TRANSCRIPT - Quilt Project - 89_11_2_2
Interviewees: Deonna Green (DG), Ione Todd (TD), Unknown Speaker, Unknown Child
Interviewer: Marsha MacDowell
Date: April 12, 1989
Place: Remus, Michigan
Transcriber: Sasha Franklin

Abstract:
In this interview, Deonna Green and Ione Todd discuss making and caring for their many quilts. Green makes history quilts and family quilts while Todd makes baby quilts. Todd also discusses her family music traditions, such as singing with her sisters at family reunions. They reminisce about the old materials and techniques used in quilting, sharing memories of their grandmother’s handmade quilts and the resourcefulness required for making them. Green and Todd also touch on the difficulties of maintaining and restoring quilts, and discuss the sentimental value that is tied to each piece.

[1:13 minutes of silence]

Deonna Green (DG): …cotton brown stuff too.

Ione Todd (IT): What, in between?

DG: Yeah. Look at that.

IT: Yeah, but it — it would have turned — it was white when they used it [inaudible] after all these years.

DG: Oh.

IT: But it's a regular cotton batting. That’s what you used.

DG: You should have got busy and stitched the edges up, ‘cause some of them are kind of rotten.

IT: Oh, D, it’s been out in the closet. I haven’t seen this for years. I haven't seen it for years.

DG: All they do is [inaudible] up like that.

IT: That's why it was — it took me a long time to find it.

DG: There — that is some wild material, it…

Marsha MacDowell (MM): Isn't it? Isn’t it?

DG: I haven’t seen anything like that in a long time.

IT: All cottons.

MM: Here, I was — I missed it. What were you saying about the batting?

DG: It's old. It's — look it up.

IT: I said that's what they used in quilts back then.

DG: It’s a old batting.

IT: Just regular cotton batting. It was a whole sheet of batting.

MM: Oh yeah.

DG: Not like our modern fiber fill.

MM: Yeah. And you said you don't know if this was ever washed?

IT: I don't know how I would have washed it.

DG: It's got spots all over it, I know that.

[Child talking in the background]

IT: Sure. I said it was dirty and I…

MM: And probably though, you had to air it out every spring or…

DG: Probably [inaudible] off the clothes.

MM: Well, yeah.

DG: [To child] Get down off the bed. Get down before you fall. And leave KK’s dolls alone.

IT: D said she remembered they would get it out and use it, but I can't remember having ever washed it.

DG: [Simultaneously] I remember getting it out and using it.

MM: Mm-hm.

DG: Get on from there.

MM: But did you keep quilts on your beds? I mean, growing up, do you remember the coverings on your bed were quilts?

IT: Mm-hm. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. My mother — grandmother made them all.

DG: [To child] Take your books and get down off the bed. You’re gonna get the bedspread dirty.

MM: How about you, Deonna, did — growing up, did you have quilts on your bed?

DG: Did we?

IT: Grandma Todd, I think made most of your quilts.

Unknown Speaker: I don't remember them. In fact, I think she made a couple of quilts for us when we were married. If I remember right. They were just very plain, you know, they weren't anything fancy.

IT: I don't remember, but.

DG: [To child] I told you to get down.

Unknown Speaker: In fact, I think some of them were made out of what we used to call flour sacks. Did you ever hear of clothes made out of flour sacks?

IT: Feed sacks, they used to get feed and they would come in these pretty bright print sacks. Some of the quilts were made with those bags — more time you couldn’t get into [inaudible].

MM: Yeah. Huh.

Unknown Child: Over here.

MM: You coming through here?

DG: I think of more and more things. [To child] Dusty, you’re gonna have to lay down and take your night-night pretty soon.

MM: He still wants me to see his book collection.

DG: This coat — I washed that coat this morning [inaudible] in the washer. He's got it on. Went in the closet and found it. [Sighs]

MM: Well, do you have any other cousins or family members that you know now are doing any kind of quilting?

DG: Kitty used to. Kitty Pointer.

Unknown Speaker: Kitty Pointer.

DG: You — you know…

MM: Oh, I did — I met her.

DG: Okay.

MM: I remember meeting her, yeah.

Unknown Speaker: Mm-hm. She did a lot, but I don't know. I — I haven't seen her for quite a while. I don't know what she's doing now. I know she retired and she was sick and…

DG: Can you let her take that one too?

Unknown Speaker: Oh, well she wants it.

MM: Oh, I — I would like to take it down and get a photograph of it.

DG: No, no, leave it there.

MM: And then we’ll — we'll send you photographs back. I mean, we'll send you the quilt, but also a copy of a photograph then too.

Unknown Child: Your house.

Unknown Speaker: Take you to my house? Why?

DG: Yes. Okay.

Unknown Speaker: You got to go to bed.

MM: Now, the next that you’re making, did you say you had at least some…

DG: I’ve got — you will laugh — I don't want you to laugh at it because it — it was my husband's idea. It's not a history quilt, it's a family quilt. And…[laughs] Did you get pictures of this?

MM: No, but I — you know what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna wait till I can take it down.

DG: [To child] Don't let Paco out. No, no, you're not going in.

MM: Yeah, I'd love to. I'll…

DG: Okay.

MM: …I’ll have to write a little slip. I didn't bring any loan forms with me but I — I'll write out a receipt. Yeah. I'd love to get some details out of that.

DG: You know what I did? I wash — you know, these quilts, you can wash them. I washed and I threw it in the dryer. One of the kids had left gum in their pocket and it had gum all over it.

MM: Oh.

DG: And I got it out. Buzzy brought some stuff home from work for me. Some kind of solvent.

[Child screaming] [Laughter]

MM: Oh, I’d die.

DG: I almost did die when it got all spotted and it had little things on it.

MM: Oh, I’d be furious.

DG: And I took a tooth brush and that solvent and I put it back in the washer and I just soaked it.

MM: Of all things to be in the dryer.

DG: Gum.

MM: Gum.

DG: And it got all over it. I don't know how that gum… It’d never come out on the other clothes; I don't know why it come out on my quilt. I guess, ‘cause I knew I was trying to hurry with it.

MM: [Laughs]

IT: Doesn't matter about that old thing.

DG: Well, it's still kind of fray up — we'll just send it in the end. [Something hits the hall] Just a minute, let me — let me get a hold of this child. Just a minute.

MM: So this — you're saying that this is a different kind for you?

DG: Well, there's a difference between a history quilt and a family quilt. History quilt tells history. Well, when I asked these people how — who's all names did they want on there, they said, “Well, we don't want those other people's names on there.” The most selfish people I had ever seen; they only wanted their names on there. So this…

MM: This is the North…

DG: This is the green.

MM: The green. Okay.

Unknown Speaker: Her husband's family.

DG: Family quilt.

MM: A-ha.

DG: Okay. We'll get it — it's got Kool-Aid and everything else now. This is a tree.

MM: Oh.

DG: Let me see if I can get it out. Whoops, I stepped on it.

MM: Oh my gosh. The work in this one again. Holy… Oh, my goodness.

DG: Now, that's the tree trunk. See, the…

MM: This has — this has taken you some time.

DG: Yes.

MM: Beautiful.

DG: That's the top of the tree. That's my husband's brothers and sisters. And see, the squirrel and stuff, I was — what I had planned on doing was going to put everybody's picture on the quilt. Well, then I got the people around and they didn't want to — their pictures on the quilt. So then I had to find something to fill in all these blank spaces. I’m still — I still have to put their dates of birth and things in them. Eddie got in the tree trunk. So this is where the house was supposed to go. This, down here — yeah, the tree trunk. This down here is where Buzzy’s mother and dad's picture’s going go. Here's their date of marriage. And the house will probably go over here, and I'm going to put the church over here, I think.

MM: Which, the Wheatland Church?

Unknown Speaker: Uh-huh. Wheatland Church, because his father was the one that built it. Or, Tom was the one that built it, wasn’t he? His father was the one that built the church.

DG: These are the roots here. See how they come up? But I don't have this side finished.

MM: This is beautiful, look at this.

DG: This is — he puts harvest time because they were farmers. All of them were farmers. But I had to have something that was bright, kind of.

IT: What's with the parrot? I guess…

DG: Because I had to have something to stick on the tree!

Unknown Speaker: I guess that’s a parrot.

DG: I had to have something to stick on the tree and it was bright and I already had enough brown stuff. Check this coon out. I said, I hope they don't get offended.

MM: Listen, did you ever have art lessons?

DG: No.

MM: Look at this, it's beautiful what you're doing.

Unknown Speaker: She should have been an artist because she does her own pictures.

DG: I do my own — my butterfly [inaudible]. Check my spider. He's crooked too. He's so ugly. But I went out one day and I said, well, what do you see? I was… [To child] No, don't you get on that. [To interviewers] I was at a loss. I said, well, what can you find in a tree? And Buzzy said, “Are you here or are you in Africa?” And I said, “Well, I don't care where I'm at.” He said, “Well, put a snake up there,” which I've seen snakes in trees before, it was a [inaudible]. He said you got to have a coon and you got to have a monkey. I said you can either have the coon or the monkey because I didn't want anybody to get offended saying, “Well, we're not monkeys, we don't swing from trees,” and you know all of this stuff. But this is that picture that I said, “You'll see on my quilts.”

MM: Oh yeah, the team of horses

DG: And the man driving them, but the other one’s a lot smaller.

MM: How about the flowers and all here?

DG: I don't know what kind of flowers they are. I did them myself. That's supposed to be roses — I can tell you that. Rose buds, that very top one. The other one — the other flowers are imaginary — [laughs] what you call imaginary flowers.

MM: [Simultaneously] Flowers.

IT: Which ones are roses?

DG: These are rose buds. They’re supposed to be rose buds.

Unknown Speaker: These rose apple blossoms, aren’t they?

DG: Oh, are those apple blossoms?

Unknown Speaker: I don’t know. [Laughs]

DG: I know they're crooked. You see where I had to redo them. And this — I didn't have anything to put up there, so I just put kids playing well and a well and a cat — black cat. This is my other r—

MM: When do you find time to work on this?

DG: When kids are sleeping.

MM: Wait, so in the afternoon or evening?

DG: Uh-huh, in the afternoon, evening, morning.

Unknown Speaker: She watches her soaps and does her work.

MM: Do you work on it every day, or?

DG: Yeah, just about every day. I haven't worked on it for — I didn’t work on it for about two months because I was trying to get that Todd family quilt ready to go. I did some things to it. Like I said, I changed my chickens. Then what did I have? I had a project, something else. Oh, I was trying to make — get a couple of quilt tops. We're going to remodel Brian's room. And so I made a new quilt top for his bed and baby quilt. That's what I was trying to get done and I just started working on this the other day again. But just for this little — it's not straight, so my threads aren't laying straight — but just for this little arm from here to this chunk of the tree, it took eight skeins of embroidery thread. It took me about two weeks to do it.

MM: I mean, that's a lot of stitches.

DG: Mm-hm.

MM: Well, was embroidery something that you did growing up too?

DG: Mm-mm. Mm–mm.

MM: So this is all really relatively recent.

DG: Ma — thank mama, she does all that — she used to do all that stuff.

[Laugh]

IT: I don't know whether — I didn't show you how, though, did you? It was just trial and error.

DG: I guess. When you…

MM: But do you do projects, ma'am? Needlework projects?

IT: Oh, the only thing that I do is baby quilts. I made one for Cleo — cousin. She was talking about expecting a baby and I've got one started for Wally. That's my sister's daughter.

DG: Uh-huh. I had the top — [to child] don’t step on that — I had the top finished for that.

IT: [Inaudible] …but that won’t be until fall, so I have — but I have the top all finished. I haven't decided what I'm going to do. You know, for the back of it.

MM: Lucky babies. Yeah.

DG: [Laughs] And this is just a man hunting because my father in law used to like to hunt. There's snow here — you can't see my rabbit because I don't have him finished. I just got him drawn up there. He was kind of a ugly rabbit and I didn’t know if I was going to put him in there or not. So, but like I said, the tree trunk was supposed to be really long, but the top of my tree is a lot bigger than the bottom. But I guess…

MM: Well, again, it looks like you've got a lot to get in here. I love your leaves. It's a nice design.

DG: You know, the top of the tree was going to be like the bottom, you know, of — more like this. And I said to Buzzy, I said, “I've been working on it for a year and a half now” I said, “I won't get it done probably for two more years if I did that.” But I needed something to quilt around when I start quilting it. So that's why the leaves are there ‘cause I'll quilt around those leaves and it’ll be [inaudible], you know?.

MM: Oh, it’s super cute.

DG: And it’ll also, you know, this — when you do this much needlework, it's going to pull it together, where if I — when I quilt it, it’ll pull it back out, see? And wash it. [Laughs] It's got blood all over it where I pick my fingers and…

IT: Now, is this a sheet?

DG: This is a sheet. So is the other one. Use my white sheet.

MM: And what — and you'll use just polyester batting for them?

DG: Just fiber fill. Polyester fiber fill and a sheet for the back. So, it's a cheap way to go because if you buy material, it's a lot more expensive than that.

MM: Yeah.

DG: And you figure, if you buy a sheet, probably you could do it for $25. I think I have more embroidery thread than I have in the sheet.

MM: Especially this one.

DG: Uh huh.

MM: My goodness.

DG: And it's taken me about 30 to do this part of it.

Unknown Speaker: 30 skeins.

MM: Oh my gosh.

DG: And, you know, they're just plain…

Unknown Speaker: [To child] Gotta go night-night.

DG: …floss here. Like, embroidery floss. I always have something to do.

MM: This is so ambitious.

[Laughter]

MM: It is.

DG: See, and I work out of the garbage bag. I just get them — so it, you know, doesn't get too bad.

MM: Your mother makes pretty quilts.

[Laughter]

IT: Say yes, she does.

DG: So this is — I’m just…

MM: You have a copycat here, look at this. He's crawled under here, just like you. He came right over here and decided to…

DG: This is also what I quilted with too. It — you know, lap quilting.

MM: That’s a small hoop though.

DG: Well, I have one bigger than this somewhere, but it's like this: I had a quilting frame and it takes up — I had it out in that room out there when… It takes up so much room and I told Buzzy “I…” It’s back in the dump.

Unknown Child: Dump.

Unknown Speaker: You threw it away?

DG: Yes.

IT: You shouldn’t have done that, you might want it some time.

DG: I don't need it. Why do I need it?

Unknown Child: I don't know.

DG: It just takes up too much room and the house is not that big as it is.

MM: Plus it's nice — it's more convenient, isn’t it.

DG: Yeah. Because I can sit in the chair where otherwise you'd have to set it up in here and then you would have to work around it where I can do any, you know, work over anything I want to now. So.

MM: Well, this is impressive. I’ll be anxious to see it when it's all done again.

DG: [Laughs] Okay.

MM: Well—

DG: It'll probably look a lot different. Like I said, I don't like to show anything that’s not finished.

MM: In process, huh?

DG: Yeah. Well, I need to get a little bit more…

[Audio cuts out]

MM: Why don't you just tell that story about how you — you were put up front when you were, what, six?

IT: When I was six years old, I sang my first solo. We had a program at school and they dressed me up in a cowboy suit and I had a big hat on and I sang “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart.” And my dad played the guitar for me and that was my first solo. And I've been singing ever since.

MM: You said you and your sister sang for a funeral…

IT: Yes.

MM: At age nine…?

IT: Nine and 11, yes.

MM: What would you sing? What kind of song?

IT: Well, it was some sort of hymn. I don't — I can't tell you the song. I think we did two songs that day. I can't remember the song. But a young girl got killed in an automobile accident. So that's why they asked us, because we were young.

MM: Oh, how sad that must have been.

IT: It was. And I had never sung at a funeral before, but I’ve sung at many funerals since then. And I used to sing at high school. You used to have — maybe they still have junior, senior plays, things like that.

DG: Uh-huh. Generally they do.

IT: Between the acts of the plays I would sing.

MM: Have you heard this before? [Laughs]

DG: [Laughs] No.

MM: You didn't remember — you didn't hear me tell this?

DG: No.

IT: You remember Laurence Decker?

DG: Yes.

IT: He used to play guitar.

DG: [Laughs]

IT: And I would sing.

MM: Like what?

IT: Fella that was in — oh my. I don't know, what I…

DG: Can I tell about the song that you and Aunt Donna and Aunt Peggy do every year.

IT: Oh, at our family reunion?

DG: Oh yes. “Little Red Schoolhouse.”

IT: My sisters and I used to have a trio, and I think we're a musical family, and my sister would play the piano. And we — that was our theme song, we always called “The Little Red Schoolhouse.” Our theme song.

DG: And we're laying out the other room… [laughs]

IT: And they laugh, but yet, they always request it. It's not — it’s not a reunion unless we sing.

DG: [To child] You get down off that.

Unknown Speaker: So, I think they kind of like our singing. And we have a couple more we've gotten now where our voices aren't what they were, and we don't do as much singing as we did.

MM: “Little Red School House” — is that — was that a popular song at one time? I don't…

IT: I think it probably was. We probably heard it on the radio. You know, back years ago, we only had the radio for entertainment when — when the batteries were strong enough to bring it in because there was no electricity in those days. And we had — they’re called D batteries now, and our radio ran by batteries, and that was the entertainment. And we learned a lot of songs from listening to the radio. And my dad was musical and played instruments and he taught my brothers to play the guitar. And if I had been sensible, I would have learned to play the guitar when I was young. But I didn't. And now I wish I did — that he’d taught me.

MM: Oh, that's great, I can just picture, I think, I think I can picture a cowboy outfit — cowgirl outfit. [Laughs]

IT: And I don't know if I ever had any other time when I was dressed up in any particular way. I don't think so.

MM: So would you sing at weddings, too?

IT: I have sung at a few weddings — not a lot.

DG: Most with funerals. Somebody who dies — they want you to be sad.

IT: And my singing’s sad, so that's… No, I — I did a lot of singing in church. Still do some — not like I did.

Unknown Child: No.

MM: Well, I've got just a couple questions that I need to make sure I've got filled out on these cards. We may have some of this information already, but just to double check, [guitar plays, shushing] I've got your address here, but your address is?

IT: 3764 Arthur Road.

MM: And your phone number?

IT: 9678873.

MM: And your birth date?

IT: 8/6/27

MM: 27. Okay, Deonna, your birthday?

DG: Sixth month, 23rd day of 1948.

MM: 48. Wow, that's my mother-in-law's birthday, the 23rd. And where were you born?

DG: In [inaudible], Michigan? In grandma — in that house.

MM: Oh, you’re kidding?

DG: In grandma Sawyer’s house.

[Audio cuts out at 21:20]