitization: Pearl Yee Wong, MSU Museum
Interview transcription: Francie Freese, MSU Museum
Those who provided suggestions of questions for Bets Ramsey:
Barbara Brackman
Vista Mahan
Merikay Waldvogel
This Quilt Treasures interview was made possible by generous donations to The Alliance for American Quilts by:
Karen Alexander
Ward W. Miller with matching gift from IBM
Starr Ramsey Helms
Choo Choo Quilters
Tracy Barron
Maury Quilters Guild
Blue Ridge Quilters Guild
Lee Ramsey
Richard and Alice Ramsey
Stitchin' Sisters
Foundation for the Carolinas/Thomas & Marilyn Bradbury Trust
Patricia Kyser
Jeanne Webb
Cumberland Valley Quilters Association
Foothills Quilters
Richard J. Ramsey, Jr.
James Ramsey with matching gift from Global Impact
Linda Claussen
Smoky Mountain Quilters of Tennessee
Jane Evins Leonard
Peace by Piece Quilt Guild
The Village Quilters
Katy Christopherson
Ritzy Thimbles Quilt Guild
Tennessee State Museum Foundation
Merikay Waldvogel
And a special thanks to Alliance board members Merikay Waldvogel and Jane Evins Leonard for leading the fundraising for this project.
Completion and presentation of this portrait was made possible by in-kind contributions from Michigan State University Museum and MATRIX: Center for Humane, Arts, and Social Sciences Online at MSU.
The Tennessee Arts Commission has two videos, "Bets Ramsey-Fiber Art" and "2009 Tennessee Governor's Arts Award."
In 2022, the Quilt Alliance's QSOS presented a Textile Talk with Merikay Waldvogel and Bets Ramsey.
For more information about other individuals interviewed as part of the Quilt Treasures Project, go to https://quiltindex.org/view/?type=specialcolls&kid=12-91-508.
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Documentation Project
The Quilts of Tennessee Tennessee State Library
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Story
Quilt Treasures Presents: Bets Ramsey
Marsha MacDowell
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Collection
Quilt Treasures
Worrall, Mary
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Ephemera
Design Invention in Country Quilts of ...
Ramsey, Bets
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Recollections of Childhood Recorded in...
Ramsey, Bets
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Roses Real and Imaginary: Nineteenth-C...
Ramsey, Bets
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The Land of Cotton: Quiltmaking by Afr...
Ramsey, Bets
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A Tribute to Mariska Karasz (1898-1960...
Ramsey, Bets
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Art and Quilts: 1950-1970
Ramsey, Bets
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Three Generations of Quilt-Makers
Ramsey, Bets Miller
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Cuesta Ray Benberry, The Search for Sl...
Benberry, Cuesta
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The Artist and the Quilt book review
Ramsey, Bets
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Opossum Inspires Designs for Quilt, On...
Ramsey, Bets
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On the Book Shelf, Classified
Ramsey, Bets
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Comic Patchwork, The Gossips, Research...
Ramsey, Bets
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New Quilt Digest is the Best Yet
Ramsey, Bets
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Bets and Paul Ramsey Postcards
Ramsey, Bets and Paul
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Broken Promises Ramsey, Bets
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Childhood Memorie... Ramsey, Bets; Senio...
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Diverse Opinions Ramsey, Bets
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Florence Peto's N... Ramsey, Bets
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Friendship #1 Ramsey, Bets
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In Oriental Water... Ramsey, Bets
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Japanese Rerun Ramsey, Bets
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Oak Park, 1939 Ramsey, Bets
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Ramsey Family Qui... Ramsey, Bets
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Rush Hour in Toky... Ramsey, Bets
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Soft Bulletin Boa... Ramsey, Bets
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The Broken Heart Ramsey, Bets
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The Journey Ramsey, Bets
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The Point Ramsey, Bets
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