Kentucky Barn Quilts

In mid-December my older sister and I headed out from Louisville on a four hour drive to eastern Kentucky. It had been over a year since we had been back to Pike County where we were born and raised. In 2008 a fire destroyed my sister's apartment building in Pikeville. I moved her to Louisville so I could do a better job of caregiving. She was happy with her new apartment in the city, but she wanted to see her old apartment and we both wanted to visit my elderly Aunt Draxie who still lives on the family farm. A long roadtrip with my sister can be a challenge because, sadly, we don't have a lot to talk about. However, on this trip we would be traveling part of the time on one of Kentucky's Quilt Trails. Once we left I-64 and got on more rural roadways of eastern Kentucky we were on the lookout for the brightly colored graphic quilt designs painted on barns--like this flower basket on an old rusty tin-roofed barn.

Quilting in Kentucky is a functional art form. Country women saved scrap pieces of fabric and sewed them, usually by hand, into bed covers that provided warmth and beauty for their homes. Mothers taught their daughters to cut out, piece, and quilt these traditional bedcovers. The patterns were handed down through the generations. The quilt designs had names like: Flower Basket, Little Dutch Girl, Log Cabin, Flying Geese, Bowtie, Grandma's Wedding Ring.

The idea for barn quilts probably originated with the hex signs that were painted on barns in Pennsylvania. Painting quilt patterns on barns was first done in the mountains of West Virginia and then spread to Kentucky and North Carolina as a way to celebrate rural life. Kentucky's Quilt Trails were organized by the Kentucky Arts Council.

We had not been driving long on KY-460, a quilt trail that runs through eight eastern Kentucky counties, when we spotted our first barn quilt: I pulled off the road and tried to get photos without getting run over by the traffic. My photos aren't great because the barns were usually at a distance from the highway, but you can see the variety of barns and patterns that we spotted.

The next quilt was the flower basket on the tin-roofed barn above--which was my favorite for it's rough weathered beauty. Next we spotted this newer barn with the Bowtie pattern painted in bright orange, green and yellow: As I mentioned earlier, we made this trip in mid-December so there were Christmas decorations out. Look closely at the barn and you'll see a simple star over the quilt. At night it's quite common to see barns lit with these huge stars. A lovely sight when you're driving through the country on a winter's night.

We were having good luck with our barn quilt hunt. In less than 100 miles we spotted five barns with quilt paintings--all very different. The next one was in a small community by the highway. It was painted to resemble print fabric which would commonly be used for quilts:

Once we got into Pike County we had to leave the main highway and drive this narrow road to the end of Joe's Creek hollow. If we met an oncoming car, one driver would have to pull off the road--please not me--to let the other car pass. My Aunt Draxie, who is in her late 80s, lives alone on the family homeplace which is nearly a hundred years old. She is a true mountain woman in the best sense. She is a keen quilter so after lunch we admired her latest creations, including this pansy appliqued quilt top: Aunt Draxie was really enjoying sharing her quilts so we kept digging through the quilt chest and found this treasure. This embroidered muslin bedspread was over a hundred years old and had been a gift to my Aunt Draxie from her aunt. This cover would have only been used for special occasions like when the house was cleaned for Sunday or when company came. I was fascinated by the embroidery stitches--quite different from modern embroidery, perhaps because of the heavy thread used many years ago.

Late in the day we reluctantly left my Aunt Draxie and drove into Pikeville so my sister could see her old apartment building. She was satisfied with just a passing look at the building and said she was happy to be a city "girl" in Louisville. We drove back home and before leaving the KY-460 Quilt Trail we ended the barn quilt search with this last example, a patriotic red, white and blue:Although I've been a city dweller for over thirty years, these beautiful quilts and visiting my dear Aunt Draxie reminded me that I'll always be proud of my mountain roots.

Note: if you are interested in learning more about barn quilts, the Kentucky Arts Council has published Kentucky Quilt Trails Views and Voices which describes the community by community establishment of these quilt trails by folk art scholars. The book includes pieces by both literary and visual artists describing the impact of quilts on rural life in Kentucky. It also includes interviews with the families who participated in the project--how they chose the patterns for their barns, its significance to the family, the history of the barn itself. The introduction to the book is written by Silas House, a rising young Kentucky writer. House has earned national critical acclaim for his novels such as Clay's Quilt , The Coal Tattoo, and A Parchment of Leaves.

Yin and Yang Sisters

Messiness is the topic for this week's Fun Monday. Gattina, our host over at Writer's Cramps ,wants to see a photo of what we'd call our messy place. If I were still working, it would be my entire office. Colleagues used to stick their heads in my work space and mutter something like "You better hope the fire marshal doesn't show up." or "This must be your job security--who would be willing to clear out this place if you were ever fired?" That was some time ago, three years to be exact since I retired.

In my home I live a very pared down existence with minimum stuff to leave messy. However, I do have a messy situation in my life that causes conflict and frustration--the challenge of caring for an older sister with whom I have very little in common. We are the yin and yang sisters.



My sister and I were about the same age, probably 14 or 15, when these photos were taken. M (on the left) is nine years older than I. Recently I've been scanning and organizing family photos and when I studied these photos of us side by side I thought: we are so different on every level. And, it got me thinking about how different our life paths have taken. We could not be further apart in personality and interests. I see these contrasts in our photos and the effects on our relationship now--over 40 years later. Over the past year, my care taking responsibilities for M have grown--to what seems like full time some weeks. This is not how I planned to live out retirement years. I hoped to spend my eagerly anticipated retirement years freely pursuing a quiet, creative, almost scholarly lifestyle. However, that's not my current reality.

My family has never been very close. Now it's only my sister and me left except for a brother in another state who doesn't involve himself in our lives. That's the way it has always been. My sister left school at 16 and stayed home with my parents, working for a few years as a housekeeper/babysitter. She never married, nor did I--one thing we have in common. I loved school and saw an education as the way to ensure a happy independent future for myself. I left home for college and never returned, managing to graduate from college without any support, financial or otherwise, from my family. Work took me to many different places, but never back to my parents' house except for obligatory visits.

After my parents died, M lived independently, which was just the way she liked it. She dealt with some chronic illnesses, but nothing serious. She built a big network of friends, keeping in touch with many people by phone and extensive correspondence. She never learned to drive which was not a big issue in the small town where she lived. I made regular trips to see her and help with any business that she couldn't sort out. I will have to admit that these were strictly duty visits--a stepping up to the plate because no one else would. I became my sister's "fixer."

About this time last year I had to re-locate my sister to Louisville, where I live. She lost her apartment to a fire and her health and ability to manage on her own was declining. We had a rough few months trying to live under one roof. And there was a lot of stress in having to sort out all the red tape of moving her, finding her new housing, and lining up medical and legal provisions for her ongoing care. I did this alone without much cooperation from M. But, after a year, things are on an even keel. My sister enjoys her safe new apartment and the companionship of other women her age in the apartment building. She has good medical care and never has to worry about affording her prescriptions. She spends her days chatting with friends, watching TV, and keeping up her extensive correspondence. I live about 10 minutes from her so am always on call for chauffeuring, shopping, laundressing, business responsibilities. I am my sister's fixer. Most days my "halo" is a bit crooked because I think: how did this happen? And why is it that in every family there plays out this same drama? Mostly though I feel sadness and regret that I've lost the freedom to live the way I always planned without being bound by someone else's needs and expectations.

Now dear readers, this is the closest you'll ever see of me lying on the virtual psychoanalyst's couch on this blog. I usually go for something happier here. But, if we're sharing the "messy" places around us, this yin and yang sister relationship would have to be what I'd write about. What about you? Are you dealing with the same issues? If so, how do you manage?

Be sure to hop over the Gattina's place and see what other messes need tidying up.

(Image credit for yin yang symbol at the top of post: www.redbubble.com )

Quilting Memories

(Our host for this week's Fun Monday, Karisma , wants us to share something made with our own two hands. She's confident that everyone, especially Fun Monday people, has a great many talents and abilities to share. And, Karisma apparently doesn't go for excuses. Even though we may say that we've never made anything creative with our own hands, she gave us the assignment last Wednesday with this challenge: "Even though you've never made anything, you have four days to work on it, so get off your butt and bake us a cake or something!" Well, I'm temporarily off cake baking because of the upcoming swimsuit season, so I'll tell you about making quilts. How's that Karisma?)

I made this quilted wall hanging last year. The design is called Log Cabin.

All the women in my family quilted--my mother, sister, aunts, and cousins. For mountain women making quilts was both a necessity and art form. Every home needed a supply of quilts to keep everyone warm in the winter since we didn't buy blankets. All year long quiltmaking was a part of a woman's work. In the summer women pieced scraps of cotton together in beautiful designs, with names like Grandmother's Flower Garden, Wedding Ring, Drunkard's Path and Friendship, when the housework and gardening was done for the day. In the winter the handpieced quilt tops were "set up". Setting up a quilt involved sandwiching cotton batting between the top and lining and stretching in a frame. After the winter housework was done, the quilt would be let down from the ceiling in the front room (or parlor) and the women of the family--and sometimes visiting neighbors--would sit around the quilt frame joining the three layers together into a beautiful work of art and enjoying each other's company. The workmanship standards were high. No fabric was wasted, every hand stitch must be even and very small with no puckers in the fabric. A common insult to a woman's quilting abilities would be to say that her stitches were so long her husband may catch his toenail in a stitch! We more modern women may say that perhaps the husband should cut his toenails. . .

As a small child, I can remember playing with my cousins underneath the quilt frame as the women worked. Young girls learned to quilt by making miniature or doll quilts. My 85 year old Aunt Draxie still has some of the treasures she made as a child. Newly married women were given at least five new quilts when they started their new home, almost like part of a bride's dowry. Recently my Aunt Draxie presented her great grandson with a collection of handmade quilts at his wedding. What a loving tradition to keep going!

My Log Cabin wall hanging was done the modern way. I bought coordinated fabrics, laying them out on the work table like I was creating a painting. I selected the earth tones that I like to have around me instead of using what fabrics that could be found in the quilt scraps bag. I used precision tools like a rotary cutter to make the quilt pieces. Then each section was assembled, using my very weak geometry skills, on the sewing machine. There are no hand stitches in this quilt except for the edge binding. Although it's not handsewn, it's definitely made by my hands. It pleases me as much as a painting.

Now be sure to check out other Fun Monday "made by hands" at Karisma's Page .

Women's Lot

(Our host for this week's Fun Monday, Kitten , invites us to describe the super hero in our lives. She's not interested in celebrity. Instead, who is the person that you look up to, that has had a significant impact on who you are and how you live your life? For me, that would be my 84 year old Aunt Draxie.)

In the early 1940s my Uncle Dennis married Draxie, a girl from a neighboring farm, and brought her to the family farm in the Appalachian foothills to live with my grandmother and grandfather. In just a few years they had two sons. Over the years I have talked with my aunt about her early married life and have always understood that she endured many hardships of body and spirit that continued for many years.

The farm was owned by my grandfather,who was ailing by that time, and my uncle worked it in anticipation of someday inheriting. The farmhouse sat up on a hillside and all the rich bottomland below was used for crops. It was subsistence farming in that everything the family expected to eat had to be grown each year. Man and mule provided the labor to work the land. It took everyone old enough to work in the family--man, woman, and child--to plant, tend, and put the crops by to live on from year to year.

From the beginning of her marriage my Aunt Draxie was always the second woman in the household. Although my grandmother was a very loving and indulgent grandparent to me and my cousins, she was very hard on my aunt, insisting that she have absolute control over every decision that would traditionally be the woman's role in the family--homekeeping, child rearing, caregiving for my ailing grandfather. Unfortunately, my uncle never stood up to his mother and defended his young wife. He felt that it was my aunt's duty as the young wife to submit to everyone else in the family. Aunt Draxie learned early on that she just had to take it--for the sake of her young boys and because there there was no other alternative.

So, the years went by. My aunt reared two sweet and gentle sons, who to this day honor and respect their mother. This was one of Aunt Draxie's most telling achievements because in the mountain culture sons are catered to by the women of the family. My grandparents died in the 1960s, followed very soon by my uncle. After all these years my aunt was finally on her own. Had she not done such a good job in rearing her sons, her life would have continued to be miserable because the farm was deeded to her sons, not to Aunt Draxie. However, her sons moved quickly to protect their mother by giving her control of the farm so long as she lives.

In this photo my Aunt Draxie is in her early 80s. She still lives alone on the family farm. Her life is a daily rhythm of work and discipline--but of her own choosing. She raises a huge garden, putting by much of what she raises for the winter. She keeps her home with little help from modern conveniences. In the winter she makes beautiful quilts. No days are idle. She has the pleasure of welcoming new daughters-in-law in the family and treats them and her grandchildren with great love and affection. If only she had received the same treatment as a young woman. I often think that the greatest compliment that could be paid me is to say that I'm like my Aunt Draxie--she truly is my Super Hero.

Now take some time to check out other Fun Monday heroes. Go to Kitten's Place for the list.

(Photo credit: Kentucky postcard "Rural Kentucky" by Dan Dry)