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Ten Afro-American Quilters

March 19, 1984
Michigan State University Museum; Cuesta Benberry Ephemera Collection; Black Diaspora Quilt History Project
Storrs, Connecticut, United States
Flyer for an exhibition of quilts at the William Benton Museum of Art, The University of Connecticut, March 19 - May 25, 1984.
Ten Afro-American Quilters
March 19 - May 25, 1984

The William Benton Museum of Art
The University of Connecticut, Storrs

MOZELL BENSON: Sometime I think about making something different. So I'll just try to make it simple, like I take a square, and cut if in four different, cut it four times, and then I redo it and make it look like something besides just a plain square.

ARRESTER EARL: And like I'm going to cut one day, I cut one day and I piece, start the piecing and just piece, And when I get 'em pieced I do most all my quilting at night. I'll quilt all night long. I don't sleep a wink then.

JOANNA PETTWAY: After we cotton in, you start quilting. After you finish picking cotton you can go back to quilting after you finish picking cotton.

MARTHA JANE PETTWAY: I sit down holding my hands I'll feel bad. I'll fetch my quilt pieces and go to sewing. I feel all right.

PLUMMER T. PETTWAY: I love red and white. I don't have it all the time to make quilts out of like I want to, but I love red and white. Or else blue and white, one of them. I like them quilts color, I like the color.

SUSIE PONDS: Now if somebody tell me to piece 'em a quilt, why I'd piece it, but if ain't nobody tell me to piece 'em I just go ahead and piece it up my pattern.

PEARLIE POSEY: I just like mine mixed up. I reckon that's why mine don't do no good. I just like them mixed up. I have a bird sitting over yonder, something else sitting there, something else sitting over there.

SARAH MARY TAYLOR: Well, I likes red, blue, green, and I like black and white. I don't like brown too good but I do use the brown. Look like it make you kind of sleepish looking. I likes gay cloth to make it look loud. Red and blue and white and yellow and pink. It brings everything out.

LUCINDA TOOMER: I tell you red looks better, and red shows up a lot better than anything. You know you can see red a long way. And I reckon that's why that people do like red, so I like red in my quilts.

PECOLIA WARNER: Oh it's all in the way of piecing a quilt. And then how you put it together. See what I mean? You got to study some way to put it together to make it show up ... I said Sam I seen a pattern in my sleep. United States flag. I said I can piece that. I saw the flag at the post office. I said I can piece that, I dreamed it.

A concurrent University of Connecticut Library exhibition, "Quilts Today," includes fourteen quilts that suggest the range of contemporary quiltmaking. A few examples of Afro-American work are included.

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