Harriet Powers (1837-1910), an enslaved African-American woman in Georgia, created two remarkable story quilts using appliqué techniques that depicted biblical narratives and historical events. Her quilts, including the Bible Quilt (c. 1886) and the Second Story Quilt (c. 1898), served as visual storytelling devices because she was illiterate and had no formal education. Powers drew inspiration from spirituals she heard in church, which blended Bible stories with everyday experiences of enslaved people. The quilts contain 299+ blocks depicting scenes like Jacob's Ladder, the Baptism of Christ, and the Dark Day of 1780, with symbols like stars representing both religious significance and practical escape routes for runaway slaves. The quilts were sold to Jenny Smith, an educated white woman who recorded Powers' explanations, preserving the stories for future generations. This demonstrates how marginalized communities used creative expression to preserve history and convey complex narratives when written documentation was impossible.
COCKTAIL TIME: Harriet Powers, the stories of the blocks
Added:Welcome back to Ribbon Candy Hooking everybody. It is Friday night. It is cocktail night. It is time.
Thought someone was coming to the door.
It is time to have fun on our Friday night. Let us continue what was a great conversation starting earlier this week about um the memorable and unique uh fiber artist um Harriet Powers uh who lived in the 19th century and was a quilt maker and um an an enslaved person which makes this story have this sort of um me very melancholy angle to it. that I I hate for that to tinge how uh remarkable all of her quilt blocks are making up these two quite famous quilts.
Uh we started looking at her two quilts.
We started with the quilt that is called the Bible quilt um that is at the um Manhattan Museum, the Folk Art Museum, not on display. Um that is a super famous well-known quilt. I'll tell you how that quilt ended up where it ended up going after her after she made it.
Right. So, there's like more to the story between her and the museum. But, um, let's talk about some of those foot blocks tonight because many of us are starting the Harriet Powers challenge.
It is like the Caswell challenge. Uh, still working on it, right? Still still waiting to hear from people. Hey, I'm just going to shout out to anybody. If you have a great place, particularly in Vermont, my first choice is Vermont because that's where the Caswell carpet came from. If you can think of somewhere in Vermont or you have a leg in with someone who might return emails like a historical society or library, you know, maybe not library but something more historical, you know, historically based, please let me know. And also, I will take some great ideas for the Harriet Powers, right? We want to get get your get your big head down. There he is. There he is. There's the monster.
The Friday night boy. Happy Friday night, baby.
>> Happy Friday night. Oh, thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> Can you tell Papa? I'll take uh I'll take some water later.
>> Okay. Actually, I could give you some water.
>> Really? Why? Thank you, my sweet. Thank you, my sweet. You know, people are going to start saying, "Happy Friday night, Teddy."
>> Oh, thank you.
>> You know, I went to the hairdresser the other day. What day did we go to the hairdresser? Like Tuesday or Wednesday or something?
>> Um wait, do you want me to get that water?
>> Yes.
>> Um Oh, wait. What size cup?
>> Um a big one that if it's if it falls, it won't break.
>> Okay. No ice.
>> Um I I'll take some ice. Okay, sweet.
>> Um, I went to the hairdresser to have to have my roots done, right? That's always like a huge a huge thing with me because otherwise I'm spraying it like crazy, right? And um, he wanted to come with me because he wanted to stop at Dunkin Donuts after, so it was worth the time.
And uh, so he waited in the car. It was a very sort of mild day. He was very comfortable. He waited in the car, but he needed to go to the bathroom twice.
And the first time he came into the room, it's owned by a a super sweet guy, right? Uh, his name is Timothy. He's super sweet. The salad is named after him. And um >> yeah, that's a good size. Thank you.
>> Oh, >> yeah. No, it's the perfect cup.
Everything works like this. Everything works like this. Um anyway, he came into the salon and um I think most of the men who go in there, I struggle with hair stuff. They struggle hair mightily and hairily. And of course, Teddy comes in and he looks like uh sorry, I hit the computer. He looks like, you know, he's in the he's living in the disco era. And uh everyone was like, "Whoa, that's some good hair." He didn't he didn't even hear it. He came in twice. It happened twice. And I said to him after, "Weren't you weren't you so proud that when you went into the salon, everyone noticed your crazy hair?" And he totally didn't.
He totally didn't get it. But um yeah, here, I'll take that water. Thank you so much, baby. All right. Yeah, some of your buddies are saying hi to you. I think Gamy's on there, too. Um, see you later, sweetie.
>> See you later.
>> So, um, yeah, Harriet Powers, if you can think of anywhere that it makes sense for us, um, some sort of venue that honors black history, um, ideally black history and fiber arts. Um, I I'd go for fiber arts or I'd go for black history.
I'd go for I I'd go for any combo because I'd love to have this up. I will have that castle carpet thing up if it if it kills me. It might actually kill me. Sorry, we're moving because I'm moving the table. Um, so let me know if you have ideas about that. I struggle so much with sending emails to people who respond or don't respond, respond once, never answer, you know, and I know uh most of the places where I would be thinking historical societies to have these kinds of shows um are volunteer, you know, basis jobs and roles. And I get it. I get it because I volunteer at the church and I'm there three or four days a week. But I will tell you, if someone contacts me, I respond. I always respond. And I know everybody's busy.
Everyone has different whatever different ideas of like what's normal.
But uh I'm definitely looking for places to hold both of those shows. Not the Harriet Powers yet because we're just getting started with it. So if you are just jumping in now, you are not late.
You have tons of time. I'm looking to do this next year in 2027. So in the meantime, I will say Kirsten, great to see you. Happy cocktail night. Jane, great to see you. I think I shipped a bunch of stuff for you today. Thank you so much. Um, great to see you. Happy cocktail night and Joy. Happy Friday.
Great to see you, Linda. Cheers, my dears. I will use my giant my giant cup to do cheers with you. He ran the cup by me. I accepted the cup.
It's an enormous cup. It has ice, right?
What more could I want? Alcohol, but I'm trying to watch the weight and all that stuff.
Oh, it's nice water. It's just fine.
There you are, Mom. You got in. Happy Friday night, Mom. I'll see you tomorrow. We didn't see each other today because I've just been so busy and we've both been busy with stuff and um I didn't do I didn't hold the Hearts and Hands group that I hold every Friday at the church. I learned at everyone that we'll take a break for a little while because number one, it's super hot. Um and in the room where we normally are, it's super super hot. So, if you were thinking, "Oh, I'm going to make that trip to Connecticut. I want to do that on Friday with them." Make sure you let me know. Um because if you if you're coming, then I will be there on Friday.
We will show up. But um I thought I'd just take a couple of weeks off because everything is just super fast-paced right now. So I didn't see the mama today. Karen, great to see you. Good evening from warm and dry Black Forest, Colorado. Did you get some rain in between there, though? I know you were worried about the rain then maybe. I think it did rain a little bit. Probably not enough. Probably not nearly enough.
Diane, great to see you. Happy Friday.
Sipping your absin. Oh, decadent. That's an occasion. Sipping your absin. and uh markering my background fabric for a floor rug. Oh, how fun. You are always doing something really ambitious like that. Um all some all all something all something else. All something else. Oh, I didn't say that right. Did I? Welcome.
It's great to see you. Happy Friday night. Very happy to see you. Um wonder piece collection. Cheers, my dears. Um and yay. Yay for rain. So, so we're all getting different sort of weather. It got a little bit humid here again. We're not through the roof in Connecticut.
Well, we're we were close to 90 today.
Maybe we got into 90 today. We were warm enough that I did two rounds of dying.
One for um an early one for uh finishing off the bits and pieces for the kit for the month. And it's this one here. And then for the better part of the day, Chetty Camp. So, I'm going to show you that in just a minute before we start our programming. So, this is the kit for this month. It's called We All Scream.
And it's Margot the mouse and her two dogs laundry and lint ball.
And she's got on her yellow summer dress. I struggled much over this if you watch the videos. It is like a seaside background. A little bit of sand over here that will connect to the next month. And these sort of you know how there is like that the ice cream parlor chairs. You know how that's a thing? The little table with the curly legs very French looking. You know that is a thing. And the ice cream colored seats parlor a parlor table. Um, I found this out on Facebook Marketplace and I thought, "Oh, I really need some uh ice cream parlor chairs, obviously." So, different color chairs for the three of them. This is going to be a real pretty um crazy eight set that's included, plus all the other colors are included included. And this set will be uh at least two blues, and then you'll have some extra blue strips because that's a lot of blue. the cranberry table, the yellow dress, the orange chair, the pink chair, the two blues, and um her skin tone because she's more skin than usual.
And then there's a bunch of other colors for the purple bowls, the pistachio ice cream, the chocolate ice cream, the orange sherbet, um some um thicker black, right? Some black to do the birds a little bit thicker, although you might want to do those in gray or in white. So many things that you could do. So, these monthly kits obviously come out every month. And I'm working toward something in December that uh will be like the culmination of all 12, not putting them together, but uh a product. So, that could be fun. I know there's a lot of people who are doing every month. So, um it's a lot of fun. We're having a lot of fun. And I I'm sure I will do something next year. I would take some ideas for a theme for next year. I'd like it to be fairly simple and open to beginners.
Some of these are simpler than others.
This is kind of in the middle, but I'm hoping to do something um a theme that we all like that. Um yeah, I wouldn't mind brainstorming on that, you know.
So, um yeah, let me know if you have some great ideas. Ketti, great to see you. It is hot and humid in Ontario. Oh, Audrey, I love that name. Audrey, it's great to see you. Gosh, we had fun on Monday, right? Starting starting this conversation and I'm absolutely sure we won't get through it tonight. I mean, I shouldn't say absolutely never say never, right? But, um, this conversation is so dense. So, um, and I'm so dense.
Uh, so, you know, I'm going to get started. I'm going to watch the I'm going to watch the thread. I'm going to get in get into the zone because when we started on Monday, we we started talking about the Bible quilt. And I'm not going to review what we did because uh it was a full episode, right? We we started looking at this one and we're not done looking at those squares yet. So, the reason that I started talking about the squares is because of the challenge because these blocks, these patterns are available at ribbon candy hooking and oh, Sharon, great to see you. Happy Friday. Did Mar the Marggo rug just fall off the mantle? It certainly did. Thank you. You know why I'm not going down to get it? Because I feel like if this if this wasn't a chair, I would be on stilts. My husband got a stool for me that is like mounting a horse when I need to get on it. I have fallen off of it spectacularly so many times. I'm always in a really good mood when that happens. Particularly if I take down another piece of furniture like my stand. Um so I'll wait for somebody to come and help me. It's it's on the clean flag stone floor. But yes, good catch. I would have I would have gone where's where's my rug if I reached for it again. Ghosts. Um so you know we started we started talking about Harriet.
started talking about her life because I have this great uh reference and resource in front of me. It is this astonishingly thorough book um on the life of Harriet Powers. Now, of course, we don't know everything about Harriet Powers. The first 18 years of her life, we don't know anything about her other than she was born into slavery. Um yeah. Um Arian, if you come over here, that thing the fell off the mantle. So, you've got the salsa. That's important. Don't we can do it later. Don't worry about it.
Um, I know some of you are selecting which quilt blocks you want to do. And many people are doing multiple. I just put, I think, three together for Shannon. She picked three that stack on top of each other. One, two, three. And she said, "What order?" And they make a lot of sense together. And I made sure that they became the same size. So, it's one piece without borders. Pieces without borders. So, um, and and some other people have said, can you do two together or, um, so I'm getting a lot of those kinds of things, and that makes sense to me. Obviously, a strip of several or a block of four, something like that. And some have been selling that are the small size and the large size. There's two sizes. So, I know um some maybe sometimes people are hesitating looking at the uh imagery and saying, "What is that? What's going on there? Uh, what is he holding?" You know? So, it's good to do a shows like we are this week looking at what the imagery is because as I say the first quilt that we're looking at that we'll conclude in just a minute uh is the Bible quilt. And I made this sort of um I made this sort of statement on Monday that you know however you feel about religion, however you feel about the Bible, this is really about folk art, right? These squares are really about folk art and and um religion aside, right? Um these are well-known stories and these are sort of moralist type stories and uh they have beautiful sort of plot lines and um not always happy endings but you're going to know the characters and once you know what the block is about I think it becomes a lot more meaningful. So, um I feel like whether you are a religious person, a Christian person, a this person, a that person, um I think you can still with both of her quilts, the second one has fewer Bible references, but the first one is uh the Bible quilt is a series of scenes from the Bible. So, it's a it's a take it or leave it. But I do have to say, as Linda No, Mary Lions says in this book, and this is a children's book. This is like an older child's book. I think this is out of print, but this is what it looks like. If you want to Google lens it, it has got to be out there. I don't know how scarce it is at this moment because we were looking at it on Monday. My copy was, I think, 15 something like that. 1518, something like that. And it's a used copy from a library. Uh, but I had to get it so I could share it here.
Um, what was I just going to say? Um Mary does a good job of um piecing together what is known about Harriet's life and we did the sort of early segment of her life knowing that for the first 18 years there's nothing there's nothing to say because other than her being born into slavery there's nothing more than that to say. We don't know anything else about her life during those years. So we move on a little bit and we'll get a little more information tonight be a able to find out more about her as a person. uh what her life was like, what happened at the time of the Civil War and after the Civil War. That was a question that came up on um that came up on uh Monday. And um so I have the answers to those things for you tonight. But one of the things that came out on Monday was the idea that, you know, Harriet talked about her quilts and her blocks in her life, right? These two quilts. She talked about them a lot.
She loved them. And what she said was that she had been hearing a right this is this is a time when not everybody was educated and certainly with slaves um enslaved people um we have no reason to think that she would have been sent to school or educated right sometimes um the the whoever the sort of mistress in the house was was kind enough like if there was a young woman in the house was kind enough to attempt to teach and and put some kind of a syllabus together like some kind kind of an academic um something together, right? Uh but oftentimes not and I would say usually not. So um in lie of that kind of opportunity to write and tell stories that way um sitting around at Quilting Bees, we talked about that a lot on Monday and doing oral sto storytelling, telling stories, right? Just just by mouth, nothing's written down. So sometimes these stories uh fail to be consistent over a period of time because of the nature of or oral storytelling.
Right? If I'm sitting in a pub and I'm I have a martini and I'm telling you a great story. You go tell someone else the same story. It might be a little different. Or I have a second martini.
It's definitely going to be different.
You know, oral storytelling is is flawed just by nature of how it's done, right?
It's coming out of one person's mouth.
And and when you're telling a story, you can't help but be the narrator. you can't help to layer the story with your own opinions, right? And your own sort of visuals and ideas that are attached to the story that you're telling. They might not be there. That's the problem with oral storytelling. In so many periods of history, even US history, even us being a new country, uh there are so many times in early America and then uh going right through the 19th and even the 20th century where all we have are oral histories to share. So, what we do know is that Harriet uh loved talking about her quilts and these blocks. And what she said about them was that she had always been told sitting around storytelling with each other for fun in in your free time stories from the Bible. So for her, that was her that was her whole life. That was where she was coming from. And for that reason, she regarded the stories and the characters from the Bible as her family, right? As you would, you've been hearing about them your whole life. This is going to sound very sacriiggious, but I think that's how I feel about Agatha Christie and Dorothy Elsayers and a lot of other writers, Dodie Smith, right? So many people who I have loved all of my life and read all of my life. I feel like they're part of I feel like I know them.
I feel like if a conversation came up, I would defend them, right? Never having met them. So I I think she felt a similar way. She had only ever heard stories about Bible characters, right?
Because that is what you would do. Um and so she felt like these people were her immediate family. Like not literally obviously, but um they were very dear to her. And that's why she wanted to depict some of their stories into this into these two quilts. And she regards these quilts as sort of albums, right? albums that show pictures and tell the story of people who are very dear to her. And that's the starting point for both of these quilts.
So, um I'm going to figure out where we are in the thing. But let me get to where we were in the book. I think we had finished talking about we' gotten to the period of uh 1855 uh to 1865.
We were talking about some of the early squares. And of course, you can go back and return to um Oh, I don't know if we did this one. No, I don't think we did. We can return to that show on Monday. And oh, you know what? No, I I earmarked this page, but I don't think we got this far. I don't remember us doing I remember us doing Cain, right? Cain and Abel and that Cain has gone to the land of Nod to get a wife. I remember doing that.
Um, and I think we paused there. So, I'm going to pick up there as well. And as we go through, I sort of paraphrase the words of Mary Lions who wrote this beautiful book. I'll show it again. Uh truly honestly a treasure. This is the best periodical on Harriet P's work without any doubt. Right? There's you can piece together stuff on the internet. This is so well researched.
Um, and even though it is like a like a a juvenile sort of book, like for for a juvenile audience, um, it is excellent and it's a great read and there is a lot of text. So, when we hit the next decade, 1866 to 1886, that's actually two decades. U, she talks about how great poverty swept through Georgia um, after the war. So she says, "Like most people, the P family probably didn't have enough to eat. More food had to be grown, but uh who would do the work? The white planters were reluctant to pay for labor. And so they didn't want to, did they? Were reluctant. They didn't want to. Uh and so recently had u labor that had so recently been free, right? What a bargain. African-Americans didn't like working for low wages and planters fields because that felt too much like slavery. and that had just ended. So, competition for food was fierce. And in 1866, laws were passed that forbade uh black people to hunt on Sunday, their only day off from work. Right? That's convenient. Uh with dogs or guns. So, uh Armstead, to remember, Harriet is is married by now. She has gotten permission. We don't know how she met Armstead, possibly at a quilting bee, but um they decided to be a couple.
Hopefully fell in love and had to ask permission of their owners. Now, a little time has passed, the Civil War has passed. Um this problem of the economy and who was going to do what job, right, comes up in a powerful way.
Armstead um couldn't collect fruit, berries, or honey from anyone else's land. Of course, he didn't have land of his own. Even fishing in local streams was restricted. There were rumors that the federal government was giving 40 acre lots of land to freed men. Like other black Georgians, Harriet and Armstead longed for 40 acres and a mule.
That appears in a lot of songs from that period of their own. They felt ties to the earth that generations of slaves before them had cleared, tilled, plowed, and planted. When the rumors prove false, former slaves all over the South were angry, very disappointed. So the take and this is a much longer chapter but the takeaway from this period is it is um you know once once you know it's like Abraham Lincoln paraphrasing comes in and is like we can't do this anymore this is inhumane we are we are human people right we have everybody has uh in intrinsic they are born with self-worth dignity everyone is born equal uh we have to conduct ourselves as as if we believe those words even if you don't you are out you are overpowered and outvoted. So uh we fight a war over it and then when we come out of the war there is really a whole generation of people who go what's next right is that is that all there is because u now the people who are free have nowhere to go and there is an economic u recession depression um and it is regional and the people who who should be celebrating right all of the freed enslaved people who should be celebrating now have no idea what to do with their lives. and all everything seems like a dead end.
Well, maybe I could go hunting. No, you can't because you can only do it on Sunday, but you can't, right? So, we're putting all these other laws in place.
Uh, impossible situation.
>> Hold on. Sorry. Can I get back?
>> Yeah.
>> Oh.
>> Oh, did you want to Oh, you want to get uh You want to go? Okay. We did this last week.
>> Yeah.
>> Um, can you go out that door? I will open. We did this last week. Yeah. Yeah.
I'm gonna attempt to get off this stool.
>> Sorry. I'm just gonna think you have my ice cream left.
>> Sorry. You think because I'm in my own room. I said to I said to the kids today because I was dying in the kitchen all day. I said, "Sorry, the screen is going to move because I'm touching the table."
Um, I said, "You know, I don't have the kind of job where I'm often behind a closed door. Like, please do not talk to me from I mean, it's fine. Like, we love him. It's fine if he comes through, but I just can't I can't get away, can I? No matter where I am in this house, someone wants to get by me or through me.
stopping. Okay. So, um so this is a difficult period in um the history of the American South and there's lots of other things going on that are not for this night, right?
>> We didn't have any >> Oh, I'm sorry, Ted. There's probably some jello or some um >> Oh, yogurt. Yes.
>> Yeah.
>> Love you.
>> Love you. Yogurt. Yeah, we did just have an ice cream at the store. Just saying.
So, um Harriet, so uh hold on one second. I think I missed something important. Um things were going okay for she and Armstead first. Um Armstead was able uh to to start buying some farming tools. So one by one he was collecting tools. He was able to do some more jobs.
Um he was able to over the course of time uh buy some horses, some mules, some cattle. I know this sounds very grand and I'm sure it wasn't. Um to stock their farm animals. The price of sewing machines at that moment in time had dropped by 50% in 1878 because if you remember and you know the history of the sewing machine, remember when we did the book club thing and we had the sewing machine as the book. Um when sewing machines first came out, the price was so prohibitive that several women would get together and buy one and share it and have it different nights of the week. And this is not just a southern thing. This is like a a countrywide thing, right? All of the women on our on my street maybe want to share the machine and I get it Monday, you get it Tuesday, she gets it Wednesday. We all get it different days and and that's just the way it works.
That's the only way we can afford it.
But now the price of sewing machine um a sewing machine has dropped substantially and it's entirely possible that Harriet bought one um looking at her work close up, right? that is if if we were able to look at it close up, if it was actually on display, you would see uniform stitches as if they were made by a sewing machine. So, this is entirely possible, right? Uh a man's dress shirt and collar, sleeves, and wristbands required 20, five uh oh, I'm sorry, 20,530 stitches. It would have taken her days to hand sew just one shirt. But with a machine. So if she was making shirts for Armstead, but with a machine, she could make clothes to sell. Okay, so she was making clothing to sell. I skipped lots because this book is much longer than I want to cover in tonight's show. Um, so she might have owned a sewing machine.
That's kind of a nice idea, isn't it? I hope that she had one. How easy that would have made life for her. Easier.
Easier. God knows she deserved it, right? So um, things are looking up during this period of time. They seem to be doing quite well. food is becoming more plentiful. Um, they ate flathead catfish from Sandy Creek and grew their own vegetables.
They probably raised cotton. Uh, many small farmers in Georgia turned to cotton after the Civil War. It was an easy crop to grow, especially where commercial uh, fertilizers became available when they became available.
So, um, this is a time when she is regrouping. So, in answer to the question, is she still an enslaved person after the Civil War? And the answer is no. Neither she nor her husband Armistad. Armstead R. So, um, isn't that weird? I said Armistad. I'm thinking of like the boat, right? But it's it's spelled differently, too. I just made a weird sort of hardwired connection there. I wonder if there's any um any uh meaning in that, right? in the in the this the genesis of his name.
So, um it doesn't I'm just scanning this here. It doesn't sound like things are going particularly well, but I mean getting by is a pretty good thing, right? So, by this time, Harriet had finished her first story quilt. So, we're talking about 1886. Uh she had cut out 299 separate pieces of cloth. Then she'd mis So it's she's saying m machine stitched them to the background uh the fabric background the color oh the color of juicy watermelon. So we don't remember how it said there was a lot of pink and green in this quilt. Not anymore. It's just not what we're seeing anymore. Right. Let me show you that first quilt again. Um and let's look at some of the squares we missed on Monday.
Oh, wait a minute. That was one. So So this is an example. We'll look at this one tonight. This is The Last Supper.
Um, this is an example of one of the drawings I did after one of her blocks.
I have about I want to say 23. Um, Karen, I I wrote to the Harriet Tubman Museum and I'm hoping they write me back. If you are a member or you know anybody there, I would love to get um I would love to get a second email going there. I wrote to them about two plus weeks ago and I was I wrote a very nice message about what we're doing and I was really hoping that they'd write back. I know summer is a tough time, too.
This is the last supper. So, this is an example of one of the 20s something um blocks that I drew from the original pattern. And in this case on the right, I just uh this was for Monday's thumbnail. Uh you know, I filled it in with crazy colors because the colors and these these are not the original colors.
The original colors have faded, but you know, this is the Bible quilt, right?
This is how faded it is. So, picture the background a juicy watermelon color. So really bright pink, like not light pink, not baby pink, but really bright pink.
Can you imagine how beautiful that was?
Knowing that, is anybody going to do their square with the background being juicy watermelon color? Because that is the original color, the white that you're seeing, that was that watermelon color. Interesting, right? So let's look at some more of these blocks and we'll talk more about the quilt. I want to start with this one. Uh this is this is called Jacob's Dream. So Harriet said that this was a picture of Jacob's dream when he quote he lay on the ground. Uh the enslaved people identified with the uh Bible story about Jacob because he was homeless, hunted, and weary on his journey. The angel in Harriet's quilt is going up the ladder to heaven. In the spiritual uh in quotes, we are climbing Jacob's ladder, right? That's a song.
The latter also means an escape from slavery. So the angel in this story, Jacob is is down on the ground, right?
He is down. He is like um he he is laid out. He is down on the ground. And here is the angel on this ladder showing him um a a way out. Right? So I don't want to build any more into that, right?
Because it goes along with I don't think there are metaphors like what what is the way out, right? This is a Bible story. So the way out is through good deeds and possibly the help of the angel and being a good person and making your way into heaven is the way out. But you can see some of the classic kind of symbols here. Um and you can see a lot of the Civil War era fabrics like the brown circles that have two colors in them. Classic, right? Um there's a small blue print that is Jacob. Um the background again was the watermelon color. Now this motif that she does, it's pieced, right? Those little circles are pieced. Those are stars. So those represent in these blocks the sky, the heavens, heaven itself, the night sky, different things at different times.
They also represent uh spiritual or religious personas. Can somebody open that teddy? Oh my god, I'm going to kill someone tonight. I'm tell Teddy the dog. He shut the the door. So now the dog is at the door. I'm not getting off this stool again because chances are uh I'm just going to send a friendly message to my husband. Can you come here immediately right now, please? That was a friendly message. Um so color-wise, very strong Civil War accents despite the the pink color. So picture these oranges, these blacks, these browns, these indigos against pink. Super unusual color palette. It's just not how we're seeing it anymore. It gives you lots of room for play. When we see stars, right, we are talking about religious figures who are um either dead or somehow sainted or um have a certain religious status either on earth or in heaven. Like they're saints, they're apostles, they're angels, something like that. or they are holy figures that deserve a halo because Jacob, it doesn't say that he's dead in this instance, but um Oh my gosh, I know it. Right, Karen?
That's an amazing idea. Holy mackerel.
That's an amazing idea. Oo. Okay, I'm going to put that I'm going to take a picture of that comment. Not that I would forget that. That's a great idea.
I'm just taking a picture of our screen.
Thank you. Uh, that's that's amazing.
Um, I I would love to see that, of course. So, you know, Jacob, we're not told in this moment that Jacob is dead, but yet he has a halo. So, this is probably a reference to him being a truly holy and spiritual person.
Normally, we only see people who are deceased and angels with halos so far, but this seems to be an exception. It looks like hair, but if you look closely, it's pieced triangles. the same as the stars. The same as the halos that are around the stars I'm going to um I'm just wait sorry I'm just trying to deal with the situation without getting off the stool. I'll tell you what where people are involved. I just cannot um do this in peace.
Sorry. Hold on one second. Okay. Okay.
And he's not picking up the phone. He's probably playing a game on the phone. So anyway, um, so this is a really picture this with a pink background especially.
This is a really picturesque one. Can you leave the door open and make sure the dog is on the right side of it?
Because I have stopped the show about 20 times already and I'm like starting to lose my patience. Just make sure the door is open, please. That's like the one thing I ask for the next two hours.
Um, yeah, that was actually quite polite for me if you're if you're wondering.
So, this is one that I think is one of the more recognizable stories and in terms of imagery and composition layout, um, I think this is bound to be a successful one. Now, whether or not you want to do the stars with tiny little pieced triangles is entirely your call.
Of course, you can enlarge the stars.
Just because they're drawn like this doesn't doesn't mean you can't do regular stars or something else. If you feel that you want to make modifications to this block, these blocks, I am thousand% sure that Harriet would love that. So, don't give that a second thought if you want to make those kinds of alterations. Remember, our medium is very different than quilting, right?
She's piecing, that's hard enough. But with rug hooking, particularly if you like to hook in a wider cut, you want to think about how you're going to handle these smaller details because most of this block is quite clunky and primitive, right?
So the next one I want to look at is another really strong, super strong composition and not very fussy or busy.
This is the baptism of Christ. And Harriet said that the bird represents the Holy Spirit extending in the likeness of a a dove. So that's a dove up in the sky. Doves appear three times in Harriet's quilts. The dove was also the most frequent bird in slave spirituals because it could easily fly away to freedom. That is so sad. Um so another absolutely amazingly simple and yet perfect composition. We have got the Holy Spirit coming down. Um Christ is being baptized by a holy by a holy person. So, I think Christ is on the left. It doesn't say by whom. Um, it's got to be some kind of religious figure, right? Like some sort of priest or maybe um I don't know. I don't know. If you know, let me know. I can't remember simple details like this of these stories from growing up, but we know that this is uh the baptism. To be honest, when I first saw it, I thought it was like the enunciation. Um, so I was surprised because I expected there to be some water in the baptism. um super strong compet composition and uh whether you like the the idea behind it or not, this is just a beautiful piece of folk art. It's a standalone, right?
So, I'm just going to jump back to the book and say um Harriet's favorite Bible stories um were from spirituals that she had sung all of her life. So, songs uh this is me now, songs that made references to um Bible stories, right, that she would hear in church. These spirituals pull directly from Bible stories. These these are the things that she loves and locks on to the most because she both knows the story and she hears the song, right?
So, it's like double whammy. She she loves them twice as much. So, let's move on to Oh, wait a minute. I'm out of order. Okay. Um Oh, did we do this? No, we didn't do this one. This is uh the holy family. This one is the holy family. Um Joseph the virgin and the infant. Uh Jesus with the star of Bethlehem over his head. So that huge huge huge star right is important. Right in the top center those are the crosses he had to bear through his through his undergoing. Um this is all a quote. uh anything in and the quote was said by Jenny Smith.
You'll find out uh who she is shortly and she is paraphrasing what Harriet said to her directly. Right? So telephone game uh anything for wise men we can't go back any further than the Bible. Right. Um well now we know we can't but just you know just for clarity but um so the the Holy Family now remember that see I'm confused because this book goes back and forth a few times. I am loving this book. No criticism of this book but remember earlier in the book that we were told that crosses are not references to um the crucifixion or the story or the Jesus story. They are references to Lisa who is the son god uh in West Africa right so Harriet's storytelling right was West African right she was born into slavery but her family was not so they were west Africans and of course she was too but um their their son god was called Lisa and Lisa's symbol is a cross so we're told in some of the blocks that the crosses probably represent are probably I I I don't want to say this wrong, but might not represent anything, right? The crosses might be a decorative um uh motif that furthers the composition along because you fill up some empty space. Um it's not necessarily a religious reference, particularly when they look like this, right? This has a very tic-tac-toe feel to me. So I I'm feeling here I'm going to go against what the book says and knowing that the symbol for Lisa the sun god is a cross and not a cru crucifix cross on a vertical I would say um oh Judy good to see you. I would say that this is a hard call for me. We can't know what every part of every design is. But we do know that Harriet said that that big star is this the star of Bethlehem and there are two smaller stars. There's actually three. There's one down below as well.
And we're seeing four crosses. Uh we're seeing the Star of Bethlehem coming almost on a comet. You see how it's kind of on a stem. You are seeing that all three members of the Holy Family have that halo around their head. None of them have a regular human head, right?
The this is like the triangle halo that is on all. So so pretty. And again, remember we are still looking at blocks that originally had that watermelon colored background. Um, this is the Last Supper. I think this is another um super successful composition. Of course, Harriet was going for what the story was about. I'm looking at it because I drew these, right? And I'm getting these ready for us in this project. Um, oh, Shay, great to see you. Happy Friday.
You know, I'm getting these ready for our project and I'm looking forward to choosing mine and I'm thinking them of them in terms of folk art and honoring Harriet. You know, I'm certainly going to do stuff with the color watermelon, but I'm thinking of them in terms of lines and how to ensure that they are successful when you make them, too. So, I was really careful with with line choices. And of course, color is going to come down to you. We could do if we feel like it and a lot of people are working on it, we could set aside a day like u at the beginning of the fall or something where it's like a um like a Harriet Powers day, right? And we do we we log on for a Zoom and we talk about colors and what we're doing with colors and maybe we brainstorm with each other.
You we could also do this in the meantime in the form of gallery night.
You just send me what you're working on and say, "What do you think? Should we do browns here? Should we go out on a limb? Should I do red? Should it go red?" an orange. What? What? You know, let me get some more opinions because we love doing that on gallery night, right?
So, this is the last supper and Harriet included only seven of the 12 apostles, right? Probably a space issue here.
Judas in his dark clothes stands out from the rest. So, Judith is the betrayer, right? And so, he he still is one of the apostles. So, he does have the halo, right? The all of the ones that we're seeing, the seven that we're seeing have the halos. We know there are more but it's probably a question of space. Uh we are seeing that that central star in the middle as well which seems to be present when we are looking at multiple religious personas right lots gathered in one block. We tend to see the star of Bethlehem in those situations and we are seeing three smaller stars as well. If you look at this composition and think back to the last one and even Jacob's ladder, the one before, it does seem to me like Harriet likes to fill the background space. Think about Magdalena Briner Eevee, right? Think about the way that folk artists who lived in the 19th century liked to fill the space, right?
We're talking about folk artists. We're not talking about trained artists, right? We're not talking about tonalists. We're talking about folk artists. So, it seems to me like using the Star of Bethlehem is really important to her. Otherwise, she could have fit a couple more of she could have fit nine of the 12 apostles, but it was more important for her as a choice to put in the Star of Bethlehem. When you do this block, you have that choice again. Do you want because this is basically like a stencil, right? It's like a cookie cutter. You have the choice to put in all 12 if you would like, right? Totally up to you. But for Harriet, it was important to put the Star of Bethlehem in the center. And then that left sort of a triangle of empty space, the two where the stars are up top and down below. So she filled that space. And that really supports my idea that in the last one when we saw those crosses turned on an axis, right?
Not like vertical. It seems to me like when she uses these motifs, they are meaningful motifs. They are storytelling motifs. But I think more, in my opinion, more often than not, she's filling the space. It's just what it feels like to me.
Um, and remember in this one it is a big deal that um Judas uh it was a big deal to to Harriet that Judas was darker, right? Because he's sinister and evil, right? He is definitely the bad man, the bad guy in the story. No doubt about it.
So that is the Last Supper. Um, let me see what we've got here. Hold on one second. Let me find these. I'm flipping around a little bit. So over on the left, uh, Harriet said that the picture the the picture you're seeing on the left, so just look at the left one, has reference to the crucifixion. She said that the round figures were the darkness that spreads over the earth.
Oh, I see. The round figures, maybe those are the things that look like spades, do you think? Uh, the round figures. Oh, no.
Huh. She said the round figures were the darkness that spreads over the earth.
The maybe that's the three things on top right in place of stars. The red calico.
Okay, so those are the two things on the left. I think the round figures are the two things that look like stars. The black one with the white border and the white one with the black border because the red calico is a moon turning to blood. That is super symbolic. Um I don't remember that personally from the Bible. Um, so that makes me think that that imagery of the moon turning to blood. Of course, we do have one of the year's moons is the blood moon. But I'm wondering if that also comes from African uh heritage storytelling, right?
Traditional storytelling. I wonder if any of you know because I don't, but I think that's an important part of this this image. Um, also verses about the moon of bleeding.
Oh, okay. So in one of the spirituals that she liked that was called in the great getting up morning there's a verse about the moon a bleeding and the stars are fallen. So that makes a lot of sense in this context. These images from the book of revelation were important to the enslaved people. They reminded them that only the moon and stars could guide a runaway slave on a dark night. That's really interesting. Maybe that is one of the reasons we are seeing so many stars, right? uh this is this is a big deal to them. Not just forecasting weather and uh time of day and location, but as an escape route, right? That is really interesting. Karen says, "What do you think about the apostle clothing? It's so close to the white background." Let's go back and look at that. I agree. Some of the one thing I will say is it's all the same except for Judas. So, we're seeing this like small sort of Swiss dot polka dot, tiny scale polka dot, like a like a dot calico. Uh, I would say it wasn't originally that color. It was It might have been light. It might have been light colors, but but against watermelon. So, it would have really stood out. Judas is the one that was like, "One of these kids is doing their own thing, right? And he's the baddie."
Um, but I think that's a good thing to point out, Karen, because she did make the choice that all of the apostles would be dressed the same. I think the sameness is important and because the sameness is what creates contrast to Judas's differentness, right? He's different because he's evil and and he's the sinister character, but the others are the same. Now, that's something with with my version. I did it really colorful and I probably wouldn't hook it that way. Now that we're talking it through, I have to say I would be really tempted to do this with with um Judas in dark clothing. I think I would probably choose like a dark dark u navy or a dark brown kind of a thing. Um and I would do the watermelon background for myself and I would be tempted to put the apostles into white or something like white. You know, you can also think about doing applique or, you know, with quilt material, hooking with quilt material or um this the tie the dying with ties, right? The silk neck tie dying onto wool so that you have prints, right? These are all things to think about while you are fleshing out your color plan for some of these blocks because the fading is going to be, you know, a a real challenge, right? Um since we know the whole background was that bright pink, that part is has been remarked on. We know that for sure, but we really don't know how much bleeding happened with the other colors. The indigo looks great, right? The indigo has real lasting power. The red is phenomenal. And I got to say, the black is phenomenal, too.
The other there's a lot of other colors.
It's hard to tell what they once were.
Let's look over at the section over on the right. And this section shows Judas's Scariot who betrayed Christ for 30 pieces of silver. So there he is being the baddie over there on the right. The circle, the large circle is the star that appeared in 1886 for the first time in 300 years. An event that Harriet may have actually seen. Okay, I'm going to come back to that in a second. Spirituals contained a similar mix of Bible stories and everyday events, right? Because they were making in during in the writing of spirituals, right? Spirituals are songs that enslaved people would sing in a religious setting, in a church setting.
And um they and they wrote these songs.
So they were writing them from stories that they already knew, right? Stories that they brought with them from Africa, stories about the Bible, right? And that's what we're talking about now. Um and then the third category of storytelling was what's happening to them in their lifetimes, right? And that wasn't as big of a category, at least for Harriet, as religious. themes were, but it's it's obviously a big one, right? So, there are many references and we're going to look at that a little bit later when we finish the Bible quilt. In the second quilt, there's a lot of references to daily life. So, what we're looking at here, right? And this reinforces the importance of the night sky, right? The sun, the moon, the stars, right? If you were planning to make a break for it and head up north, you would not do it in the middle of the day, right? You would wait until night and you would need the stars to guide you. We have seen references to the star of Bethlehem. And now we're seeing a reference to and it does look quite different, doesn't it? Now we're looking at a reference to the star um that appeared in 1886 in Harriet's lifetime.
And I don't know anything about that star. If anyone has time to look it up and you want to write something, I can read the comment there.
Spirituals contained a similar mix of Bible stories and everyday events. In a religious song about the journey to Jerusalem, the enslaved person included a line about men who patrolled the roads looking for runaways. Patrol around me.
Thank God. He no catch me.
So, uh, interesting because we need we need Harriet's voice and we have it, right? Harriet told the story of what these blocks meant again to the woman who ended up buying this quilt. And I'll talk about her in a minute when we finish looking at all the blocks. Her name was Jenny. What was it? Jenny Smith. Let me just be sure. Hold on. Let me find her. Um, yeah, Jenny Smith. Um, and Jenny lived with Harriet, knew Harriet, and ended up buying this quilt from Harriet. Jenny also loved the quilt. And again, we'll talk about that in a minute. But the fact that Jenny was a young white woman with who had been educated, who could write things down, the fact that she adored this quilt, and of course, Harriet did not want to sell it. Uh, in the end, Jenny did buy it. Um, but the fact that Jenny was able to hear Harriet's stories and record them is how we know what these blocks mean, right?
because Harriet would not have been able to get that information to us in and through any other route. So some you know we'll talk about the the quilt changing hands. The fact well we'll do that in a second. Let's finish the block. So it is very good in my mind that Jenny is able to tell us you knowund and some 200 almost 200 years later that well 150 that that is not the star of Bethlehem. That is that star from that famous event in 1886 that Harriet probably saw. And you're seeing in this one to um polka dots. And there is no reference to what these polka dots are. So your guess is as good as mine. Um I'm guessing they're pieces of silver. I don't see them as stars.
Right. And Judas's Scariot betrayed Christ for 30 pieces. Are there 30 pieces here? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17.
Yeah, there's 30 pieces. So I think without a doubt those are not stars this time. Those are the pieces of silver. So this is a beautiful story as well. Do you notice there's a tail on the star as well? It's almost like the tails almost have like this comet's um um tail attached, right? So that that is kind of one of her signature things that she does. really beautiful polka dots are 30 pieces, Jane. Isn't that amazing? So, this makes sense. It's like sha the shame, right? The shame of the betrayal over 30 pieces of silver. So, that one now makes perfect sense. Um, we were all counting at the same time, I bet. Right.
I know. I was I was like, "This has got to be pieces of silver." Um, so this is another one I think I did. Yeah. Oh, I'm showing you examples. Um, I'm going to show you some more of these. These are examples of the drawings. Again, this goes back to Monday's show. So, this is Jonah and the whale on the left and the Last Supper on the right. And again, all of these I'm not closing the show by any means. The there's a link to the show.
I'm going to come back to um uh Granny Donaldson a little bit later. Um hold on one second. Let me get us back to the start. Nope, not yet.
Hold on. The link to I'm struggling with the computer. The link to all of the patterns. I got to get back to the right one. Sorry, the computer just froze.
Hopefully not for you. Okay. Um, okay. So, back here.
Now, that's the next quilt that we're doing, but I feel like we haven't hit all of the We're going to come back to these blocks. I feel like we haven't hit all of the ones that I have ready. Let me just check because I thought I saw Okay, that's 2 by 2. Oh, you know what?
Jonah might be in the next. I bet I bet the reason they're out of order is because they're not out of order and those are from the second quilt.
Interesting.
Okay, so let's conclude. Yeah, I think that is the case because we did the Holy Family. Okay, so we're going to move on to the next quilt. Let's just pause for a second because I want to talk about Jenny for just a minute because she's a big part of the story. However you feel about the way that this went down, right? So, Jenny uh um her original name was Onita Virginia goes by Jenny Smith.
Um and this is a photo of what she looked like. I didn't put that into the slideshow, but beautiful young woman.
There she is. There she is in focus.
Beautiful hair. Um so, let me start with Jenny's story. Um, okay. I'm going to go back a little bit in the story so we can link back up. And now we're heading into the period that's 1886 to 1895. So Harriet and Armstead climbed into their ox cart um and followed the rolling red clay road. So uh Harriet must have felt a flush. Okay, wait a minute. I missed something important. Hang on. Harriet's favorite Bible stories were spirituals. Um, okay.
Wait a minute. I did miss that much.
Harriet must have felt a flush of satisfaction when she spread the quilt over her lap, traced the figures with her fingers, and studied the bright colors that bounced that bounced off each other. When she heard about the cotton fair, she made a decision. So, the cotton fair is like a country fair.
She would enter her quilt in the craft e exhibit. I didn't know this. I'm reading this for the first time, too. She would enter her quilt in the craft exhibit and introduce her new child to the rest of this world. Remember, this is how she thought of her first quilt was as her next child. So, Harriet Harriet, this is 1886 to 1895, Harriet and Armstead climbed into their ox cart cart and followed the rolling red clay road to town. It was a glorious day for affair.
The sky was so clear that Harriet could see the hazy Blue Ridge Mountains 40 miles away. But she was more interested in watching the child whom she held on her lap. Oh God, this is going to be a tearjerker, isn't it? The quilt was wrapped carefully in a sack. Harriet was anxious to get underway so that she could show it off, and she looked forward to the fair itself. This was no ordinary gathering for the rural residents of Clark County. The cotton fair was a major event. Harriet was eager to see people dressed up in fancy clothes for the mock cotton wedding.
Whatever that was. It sounds like maybe it was fun, maybe it was inappropriate.
I would have to know more about it. And it would and it would be a thrill to her uh to hear the gunshots and whoops of the cowboys. There's a Wild West show apparently. But best of all, she might catch a glimpse of what she called the Bible animals. And she called them animals before they went into the circus arena.
She probably couldn't afford or maybe she wasn't allowed to go to that part of it. So, she was hoping to catch a glimpse on the way because of the she she depicts these animals in her quilt.
She hung her quilt in a corner of the exhibit tent. The aisles were lined with tables of seed displays and racks of jars, jars with pickles and preserves.
Mounds of plump potatoes, towering cotton stalks, and swollen watermelon surrounded her creation. I'm reading from Mary Lion's book right now. All were competing for best in show. Then a visitor strolled through the exhibit.
She stopped in front of Harriet's quilt.
Harriet had never seen the young woman before, but the meeting with Onita Virginia Smith would change the fate of Harriet's story quilt forever. Jenny Smith later remembered Harriet as being I'm not even going to say it. She's describing um the color of her skin. Um she says uh we are talking about the 19th century of course, right? I just don't want to further these kinds of this kind of language. She didn't say anything really bad. Uh it was like it was a a cake reference, right? It wasn't something crazy. She was Jenny said that she was an interesting woman uh who loves to talk about her old miss and her life before the war. But Jenny was an art teacher uh at a local girl school.
And it was Harriet's it was Harriet's quilt that fascinated her the most of anything. I regret exceedingly she wrote later about the quilt that it is impossible to describe the gorgeous coloring of the work.
Jenny Smith knew that the quilt was a rare work of art. She immediately offered to buy it. Harriet was shocked.
How could she give up her beloved stories? The quilt was not for sale at any price. But four years later, Harriet and Armstead really needed the money.
Clark County had more small farms uh than any other part of the state. So many farmers had cotton to sell, and the price had dropped to 5 cents a pound.
Harriet remembered the woman who had wanted to buy her quilt. So she sent word to Jenny Smith that it was for Isn't this awful that it was for sale now? Typical wages for a black crafts person in Georgia in 1890 were as low as $1 a day. Black labor and it is that in still in some places of the world here, right? Believe it or not, incredible.
But black labor was so cheap that Harriet may not have thought her quilt was worth much. She probably asked little for it, but Jenny Smith recal called later, "My financial affairs were at a low eb and I could not purchase it." So, she wasn't a wealthy woman. I was picturing her as being like, you know, in a plantation house. She wasn't.
She was a local school teacher who just loved it.
Another year passed and the powers, Harriet and uh Armstead were desperate.
Sometime in 1891, Armstead sold two acres of his land for $177.
Uh, when Jenny sent a message that she could now buy the quilt, Harriet wrapped it. This must have been awful.
Harriet wrapped it in a clean flower sack as tenderly as she would a baby.
Then she put the whole bundle in the large burlap crocus sack to keep it from harm. The powers climbed into the ox cart and made the slow trip to Athens.
Harriet arrived at Jenny's house at 129 Washington Street, holding the cherished cargo cargo on her lap. She asked $10 for the quilt, but the art teacher said that she had only five to give.
This is not getting any better, is it?
Harriet tutted back to the cart for a talk with her husband. She returned to Jenny Smith's porch and she said and and um Harriet said,"O owing to the hardness of the times." Uh she said with deep regret, "My old man allows I'd better take I'd better take it."
She felt a little better when Jenny told her she could visit her child anytime.
And she almost smiled when Jenny promised to save all her scraps so Harriet could make another.
Promised to save Oh. all of her own scraps of her own clothing so that Harriet could make another quilt.
But her face turned as solemn as a sermon, and she explained each story in the in the quilt. "We can't go back any further than the Bible," she told Jenny.
The art teacher wrote down um some of her exact words, and that's why we have quotes in this book. They reveal that sewing the story quilt was a religious act for Harriet. Like singing in a spiritual, African-Americans could choose any story in the Bible and make up a song about it. In the same way, Harriet could pick a story from the Bible from the Old Testament or the New Testament and create a picture about it.
Um, I'm going to skip. I'm going to move forward. Even the squares in the foot resemble a typical black spiritual. They produce their own swingy rhythm. Oh, cool.
Oh, there's a cool I hope that if you get this book, you check out this diagram. Um, it's making the argument that this spiritual called John John, is it John? Yeah, John John. Um, in the breakdown of the quilt uh almost goes along with the rhythm of the John John.
It's kind of a mathematical equation.
Very, very cool. Very fun. So, um, so I'm not sure. I think this is a little bit later, but um there is if you're if you're thinking how did this all work with the cotton fair like how was because because she was a black woman, right? Are you thinking how was she allowed to exhibit stuff? There was a negro building at the fair. There we have it. So, we also know why she was hoping to see animals in passing because um I'm guessing that she was not able to go to the circus part and to many of the parts. So, she was able to go to um the cotton the cotton uh the the specific cotton building. And this building, I'm going to show you a picture of it, was built in um I think this is uh 1895 um with $10,000 that was raised by the black community, right? So that they could have their own space at the fair and and exhibit stuff or do whatever um shows, whatever they wanted to do in there, right? because crossover was not great at this point. So that is what happened to the Bible quilt. And on one hand I would say uh it is a great thing that Jenny was able to record these stories because again I don't know that we would understand or be able to follow the stories scholars and academics would make a great I mean most of them it's very clear what's going on but some of the nuances right like the star of Jerusalem the star of 18 98 right there's a lot of u or 89 there's a lot of nuance and without Harriet telling the story right dead serious trying to So what all the squares are about to do justice to her squares. Um the fact that Jenny recorded recorded that is um is why why we know what it all means. And I am going to say it's an awful excuse me sentiment. But I would say the fact that Jenny from this point forward keeps the quilt and doesn't use the quilt, right?
She keeps it as a piece of art. Um, I think I mean it's I believe me I wish that Harriet kept it. If Har but if Harriet kept it and used it for years and years to come, we might not have ever seen the quilt or know about the quilt. The fact that it was sold and um Jenny treated it like a piece of art and not something that was being used may have something to do with the fact that it still exists or at least at least the storytelling is down to Jenny. So, it's a rough story. I know. Let's move on to the second one. Um, oh, Jessica, good to see you.
Uh, did I talk about the one about Job yet? No, I don't think I did. Not yet. I think you are good. Uh, no, we did Jacob, but we didn't do Job yet. Now, why are we here?
What am I What am I doing up there? Hold on. I want to come down a little bit and come back with me a little ways. I want to I want to show the beginning of this one. Of course, this one was Yes, this one was done uh a little bit later. So, obviously, so the years we're in now are 1895 to 1898.
So, this is Harriet's second story quilt. And in this one, right, uh much like the other one, but I think even I'll set. Thank you. Even more so, the figures are like in constant motion, right? This is a super animated one. Um, and Mary writes, "The way they wave, the way they walk, kneel, put their hands on their hips, blow trumpets." Um, she's also using a lot of patterning, stripes, polka dots, other patterns that she has gotten a hold of because Jenny gave her lots of material. Uh, also help to add movement, right? The prints themselves add a lot of movement. So, in this one, we're not looking at all one color background like the watermelon color in the last one in the Bible quilt. This one has a lot of different colors for backgrounds, lights and darks. So, this one is um not not good, better, or best, right? That's not how to break these down, right? We're breaking them down square by square. U but this one as a whole is very different looking than the first one. Obviously, both incredible works of art, but um yeah, I'm just looking at it now myself and then we'll look at some of the some of the squares. I want to come back to I'm just moving forward. I want to come back to um one of these here. But first, let me start going into some of these squares.
There we go. So, this is um Jessica, here we go. In Harriet's words, this is Job praying for his enemies. U, this has Job's crosses, Job's coffin.
Um, so we're looking at the two crosses on top. The coffin is the diamond shape, right? That is like suspended in the sky by star is being held in place by stars.
Like Job in the Bible, Harriet was tested by hard times, bad luck, and poverty, right? I mean, all of the even after she was free, life like it got very, very hard. It seemed like for a few years that she and Armstead were going to have an easy go of it, right? That they were colle they were collecting tools and they were collecting animals and everything seemed to be going in the right direction. Um but then they everybody was planting cotton, selling cotton. Cotton took a nose nose dive and of course that was one of their main income things right like main source of income. So um then she became desperate. So uh she feels she felt in her lifetime that she could really relate to Job. Uh and in this in this square Job is praying for his enemies.
Um and it's funny to me. Okay. So, let's try to make sense of this. The coffin is in the sky. Um, and those are four stars holding it. In the commentary for this piece, it says, sorry, the crosses that that these are Job's crosses. Um, so that's confusing because it doesn't say that that's coming from Harriet. Now, we have we have crosses like crucifixion crosses.
We have crosses like um St. Lucy crosses. Uh no, not St. Lucy. Um Lucy, right? Lucy, the the the god of h everything is crossing for me now. I'm so sorry. I'm so tired. Some god, the sun god, Lucy. We have her crosses. We have crucifixion crosses. And now there's a reference to Job crosses. So um it's hard to follow. It's hard to follow um the captions for these because it's not saying that Harriet said that and I'm I'm confused because it could I can't say for sure. I'm not confident at all that those are different than the crosses we saw last time or the time before. Crucifixion crosses absolutely different. These crosses not not super sure but u possibly right any sort of interpretation if it works for you it's works for me it's great. Um, so we are looking at kind of a stylized coffin and we are looking at a shooting star at the bottom with like kind of a um comet tail on it down at the bottom and we're looking at two angels that are supporting Job. I think we're seeing Job twice in two different positions and he is praying for his enemies, right? He forgives his enemies, he is praying for his enemies and he's being supported by angels. weird twist in this one is that if both of those are the figure of Job, he is not wearing a halo. So we are seeing a return to the idea that h like human people like people like earth people are uh do not have halos until they are saints or apostles or angels or deceased. That isn't a constant. So we have seen some exceptions to that. But it seems to be what's going on here. I have to say all the same. I am surprised to not see the halo on Job. I am surprised. So, um, interesting, right?
So, let's look at the next one here.
This is another gorgeous one. And you know, when you're looking at color and and thinking about how you're going to plan these, and by the way, that that little shape in the sky, does anybody know what that is? Because it doesn't say what that is.
And I wonder. It looks like God, I don't know.
It looks like a boomerang or an axe or something. It looks like a boomerang.
I don't know. There's not a reference to it. Of course, I'm not reading the whole book and this is a very dense book. So, if you're getting the book, it might be that you find the answer out to that.
Let me see if there's a section where they talk about Joe. Joss, I'm doing a show in here. That's okay.
Um, no, it doesn't say anything about it. I wonder if anybody has an idea because it it looks it also looks like he's throwing a boomerang. A sickle.
Maybe a sickle. Oh, do you think it was attached? I bet you you're right. I bet there's a strip that's completely faded. Oh, I bet you're right. I bet there's one more strip that we can't see because it's faded. I'm looking at the picture in the book, too, and I can't see it, but I would not be surprised it's if it's there. Good one. I think that makes really good sense. Sorry. Um, bear in mind the two what I believe to be Job characters are in the same cloth and the angels are in the same cloth. So, this might have been because Harriet had limited cloth, but it might also be because she's trying to do something quite symmetrical. We haven't at all been talking about the borders, and there are different borders on each one cuz she made them different sizes, and then she used one or more borders, a really thin one, really thick one, cornerstones, right? She did whatever she needed to do to be sure that the squares matched up in the end, that they lined up with each other.
So, uh, that's what we're seeing there.
This one is really interesting. Uh, this is a reference to the dark day, and the dark day happened way before Harriet's birth. The dark day happened on May 19th of 1780.
And the seven stars were seen um 12 in the day, 12 noon in the middle of the day. The cattle all went to bed, chickens to roost, and the trumpet was blown. The sun went off to a small spot and then to darkness.
H, sorry, I I'm don't know why I'm yawning because I'm not tired. Let me take another sip of water. I need to refresh myself here. Well, I am tired.
That was a lie.
This dark day thing is such a big deal because you know it's funny because I'm working on the spill in the tea book at the same time and I talk about the dark day in one of the chapters. It's it's a chapter on learning like figuring out signs, right?
With very little information, very little written down yet you could get the you could get an almanac, right?
Almanacs were big in the 18th century.
Benjamin Franklin produced one called Poor Richard's Almanac. People read almanac, but you know, it's not going to tell you what the weather tomorrow is going to be. Gives you a gist of what weather trends are likely to be, but they knew that this was not um prophecy, right? The almanac uh they they knew so much more in, you know, hundreds of years ago, they knew so much more about what the weather meant. U just looking at what kind of clouds were in the sky, like Cirrus versus um cumulus, right? Um it meant it meant something different, right? The cumulous ones like the choppy ones mean like um choppy weather is coming like possible rain, wind, weather is coming. Where you get the big fat fluffy ones, right, that drift along, right, like parade balloons and um the weather is good, right? So simple things like that that we look at now and we go, "Oh, look at it's a blue sky. Probably going to be a nice day." They they looked and they saw way more than we would now. Um weather veins obviously were helpful. They had other kinds of um uh tools to predict weather, to anticipate wind, right? They had barometers and things like that like in the 18th century and earlier uh they had different tools back then for different things, but at the end of the day when something happened, right, and and at the time these things were super acceptable, right? Like these were these were considered like as we do now, we think we're great and that what could ever get better. We can't see it. We can't imagine it. It was the same for them. They had all these tools, all these with brass parts that were made in England. And uh we we had people in the US starting to manufacture um things with metal parts, right, that were like um uh um I want to say sexton, but metal tools that you could take on boats, right, that you could put out your window.
These were for wealthy people only, right? These were not for normal people.
But they thought at the time like, wow, state-of-the-art, right? Everything is the state-of-the-art. Of course, in retrospect, it's like, wow. But having said that, when something would happen like in the middle of the day, the sky turns black, the animals start bedding down, right, and the sun just goes away.
That's really scary for people. So that day was called the dark day. People just did not know what to do. I mean, people in Harry it was like a hund over a hundred years later and people were still telling the story of the dark day.
What did it mean? Because it was so frightening, right? What did it mean?
And it was right after the American Revolution. It was like it was like what what's going is the world ending, right?
Literally is the world ending. And u and they didn't understand why it happened and they didn't understand why it didn't happen again. And it was a big mystery.
And that stuff was really scary. That's why you clung to technology that you had and superstition, right? You clung to superstition to very good reasons because so so far it worked for you or it was or at least it was better than nothing. Right? So um this dark day was not in Harriet's lifetime. It was in 1780 and she makes this block of it. Let me come back to the block. So on May on May 19, 1780 the skies of New England turned dark as night. Sy, greasy rain fell. It thickened the rivers and filled the air with ashes. One witness wrote in his diary that he had to eat lunch by candlelight.
And another described the fowls, the fowls, the birds fleeing, bewildered to their roosts and the cattle returning to their stalls.
No one realized that distant forest fires burning in Canada had caused the darkness. Many people thought that the end of the world had come. Ministers warned that the dark day was a warning from God. They quoted chapter 6 verse 12 of Revelation. The sun became black as sackcloth of hair. Both the Bible verse and the dark day were said to be proof that God's judgment and the end of the world were at hand over a hundred years later. Um over 100 years later, Harriet learned about the dark day probably from a preacher. How did the dark day story travel from New England to Georgia? Why did Harriet hear about it at church? The answer is African-American ministers were like storytellers. Just as uh rare uh rabbit folktales were told and retold in black communities, preachers passed pieces of sermons down to each other through the generations. Uh this is how it goes.
More on that in a minute. I have something along those lines to tell you a little bit later. So uh looking at this one more time, I mean because this one is so different. This is a real departure from the Bible stories. This is something that happens. You see the fowl, right? Going to their roosts, betting bedding down. Um, you see, and that I think is I that middle thing I think is like the shed for the cows or the cattle or whatever going back to their houses. You know, the animals make their way back. I think that's what that is. And you see the people who seem to be um all, you know, in a dither, right?
This is horrific. This is the end of the world. And we're seeing somebody trumpeting. Um I at least I think that that is trumpeting. And that there were seven stars reported that day. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. So seven stars reported that day. But my question is, and I don't have the answer. So what is the last star? Is it the sun? Like is that the sun that just creeps off to the maybe that is the sun in this case? It's so hard because she shows us so many stars. This is one of the things about this piece that are that's so exciting to me is we don't have all of the answers and we never we never will, right? Uh because she told her story to Jenny and Jenny recorded it and we have what Jenny wrote and that's that's all there's going to be. So it it's hard to know some of the sort of nuances of it at this point along. But isn't it interesting to think that if you do several of these blocks, you might on one hand be doing the star of Bethlehem at another uh at another time that star from uh 18 um 89 uh this star which I think is the sun, right? We're seeing lots of versions of the same sort of motif and it has different meaning each time certainly Harriet new. This is another one of my great favorites here.
This is the falling stars. And the falling stars happened on November 13th of 1833.
The people were frightened and thought that the end of the world had come.
Again, God's God's hand stayed the stars. Um, and this is all part of a quote. Uh, this is probably something that Harriet said, "The varmints rushed out of their beds." So, another it sounds like there were shooting stars or you you see uh meteors, right? You see what's going on in this piece. Uh this happened in Harriet's lifetime in 1833.
How old was Harriet at that time? Hold on, let me just find out.
In what year was Harriet Powers born?
She was born in 1837. So this was right before she was born. Uh certainly she would have heard the story though, right? Both from preachers and from older people, right? Cuz holy holy crap, right? So on the night of November 13th, 1833, showers of shooting stars um seemed to set the sky on fire. Every hour, 8 to 10,000 meteors shot down through space like soundless fireworks. Some left strands of yellow, blood red, or greenish blue light that glowed for 15 minutes. Let me say that again. And you might want to write this down if you are doing this one. Uh, some of the strands were yellow or blood red or greenish blue. So, that's an interesting color cue for us as you know, she made them all red. But again, she did not see it.
So, she made them all red like fire.
People the takeaway must have been it was like the sky was on fire. So, she made the she made the dark night and these red fiery stars coming down. So others looked as big. We're talking about the um meteors. Others looked as big as the moon. The flash was so bright that it woke up sleeping Georgian. One man described it as one of the most splendid sights perhaps that mortal eyes could have ever beheld. You know, that's really beautiful, isn't it? Because I'm sure this scared the crap out of everyone. And I'm sure it would me if I looked out. But it takes a special person to say, "Wow, that is one of the most beautiful things that a mortal could ever be um you know, lucky enough to to behold, right? That is a special person." So after November 13th, 1833, scientists began to study meteors as a result of this event. Now they know that a billion meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere every day. Most break apart completely before reaching the Earth.
But people in Harriet's time thought that meteor showers like the dark day were connected somehow to the stories in the Bible. Harriet recorded uh their beliefs that people were frightened, she said of the meteor storm in 1833 and thought that the end of the world had come. But from her words, we know that she also thought God was merciful. God's hand um stayed the stars. So you see on the top left there's a hand there and oh Doris it's great to see you my love. Happy Friday.
Um very interesting. First time I'm hearing about this phenomenon. Me too.
Well since I've been locked into these um blocks but until Harriet I had not heard these stories either. Couple summers ago we had something similar here in New Jersey from the Canadian fires. The sun looked like an orange ball in the dark gray sky. You know, I remember photos of that during the fires. You're right. A couple of summers ago, maybe it was maybe it was more, but um I remember that too. It was like there was such a haze, right? It was like this orange ball. It was so eerie and it and I think we all felt even though we knew what it was and we knew why it was, um I couldn't help but thinking I'm not I'm a very spiritual person, but I'm not a religious person. And I I still couldn't help but feel something like deep down um go yeah a little bit scared you know cuz those it was it was scary seeing those I couldn't see it but I saw the pictures and it it was very haunting at best.
Right. So Harriet um this I mean this is just another astonishing piece. We're seeing the meteors coming flying down and the ones that are getting closer to the earth don't have tails. They're just round circles. We're seeing the people up in arms again, literally with their arms up, up in arms, um going wild, right? And and animals, too. There's a cat, there's a rabbit, um interesting use of materials in this as well, right? You're seeing the those Civil War era fabrics again. Absolutely beautiful. We're seeing lots of white, uh which is also nice because it makes me think it's Jenny's clothing, right?
She was a school teacher, so she wouldn't necessarily be wearing dark colors a lot. I think she gave Harriet a lot of the lights. My favorite thing in this piece is the hand of God that reaches up to stop the shower. Right? So the way that Harriet sees it, this is not she thinks it might be a Bible story. She thinks it might be related to God and the heavens, but uh what she knows for what she believes to be for sure is that God stops the meteor shower by by lifting his hand, right, and making everybody safe again. And I think that is a just stunning touch. um to this um absolutely beautiful. I'm looking at the book at the same time so I don't miss telling you anything really riveting. Um again, I highly recommend this book by Mary Lions. It is truly so, you know, it's such a moment we remember that we are talking about a a person who was enslaved, right? We are talking about um she's not at this point, but this was her life. She was born into slavery. You know, I was thinking when I woke up this morning, I was thinking about her and I was thinking, you know, what's worse? Like I mean I mean like it's it's like it's not even a game.
Like what's worse? But being born into slavery or you know being being rounded up in the country where you live by your neighbors who bring you to the shore and sell you to people on boats who come and collect you as part of the triangular trade. What's worse, right? making that voyage and and the unexpected everything and then arriving and um but at least having had the experience of knowing what your country looked like maybe for however many years, right? Having the memory of that. Um and Harriet's experience was she she missed that trauma. But her experience was she was always a slave. I mean she was born and she was a slave and that's all that's that's all she knew until after the Civil War. So it's like yeah it's not even a question of what's what's worse.
But it is I think very different experiences because I do wonder if somebody like Harriet who was so fond of storytelling and it was so important to her to be able to tell stories both from the Bible and from the world around her. Um I bet that she I wonder how if she ever felt like I'm from Africa and I'm from West Africa and I have never been there. Right. She must have had that thought like all day every day I would think because her parents like were right. So, um there's just so many heartbreaking facets to the story and yet as we sit here talking about these blocks, we're talking about the story as Harriet is telling it to us, right? and the and the the circumstances of her life and the tragedy uh of her of those circumstances and the horror and disgustingness of those circumstances is a huge part of the story. But we are able to talk about her work as an artist without constantly defaulting to who she was personally. Right? We're actually talking about her ideas from her point of view. She was able to relate to us what her ideas were for her pictures, right, for her compositions and she did it so effectively that we're able to talk about it like this like that in ex in itself is amazing and a huge success and a testament to how um accomplished an artist she was. Right.
Oh, Lynn, great to see you. Yeah, you can go back to it later. It's been it's been a great I mean we're just looking at such great content. It can't miss, right? Oh, Ruth, great to see you. Lots of buddies coming in now. Yeah. All of the all of that weather stuff. So freaky. It's so interesting to get the uh we're talking about the dark day because that's the one we just looked at. It's so interesting to know what Harriet was talking about um from her own mouth. And you can just picture her arriving, you know, traveling to Athens, arriving at Jenny's house and the ox cart pulling up and um um Armstead is in is he's in the cart and she makes her way to the door and Jenny's waiting for her. Jenny must have been very embarrassed too because they probably talked about a different price or maybe who knows, but Jenny didn't have the amount of money that Harriet was hoping to get. So, it must have been very embarrassing for both of them. And Harriet must have felt like puking really when she left and had to go back to the cart and say to Armstead, who did not make the quilt. Uh, but it was up to him ultimately whether Harriet had to sell it or not. And he said she did have to sell it. Um, and I can see why when she knew that she had to sell it, why she would become quite serious and sit down and just go block forblock about what each one was worth, uh, which what each one was about. Uh, that makes a lot of sense to me. That seems really in keeping with her personality, too. Diane says, "If you want the Kathleen Carpenter locker hooking books," Oh, did somebody ask about locker hooking? I missed that. Oh, I'm so sorry. Um, I missed that. If you want the Kathleen carpet carpenter locker hooking books, contact Brenda at Red Barn. She still has a few left. How did I miss that?
Cost above Karen's Obama post. Oh, I'm so sorry I missed that. Thank you for responding to that. Thank you. And thank you for answering that with the solution. Yes. Um sometimes we talk about locker hooking different things every time. Um so let me look at the next one with you and let's see what these are about. We are on the second quilt. Right. So this is another weather related story. This is the cold day.
Sorry, the cold Thursday. This happened in Harriet's lifetime. February 10th, 1895.
So, the cold day uh a woman shows a woman frozen while at prayer.
A w So, Harriet would have had to say that, right? Because we would never know that by looking at this. A woman frozen while at prayer. A woman frozen at a gateway.
Okay. Yep. I see. With the pillars on the top, right? Right. Um, at a gateway, a man with a sack of meal frozen right on the far left. He's laying down and he's got this sack. Icicles formed from the breath of a mule. Holy mackerel. Do you see that? I thought those were like whiskers. Icicles formed from the breath of a mule. All bluebirds killed. A man frozen at his jug of liquor. Right.
That's on the bottom. You see the man over the jug. So, yeah. Holy mackerel.
This is uh Wow. So, what happened on um what happened in on what was it?
November, no, February 10th, 1895.
Well, let's see. Uh the cold Thursday. Again, the names that she gave to her pictures. Uh, oh, it doesn't say anything else about the cold Thursday. I was hoping we'd hear more about that.
Well, I guess maybe the whole story is it was so dang cold that people were dropping dead. You know, that in itself is a story. Um, so yeah, she's showing us frozen women, a frozen woman uh at prayer. And I'm thinking that's it's hard to say because I'm thinking, okay, there's a frozen woman at prayer, a frozen woman in the gateway. So, the third woman is not accounted for. Uh, and there is a third woman who's holding something up. Do you see what I mean?
I'm wondering if that's the gateway. I thought the two pillars were the gateway, but then again, there's two pillars on both sides of the side characters. Uh, we got the sack, the person frozen with the sack of feed, and we got the icicles from uh formed by the breath of the mule. The birds are all dead and a man frozen to death with his jug jug of liquor. There's a there's a lot there's other there's like dogs frozen here too. So, you know what Harriet said um Jenny wrote down, but she wasn't writing it down word for word. She has some quotes that are considered word for word, but but Harriet was probably talking very fast.
And remember, Harriet's dialect would have been a lot different than Jenny's.
Jenny was a young white woman who was a educated school teacher and Harriet used her local dialect, right, that that occurred within her community. So there I'm sure must have been some gaps for Johnny in terms of I'm not sure what she meant by that. Possibly um expressions too, right over on the right, the red light the red light night of 1846.
So this is another historical story. A man is tolling a bell to notify people of the wonder. Women, children, and birds are frightened, but God's merciful hand caused no harm to them. So this is the red light night. So something happened on that night. Um it happened, it doesn't say the exact date, it happened in 1886.
Oh, the glowing meteor showers of the red light night in 1886 were visible in the southern United States. It's likely that Harriet could see them in the skies of Upper Georgia. And on February 8th through February 10th, 1895, Athens had a rare snow and subzero temperatures. Okay, so that's the cold day. So both of these things, no, one of them happened in 1846, the red light night, and the other one happened in 1895. So these are two things that um happened during the the course of the 19th century and Harriet is recording two different stories, two different phenomenon at two different times.
Harriet records four deaths in her picture of this cold snap. It was certainly cold enough to kill anyone exposed to the frigid temperatures, especially people in the deep south who only had clothes that were from mild winter conditions. So only four people dead. One, two, one, two, three, four.
So, the two women and the two men. So, that figure up top in the middle is not dead and she's standing. So, that's a good sign um that she's not dead. But no information about that one character.
Uh interesting. That's all we know on those. Uh so, yeah, the red light night.
I wonder what happened. I wonder if anybody knows what happened. Odian says, "Eastern half of the United States bringing subfreezing temperatures and unprecedented snowfall into the deep south and central um FL. Is that Florida?" FL or F.
Wow. Um Diane says, "The February 10th, 1895 primarily refers to the peak of the great freeze of 1894 295 and the great Gulf Co Gulf Coast snowstorm. This historic Arctic outbreak break swept across the eastern half. I see it was a continuation. Wow. That must have been again horrific and frightening for everyone in the south who was not dressed for it. Their houses were not made for it. Uh and people were dying. I mean really uh scary times. You can imagine why Harriet wanted to capture these moments right in her stories. Um, this is all really Sorry, I'm changing the slide. Um, scary stuff. Scary, bewildering, mysterious, all of it, right? Uh, this is one of my favorites. This is another one of my great favorites. This is called, the title of this is Rich People Who Were Taught Nothing of God.
Um, so it says Bob Johnson and Kate Bell of Virginia. They told their parents to stop the clock clock at 1 tomorrow and it would strike one and so it did. This was the signal that they had entered everlasting punishment.
The independent hog which ran 500 miles from Georgia to Virginia, her name was Betts. Okay, so there's two different stories happening here. Um, one of them, okay, let's see. Harriet may have heard the story of the rich people who were taught nothing of God in Sunday school.
In this scene, she places a clock between Bob Johnson and Kate Bell to show that they had gone to their everlasting punishment. In both European and African-American culture, clocks were related to bad luck and death. As signified in Harriet's picture, black Georgians often placed a cloak uh sorry, a clock on a grave to wake the dead on judgment day. Oo, interesting. I never heard that. Okay, so there is some judgment going on here. Um I don't know if Kate Bell and Bob Johnson were real people. I'm guessing they were. Uh but they must have been regarded as bad people. If so, um, just for clarity, hate bell has that the hair or the hat around her hair, but that is not the stars. That is not a halon. And she is regarded in this piece as a bad person.
Um, who who is dead or has been struck down. And maybe this is B. This can't be a Bible story with Bob Johnson and Kate Bell, right? Of Virginia. That makes no sense. I don't I don't know. Does anybody know the reference to those two people?
Um, but apparently they are dead and the clock reference is like when people would again put a clock on a grave to wake up the dead for judgment day so they didn't miss it. So um that that's a real strong cultural and um can you Okay, he's shutting the door. Okay, back to shutting the door. Um yeah, that's a really strong cultural reference that I have never heard before. Uh very interesting. Another one that I've never heard before about the free traveling pigs. Um, and this is where Okay, so apparently there were such a thing as free traveling pigs.
Like I guess this would be the uh you know if we were in Australia it would be like the wild boars, right? So the free traveling pigs are I guess the same kind of thing. And this is where both the expressions as independent as a hog on ice comes from and also the expression roadhog comes from these free traveling pigs. Who knew, right? Are common in folklore and one appears in Harriet's second quilt. Her story about Betts Bts.
Um so this is Betts the pig. Um may have been a combination of folklore and local legend. If it really happened, the facts are buried in the in the long ago. I like that. Still, her mileage is amazingly correct. The distance from AA, Georgia to Richmond, Virginia is about 500 miles. That is crazy. It took Harriet 3 years to make her second quilt. Okay, let's not go there yet. So, this one has a lot for you. Um, Diane says, "The orange critter looks like my yard possum. I know it's a pig, but neat the way Harriet simplifies her figures. I struggle with simplicity, so I appreciate her work. I feel the same way. It's not always clear um to me what the animals are and even what the people are doing sometimes. So it weirdly the mantle clock is pretty damn good, isn't it? And again, something about this. So yes, so we know that this is Betts because she must have told the story to Jenny about Bets the pig. They must have talked about it. Um, she knew the story from somewhere and she passed passed it on to Jenny that this is Bats. So, this is how she pictured Bats. Um, I wonder if those are like uh nipples or utters or whatever they're called on a pig underneath like all that all that um scalloping. I'm thinking it must be right. What a what a crazy free traveling pig we're we're talking about here. Um Suz, great to see you. That's the pattern you ordered. This is such a great one. Suz, did you order it big?
Was that yours? the big one I did or did you do the smaller one? Doesn't make any difference to me. I just wondered because I'm really thinking about doing this one and I'm thinking about doing it big because there's two stories going on here. The thing about the the bad rich people who don't know anything about about God and don't care, right? Um that obviously that's that's a little bit judgmental in and of itself in this day and age, but in that day and age, right, evil versus not evil, right? We're right everything contextual. So, yeah, I think I'm going to do the same one as you, Suz. I I really I think this is the first one I'm going to hit. I really love this, too. And now that I know that that is Bets the Pig, I'm going to research Bets the pig as well. Feel like I'm even tempted to put text on this.
What I really love is the mantle clock and the fact I mean, it's such an it's such an unusual item. We see like farming equipment and um people and animals, but we typically in in the structures of buildings, but we don't see like furniture and and decorative pieces from inside the house, right? We don't see that. So, this is really an interesting one for me. I love seeing both the moon and over on the right there's a large star. So, we could be talking about the moon and the sun as a reference to time. And then I think this is another example of um the star the stars are either there to fill space. I think the bottom one is there to fill space. But I have a feeling that the two top ones that are sort of touching the clock. Remember how Job's coffin was like being held by stars because it was like in the ether in the heavens like the heavens were holding the story. The story belongs to the heavens. I think this is the association. I think the clock is being held by the heavens as well. And I think that last star down at the bottom is just filling the space.
That would be my guess if I had to guess because there's got to be a reason why the stars are touching the clock the same way the stars were touching Job's coffin, right?
Interesting, isn't it? Um, all right.
So, let me keep going. We're making We're doing We're doing really well here. Um, okay. So this one is John baptizing Christ in the spirit of God descending and rested upon the shoulder like upon his shoulder like a dove. So this is this is another one of these this is another baptism reference.
Remember she gave up the baptizing of Christ in the Bible quilts, right? Jenny had that. So she she's she repeats a couple of the stories that she thinks are really more than a couple important and obviously the baptism of Christ is one of them. So she does it again. And you remember in the first quilt it was just the big bird descending. And in this quilt it's very similar. The figures are touching. I think in a more there's more humanity to this one. These there's a relationship between the two figures, right? Um I think the other one is maybe a stronger comp composition, but this one just has that lovely touch of them touching. And the same thing with the bird coming down, the dove coming down um to represent the baptism. Um so I think that I think this is another beauty. We're seeing possibly I'm not even going to say it. It could be the sun, could be anything. Could be a star.
We're seeing two stars on the side.
We're not seeing either figure as a Christ figure because remember if we were we'd be seeing the halo. Why not? I don't know. I don't know why she did the first baptism with the halo on one character and why she did the second baptism with with a halo on neither. Um interesting though, right? Um yeah. All right, let's go to the next one. And okay, so this is the serpent lifted lifted up by Moses and women bringing their children to look upon it to be healed.
And uh Moses was a popular hero in the slaves religious songs. Uh for he led his people out of captivity to freedom, right? So this is another um character like Job who was easily identifiable, right? With Job it was like empathizing, right? Like uh the the the trials, right? The torment, the trials, all of the endless tribulations. And for Moses um you know he is the leader who who leads his people um out of captivity. So um it's it's interesting and it makes a lot of sense talking about looking at the stories that she liked the most. Now again there is a link between the stories that she liked the most and the songs the spirituals that she would have sung right because obviously some things resonate with the black community more than others in the storytelling. Right?
If you can relate to a story, you you tend to like it more. And there are many um there are many uh exceptions to that.
I'm just thinking about how Teddy said to me the other day uh we were in the car. It might might have even been today. He was like, "Uh, I've been listening to some rap music. Do you want to hear some of the rap music I'm listening to?" And I said, um, you know, not really because I would say that my playlist, my my Spotify list in my car right now is 90% um Teddy and like 10% of my sons because and when I'm sorry, I was stepping on my table again moving it. Um, when we're in the car, you know, I listen to a lot of his electronica and I'm like, okay, it's electronica, but it's okay. Like some of it is very uh new newagy and like I I kind of like some of it but like for me um I I don't like rap. I know I don't. Right. And there yes there are exceptions, right?
There are exceptions. I have heard some rap songs that I like but I think when you are not um culturally one way or another and this is going to sound super white of me, but you are attracted to things based on your immediate situation, right? I have never listened to rap music and I've never in my life had friends who particularly like it.
Maybe one or two, but for the most part, not many. So, it never hit my radar. It was never playing in my car. Friends never played it when I was around. Uh you don't typically hear rap music.
Again, there are exceptions in stores. I don't hear it, right? So, I don't have any reference point. It's hard to relate. Whereas Harriet, I mean, would she have loved u classical music?
probably not because what she knew was spirituals, right? She knew church music. So for that reason, when she thinks about what her inspirations are, what her next block will be, where the inspiration comes from, she goes immediately to what she knows, right?
And what she knows is is I mean, she she has a she she doesn't have a boring wife. You got to say that. I mean, after she's free, it seems like they do do a little traveling. she had the sort of gumption to put her thing into the cotton fair and they travel to do that.
Uh she travels to Jenny's house, right?
They're she's not like um growing roots, right? It seems like they're kind of on the move. So um but even even in a life that is varied and and she's not stuck completely in one place all the time. Um they have the oxcott, right? They can move. Despite that, she does go for inspiration to what she knows. And in terms of music, it's spirituals, right?
So for me, I would go to jazz. Teddy's going to go to rap, right? We're all going to choose something different. So it's not surprising that and and it's I guess going to be impossible to know whether some of these stories like the first thought was exact Bible story or the first the first thought was like lyrics from a song. And it doesn't matter which it was because they both refer to the same stories, right?
Interesting. So let's come back over here. Um, oh, I'm following that conversation, too. So, Moses lifting up the serpent and um, and women are bringing their children uh to look upon it and be healed. So, um, yeah, this is a story I'm not familiar with, I have to say. Another beautiful composition. I love the diagonal line of the women coming. Um, very cookie cutterish. All of this is very cookie cutterish. um she's really achieved something with this one that I think is quite different. I have to say the subject for me is is not like it's not one that immediately makes me go wow that is beautiful you know but um what I do like about it in terms of composition is that she has got characters moving diagonally from the top right and that that is interesting because she's trying to fill the p she's she's giving them a lot of motion like they're coming in crowds they're coming in swarms right like all these women are coming to be healed they have heard the news they are coming to be healed they want to see the serpent. So there is a lot of motion in the way that these people are walking into the composition which is offset in a phenomenal way by the figure of Moses who I mean Harriet at this point is ridiculously good. The way that she has got Moses leaning back a little bit like to count like count to give counterweight to this giant snake is pretty amazing. I mean, not all her silhouettes are completely amazing. This one is completely amazing because it shows him as so strong and just that little tilt backward puts a lot of emphasis on how big this serpent must be, right? So, I mean, that in itself is, I think, a really key part of this one. The story doesn't resonate with me personally, but I hope it resonates with somebody. I don't think anyone's bought this one yet. Uh, or maybe you're working maybe you're working on it and I just don't know. Maybe you downloaded it and I just don't know. I want to be sure that we have one of each next year when it comes time um to put a show up.
Let me come back here for a m a minute.
You know, we're going to go over because we always do. Let me just catch up with what she's doing in her life before I get to the end, you know. No, I think we only have one more and then I want to catch up on her life, I think. Am I right or am I stupid? Oh, I'm stupid. No, I'm stupid.
Um well, let's look at this one anyway and then we'll get back. Um Sue, she's just amazing, right? I mean, she honestly she is just she is just amazing.
Um this is Adam and Eve in the garden. Eve tempted by the serpent, Adam's rib by which Eve was made. Okay, so that is a big rib.
You're seeing the rib to the right of Adam, right? That big white piece is the rib. Um, the sun and moon. Okay. So, the fact that Harry must have said that this is the sun and the moon makes me think for the one we looked at um a little ways back, the rich people who were taught nothing of God, we saw the moon on the left and the sun on the right.
Again, in that one, I'm going to venture to say that's the sun and the moon as well. U Diane loves the Beetlejuice style snakes. I agree. They are absolutely Beetlejuice style snakes.
Maybe that was part of the inspiration.
This is so rich in motifs, the iconography, this one. So, Adam's rib, the sun, the moon, God's allseeing eye.
You're seeing that on top in God's merciful hand. The hand, eye, sun, and moon in Harriet's picture are similar to the figures in the African-American banner on the facing page. I showed you that the other day, so I'm going to hold on that. I want to stick to So, well, you know what? Let me show it to you since I just read that line. You we looked at this the other day because we were looking at Lucy the son god and we were looking at the idea of the cross.
That's Lucy symbol also becomes a symbol of the crucifixion. Right? So this is the piece that the caption was talking about. This is the piece we're still talking about. But certainly look at West African art if you're interested um in what these motifs mean. And maybe you're interested in adding larger borders with more iconography. Right?
You don't have to do it as as it is. You could study more about West Africa and add more symbolism if you like. This piece is another h this is just another out of the park hit in my mind. So, Adam and Eve again touching uh in love touching. There's affection here. God is watching, right? He is definitely watching. Uh and the eye looks it looks like a wide eye like uhoh. Um God is watching but his hand that his merciful hand is there. We're seeing uh birds, right? We're seeing one, two, three birds on the side, two birds at the bottom. We're seeing the serpent closing in. Do you see that there's stitching for the serpent's feet? So, the serpent is crawling in. We're not seeing a snake like slithering around a tree. We are seeing a crawling serpent. And we had a little bit of this conversation the other day about the distinction between a serpent and a snake because at that time serpent would have been the sort of placeholder word for all slythering creatures whether they were like lizards or whatever. Obviously within science and biology people would have made every distinction. But in communities like Harriet's community, a serpent is going to be a serpent, right? Whether it has legs or not. So her serpent is not the snake that twi twines its way up the tree. It is something with legs and you can see those legs handstitched on.
Interesting, right?
I love this piece too. We have got um stars in it. And the stars are so tricky for me. We're seeing two stars on the sides of the hand that represent the heavens, right? God's hand is in heaven.
The sun and the moon are in heaven. The eye is in heaven. The stars in this case seem to represent um a field, right? And a because we don't get horizon lines in Harriet's work. a field meaning um a a place right not the ground not the air where the people are standing but the sky so I think that's what the stars are meant to represent is we are at the top of the composition looking at things that happen in the sky the sun the moon the eye of God the merciful hand but that doesn't explain what the star is doing on the right hand side and again it's another one of those things I just don't know I just don't know um I'm reading a little excerpt that says, and this might be interesting to look at here, um because these are the the borders are pieced, but the um figures and the motifs are all applique, right? We I don't know if we said that in the first episode. So, the part the part we're in we're adding in her story is 1898 to 1912. And it says Harriet made both her story quilts with a sewing method called applique.
Applique means applied work. Instead of making her designs with patchwork or embroidery, she applied or stitched cloth to a fabric background. Uh many cultures have used this process. Uh hand applique textiles were made by the Spanish in the late 1100s and by the Italians in the 14th century. American Indians, West Africans, Tibetan llamas or holy men have used the same method.
Early in the century, Eskimo women still painted strips of dried seal intestine and implied that applied them onto cloth for decoration. Applique was quite popular with American women in Harriet's time. They decorated bags, hats, pin cushions, tablecloths, curtains, and even stools with trees, leaves, stalks, flowers. Needle workers used pattern books to cut designs out of silk, satin, and velvet. Often they rimmed the cut out with braids, beads, and feathers.
These were tacked down in large stitches of gold thread. Harriet decided on applique for her quilts because she knew because she had seen it all her life.
She knew this method was was saved for the best quilts, the ones that showed the needle worker skills. But she did not choose to make the floral designs that were so common in her day. And I think that is a reference to like a Baltimore style quilt.
uh nor did she follow the geometric forms used by Native Americans. Instead, she cut out figures, animals, sunburst, stars, and crosses that appear to have come from Africa. How did Harriet learn to make these figures? She was an African. Okay. So, u she was of African-American descent. So, I'm going to hold on that. Um you know, again, I want to remind you this is a kids book, but certainly, um kids book or not, it has it has been good for for my brain, right? like I um I'm gathering a lot from it, right? It's not it's not too low for me is what I'm saying. I'm debating whether I should look at more because it is nine and I want to do quite a bit more dying tonight. Um we do have several more of hers. We have Noah and the animals. Uh Jonah Cast overboard, uh the crucifixion. So we have several more, possibly more than that. Uh, and I want to talk about Granny Donaldson, too, in terms of color and being uh a 19th century. No, Granny Donaldson was 20th century. She's born in the 19th century, but um I want to talk about all of that on it can't be Monday. And I'll tell you why in a second. So, I'm going to tap the brakes here. We're going to come back to this for one more episode. I want to tell you a couple of things.
Let's get the calendar out and see what's up. So, let me tell you about this weekend just in case.
Let me delete this. I didn't do I was going to go to that theater show tonight and I ended up skipping it. Um because I really wanted to do this show and keep us on track with this stuff and I was doing a lot of work today. So, um Oh, snappies. Okay.
Yikes. I see a conflict for tomorrow.
Anyway, so um there's a couple of things I want to share with you. One of them is happening on Sunday. So, um, in case you're interested, speaking of sermons and such, you know, I'm very involved in my church, um, and I I, um, am often what's called a worship associate. I'm up there and I'm helping out and I speak and, um, I do a lot of stuff with music and I do a lot of stuff. I volunteer in about a hundred different ways. And once in a while, I am the um, I'm the the pulpit guest, which means like the person who gives the sermon. We do have a minister at the church, um, but he is on his honeymoon. So, um, I'm the pulpit guest on Sunday. And I know last year I posted something. I was doing a sermon about rug hooking and a lot of people watched it and I appreciated it. It was fun because it was the highest in in the history of us recording how many people watch every service. That was by far the highest by like 10 times. So that was really exciting and I I was very proud that so many people tuned in to watch it and posted comments and stuff during the Zoom. So I just want you to know this this service I'm doing on Sunday is not about um rug hooking this time. I did that last year. Um it is about um the name of the service is starting here starting now. This is the mockup that I got. Nobody's got them yet. So this is like ahead of the schedule. Here's me up here and my my buddy Carl who's my my sweet love. He's the worship associate.
So he's supporting me for this. And Ben, another one of my beloveds. He's the piano player. And um it's going to be a really interesting service. It is about if you're interested in inspiration.
It's not religious, right? So this isn't like a God church. sometimes is, but this is more of an this is a Unitarian Universalist church. So, it's more poetry, inspiration, philosophy, um social justice, stuff like that. So, this service starting here, starting now, if you're interested in tuning in, is about um we're do we're doing kind of a funny thing that we have never done before because Carlo is my buddy. Um we kind of work this out together. Um the sermon for me will be talking about how I live on the bridge, right? I live on the bridge. If it's Friday, I'm like, "Dang it, won't Sunday come? I want to get this thing over with." Or if it's February, I'm like, "I can't wait for St. Patrick's Day." I just am always on the bridge. I tell other people to get off the bridge. I'm constantly telling Teddy to get off the bridge. I am always on the bridge. I try so hard to get off.
So, my part of the sermon will be um you know, testimony of a person on the bridge. So I will talk about how I'm trying to break this pattern and be I guess what people say be present right during people say a lot of different things. People used to say being present a lot. You don't hear that that much anymore. More often now I hear people referring to like the liinal time, right, which is the time in between, like whether it's literally like dusk and dawn or whether it's just that in between time in your life when you know you can't get it together or you're waiting for something or you're stalled or the money's not there, the inspiration's not there, something isn't there and you're just waiting. Um, whatever it is, right? We all hit that place, but my buddy Carl is never on the bridge. He is rarely on the bridge. I think he's God, he's got to be He's got to be close to 70 if he's not in his 70s. Um I mean he just he's traveled like four or five times already this year. He's retired. He does a lot of social justice stuff. He volunteers his time like five days a week. Um you know lobbying for people who need help and have all different kinds of of problems and would get lost in the system if he didn't do that. But he travels all the time. I mean he just went to Cambodia twice. Uh he just walked the El Camino, right? He's never on the bridge. He's like running across the bridge. So, his half of the sermon will be testimony from a person not on the bridge. Uh so, I hope that it's an inspiring service. It's supposed to be inspirational and we've got some beautiful songs in there. Uh Ben picked some of the songs out. I'll do a spoiler alert and say um we are using we're using three beautiful poems in the service and one of them is uh called Warning by Jenny Johnson, better known as When I'm Old I Will Purple. Uh, that's a favorite of mine. And so that will be in the service. And um, Ben is going to sing this song by Jim Crochi called Time in a Bottle, which I'm sure everybody knows.
I'm going to sing a Carly Simon song, Anticipation. And all of these kind of fit the theme. And there's a bunch more songs and poems and uh, it should just really be a nice time. If you are local, I hope that you will come. Um, and if you're not local, I hope that if you feel like it, you will watch from Zoom.
I put it on my Facebook with the Zoom and the login and all of that. So, you can like log on to the Zoom and watch it that way. I hope that there are not any technical problems. We're we're doing the surfaces downstairs in the basement now because of the heat upstairs. And um last week was the first one in the basement. The basement is sh is Fellowship Hall, so it's not like a you know dive. It's like it's a beautiful space. But um yeah, the sound was not good last week. So, I've been blowing up people's phones saying, "Please make sure that the mics are working and that everything is working because this, you know, this is a big deal to me and to Carl and to Ben and we've spent a lot of time putting the service together." So, um yeah, I'm really proud of that. As soon as we leave this service, um Oh, yeah. It should be it should be really good.
Um in my shaman community, being grounded is the main goal. Lol. Too much in my head and I need to keep staying present. It's hard. It's hard. I mean, I make the point in the sermon that, you know, being on the bridge is you're supposed to be a transition place. And if you live on the bridge, that's a different problem. That's my problem.
But at the same time, when you think about it, like life is a bridge, right?
Like we don't know what happened before.
I mean, maybe you have strong convictions, but um I I personally can't be sure what happened before or what's coming after. And this whole middle part is it's its own bridge. So the thought of leaving the bridge is kind of a strange thought. But to get but the bridge is a place of transition, isn't it? And where changes can happen. And if you live on it, I don't know. I don't I don't think that's the right use for the bridge, right? But it should be a great sermon. It should be a lot of fun. And we're going straight from that from the church to I'll stay afterward to chat with everybody and say hi to everybody and stuff. We always give hugs and um there's always like a line like it's a wedding. So everybody can can give hugs and um and say like, "Oh, I love this part or that part or whatever or I thought you sucked or whatever." What whatever they want to say, they can say it. I love everybody who's there. And um we're going to go straight after that to New York City because I had booked tickets for this YouTube thing for the kids. It's in an actual theater. It's a live event. I'm letting them go and we're going to go have a drink uh on on our own, but um we're going to be in New York City right after on Sunday night.
So, we're staying over and I won't be around Monday. So, I'm going to run the Monday show on D. I'm going to run it on Tuesday.
Why don't I come in uh right after Kirsten's 11 till 1 Zoom?
Why don't I come in um I'll come in at 1. So, I'm going to do coffee time. I'm going to put on my calendar 100 p.m.
Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday immediately following um Kristen's Zoom, right? The the hook hooking the weekly hooking. So, I'm going to save that. So, that'll be when the next one comes up.
And next Friday, holy crap, is uh Rebecca. Rebecca comes next Friday the 17th. I have to check what time she comes at. We should be able to do a live show. We always do a live show. So, I have to ask her what time her flight gets in because we always do a live show, even if it's a little bit later.
So, we'll count on doing that. And then I'll be in Newport next weekend. We'll be sorting out some ticker stuff. Man, it never ends. I'm telling you, never ends. So, anyway, remember, not Tuesday, not Monday, but Tuesday next week. And remember to log on on Sunday if you feel like it. Should be a lot of fun. I'm always very proud of what I do there.
Um, and I feel like it makes a makes a difference to a lot of people and and to to our immediate community there at the church. So, um, I love doing that and I'm really looking forward to it. And I love Carly Simon. I've been waiting. You know, that song is really what got me started with the idea for this service because I love the song anticipation and it it reminded me of how often I am suspended in space and time waiting waiting for a sign or waiting for something. Right? So anyway, I will see you soon regardless. Remember, Magpie Times uh due date, the official due date is January 15th, right? I know that's going to blow by and I'm not going to hit it, but if you are working on something, please let me know because I want to be able to say to Judy, "We got this." Right? We got this. Um let me know if you're working on something, if you need help with anything. Um ribbon candy [email protected].
The title of the book tonight, yes, good one. The title of the book tonight is Stitching Stars, the story quilts of Harriet Powers by Mary Lions with a Y.
So does and and it's not super long, but there's a lot. Um, one more time, there's a lot in it, right? And I'm hardly reading any of it. I mean, it's this is like this is a great book to just sit in a chair with and read it beginning to end. Um, I probably look at it in bed one more time tonight because we've got one more episode in us. And um yeah, I'm really enjoying it. You know, one of the best things about books like this and why for me it's sometimes worth getting these kinds of books.
I'm going to read um after Tuesday's episode I'm going to read the afterward because it does talk it kind of um sums everything up including uh the Jenny Smith, you know, interlude with Selling the Quilt and everything. But one of the great things about these kinds of non-fiction books is that they have a uh they're calling it selected sources, right? It tells you where they're pulling from uh to get all of this information to compile in the book. And if you love the book and you love the subject, then you can follow up on the sort of bibliography, right? The selected sources and get more information. So while this is a short book, you know, you could you could find out more. There is a picture of Harriet at the back of it. Um, I'll show you this on Tuesday as well. Harriet decorated her apron with a cross and the cross is like it's like one of her little ones like this, not like a crucifix cross, a cross, a sunburst, and a and she made a scalloped hem.
Um, and this is the picture of her.
Let's end with this image.
Let me get that in focus. Hold on.
No, I'm going to get off the stool. Hang on. Danger. Danger, Red Ranger. Okay.
Okay. Yep. I'm off now. Let me move the stool. And let me come closer to you.
I can't tell if that's in focus, but it doesn't look like it is. Oh, was that it? Was that it? There we go. Here. Look down here. The scalloped hem. And can you see? Sorry, I know I'm moving. The star and the cross.
Isn't that absolutely precious? How she decorated her apron and just making those scallops would have really been something, right? I mean, that's just so much extra work. Um, just so much. I mean, she's such a pretty woman, too.
What a sweet face. She looks so wise, so gentle. God. Anyway, to be continued on Tuesday. Uh, very inspiring. Yeah. So, the link to these is there if you want to get started with them. I'm not going to start mine just yet, but um but they're there for you. And I'm getting all of those patterns have gone out um up to date. Um oh, one more thing. One more thing real quick. I just want to show you uh real quick because I was working on some stuff um with Kirsten today. Kirsten um sent me I'm doing some dying. So I had I was working on doing about 120 colors. I'm going to do some more of that now. No, that's not what I wanted.
Uh this is what I wanted. I wonder if you can see that in focus. That's some of the colors I did right before the show. Lots of yellows, oranges, off-whites, and blues. This is all one ply. So, I'm I'm busy working on this.
I've to get the Chetty Camp stuff out.
Kirsten's on her end working on stuff like this, right? I'll show this during gallery night two weeks from now. So, just to just to remind you all about the Chetty Camp stuff. Um, I know a lot of you signed up for stuff. We're working away like demons because she's doing one of a kind patterns like this. She needs to figure out which colors are in which ones, what the total is. She's got me that total and I'm dying about it's 120 on the page, but I'm going to end up dying probably like 130 or 40. Um, so that she has lots of choices. So, and each one is a different kit. So, that's why if it's taking some time, nobody's complaining. Nobody's complaining. But I just want you to know we're not we haven't forgotten about it. It's just like, woo, is this a big project? Like 40 kits at once. Um, and color planning for the first time with all 40 of them.
It's not like making 40 of something.
So, I was working on that like a devil dog today. And um and I will do some more now and then maybe I get some time to do that tomorrow. But I'm working chugging along as quickly as I can with all of our stuff. Um but always send me a message if you're like, Diana, were you going to do this for me? Because I also forget stuff, right? I'm crazy and I forget stuff. I'm getting old and extra eccentric. I think ribbon candyhookinggmail.com.
Um and I can I can answer you if you're like, "Where's my such and such?" Uh, otherwise I'll either see you on Sunday or I will see you on Tuesday. Happy weekend everybody. Have a great couple of days.
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