ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 29, 1996 TAG: 9609300008
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-20 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: WILLIS
SOURCE: SALLY HARRIS SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
In the basement of Pauline Hodges' home in Floyd County stands a tall, wormy-chestnut cupboard her father, Elder Jethro Harris, made in the 1920s to store quilting materials for her mother, Ella Harris. The cabinet holds more than memories: It's still filled with quilts and fabrics.
When the nine children of Elder Jethro and Ella Harris snuggled into their beds on cold winter nights, they were covered with quilts their mother had made.
"Mama had to make a lot of quilts just to go on the beds," daughter Leta High said.
"But we never slept cold at night," daughter Alma Baker said.
The sisters remember scratchy woolen blankets their family had made at a Floyd County mill. They remember, too, that members of the congregation of their father's Primitive Baptist churches in Floyd and Carroll counties would give him quilt squares or quilts, and even chestnuts, because they had no money to pay a minister.
Pauline Hodges, the youngest of the three sisters, doesn't remember learning to make quilts; they've just always been a part of her life.
The women's grandmothers both quilted, their mother made hundreds of quilts in her lifetime, and all three sisters have continued the tradition. They will be the featured "family of quilters" at the Old Church Gallery Quilt Show in Floyd on Saturday and Sunday.
The women own quilts they've made, quilts they've been given, quilts they've bought at yard sales and auctions.
Last Saturday, the sisters were all excited about
an auction some of them had just attended. Hodges had bought quilts and a whole box of old feed sacks - ones made of printed cotton that farmers' wives cut up and restitched into dresses, bed covers or tablecloths.
Hodges thinks two of the quilts, which have an unusual yellow color in them, are made of hand-dyed solid feed sacks.
Their mother died in 1994 at the age of 99. Because she had made so many quilts in her lifetime, the sisters put one of her cross-stitch embroidered quilts atop her casket instead of a spray of flowers.
"People said how appropriate that was," Hodges said.
For the last 20 years of her life, their mother made quilts to sell. During part of that time, Baker, the eldest daughter, lived with her and they quilted together.
"There's no telling how many we made," Baker said.
Baker started quilting when she was 10 or 11 years old, and she's 82 now. That's 71 years of quilting. "I bet I've made - I don't know how many - and I've sold every one. I don't have the first one."
The birds-in-flight pattern sold best, Baker said, and she guesses it's her favorite. The squares are divided into two triangles, with one made of several tiny triangular pieces and the other containing a quilted picture of birds or flowers.
Working a public job kept High, the middle daughter, too busy to quilt for about 30 years, but she still has quilts she's made. One year, her husband made quilt racks for their children, and she let them pick the quilts they wanted from her supply - "anything except my wedding-rings," she said. The wedding-ring pattern is her favorite, and she keeps most of the quilts she makes. "I've never made a great deal," she said. "I did sell two, and I tried to buy one of them back."
Hodges, who now operates a business called Quilts and More out of her home, has always quilted. When her mother's health was failing, she quit her permanent job and stayed at home with her, keeping a bookkeeping business going at the same time. "I went from that into the quilting business," she said.
She makes quilts to sell, takes orders for special quilts, makes jackets, shirts, Christmas-tree skirts, table tops, even door ribbons made by cutting up old quilts that are too damaged to salvage. In her basement, on a quilting frame, is an unfinished Lone Star quilt she's doing on order.
The quilts made by the Harris sisters are everywhere. For example, the city of Roanoke bought one of Hodges' quilts to take to its sister city, Wonju, Korea. A woman in Floyd who is from England sent one back to her mother. A Blacksburg woman purchased one for her mother in India, and another woman who bought one was going to Africa to work .
"We're to be the featured quilters in the quilt show, and I don't have a quilt I've actually done," Hodges said with a laugh. She will show wall hangings and a coat she quilted.
The women reminisce about the quilts in their lives almost the way others reminisce about people. They remember the exact patterns, favorite quilts among those made by their grandmothers. They wonder where certain quilts are now.
"Grandma Harris had thimbles and scissors embroidered on her quilts," Baker said, "and pretty flowers. Almost every quilt had embroidery on it."
They remember going to quilting bees when they were youngsters. The person hosting the bee, a friend or sister-in-law or other relative of their mother's, would have quilt tops ready. The women would gather to quilt them while the hostess cooked. Sometimes the women would work on several quilts in different rooms of the house.
Quilt linings back then were made from feed sacks like the ones the women prized from their auction bargains.
"I tell you what else," Baker said. "They took the backs of pants legs and made quilts." The pants were made of wool or denim, and the backs of the legs were the least worn. "We made a lot of wool quilts out of yarn pants," she said.
At that time, quilts were made to be used. "Back then, nobody knew what a wall hanging was," Baker said.
High remembers the first quilt she bought as "art." She got it at a department store, and it was made of "sort of cheater's cloth," she said. "Cheater's cloth" is material printed with a quilt pattern so that the pieces do not have to be patched together. The quilter simply quilts along the edges of the pattern.
Now, quilts serve as both utilitarian objects and works of art for the sisters.
Hodges has quilts on all her beds: a double pinwheel that Baker made on one, birds-in-flight quilts that her mother and Baker made on twin beds in another room, a nine-patch quilt that was one of the last her mother made on another bed.
Hodges also has quilts as art work throughout her house. In her living room is a tulips-in-spring quilted wall hanging she made during a class taught by Linda Fiedler, an artistic quilter who is chairing the Old Church Gallery Quilt Show. Of all the quilts Hodges has made, she is proudest of that one.
Hodges' house is a quilter's museum and workshop. Quilts are folded on chairs - a Dresden-plate pattern she pieced and her sister Leta quilted, a log-cabin quilt her mother made, an old quilt with a strange slanted pattern that she bought at a yard sale, and the oldest quilt she owns, a red-and-yellow one made by her husband's aunt Arlie Tobler when she was 14. Tobler is in her 90s now.
In one bedroom is a tiny doll bed that Baker's husband made for Hodges when she was about 7 (Baker is 19 years older than Hodges). In it is the doll she got for Christmas that year; and on top of the doll is a tiny quilt Hodges later made. In another room is a small quilt rack - about eight inches high - holding another tiny quilt.
The basement is her workshop: Bins of fabrics under counters. A spool holder full of thread on the wall. The Lone-Star quilt on a frame. Pieces of crazy quilts. Quilted window treatments. The "new" old quilts she just got at auction. A shelf of quilts the Old Church Gallery Quilters group has made in its Love Quilts project for nursing homes, the Ronald McDonald House, and children's homes, all ready to be distributed.
"We do a lot with quilts," Hodges said.
Sally Harris is information officer for the College of Arts and Sciences at Virginia Tech, and is no relation to the quilting Harris sisters.
LENGTH: Long : 146 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Gene Dalton. 1. Floyd County sisters (from left) Paulineby CNBHodges, Alma Baker and Leta High are all considered master quilters.
2. Pauline Hodges uses a specially designed thimble to push a sewing
needle through the quilting fabric. 3. A thread caddy (left) keeps
spools of Pauline Hodges' thread within easy sight. 4. "Tulips in
Spring" quilt hangs on the Hodges' living room wall. 5. The tools of
a quilter lie on a nearly completed quilt at the Floyd County home
of Pauline Hodges (ran on NRV-1). color.