Unfolding: One Block, Many Stories

This podcast interview is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Listen to the conversation between Olivia Joseph and Patricia Kelly and follow along with this transcript. Run time is approximately 24 minutes

Hello and welcome to Unfolding. My name is Olivia Joseph, the Quilt Research Fellow here at Mingei International Museum located in San Diego, California. First and foremost, I would like to give thanks to the Terra Foundation for American Art for making this project and fellowship possible.

Before we get started, I wanted to reintroduce Unfolding, a series of written and now audio stories which are intended to help others find out more about the world of quilting, its diverse histories, and the Museum's own collection of roughly 370 quilts.

This interview is a part of One Block, Many Stories, a series that dives deeper into the various perspectives and interpretations which belong to individual quilt pattern blocks. I think the best way to understand this is through meaning and how meaning is made. For instance, while an artist may have a particular message in mind, a viewer may take away different meanings and reflections, likely being impacted by traditions, lived experiences, or even where they grew up.

In quilts, I have found the same thing to be true. There are so many things that can influence the name of a pattern. Today's focus is alternate quilts and pattern block names told through the experience and lens of Patricia Kelly, a local quilter and president of the People of Color [Quilt] Guild in San Diego. In our conversation with Patricia, we will discover that individual pattern blocks have complex histories, we'll discuss the Flying Geese pattern, which has an alternate African name Wasoko, referencing a farmer's tool known as a sickle. Both of these names are true to the design of the pattern. However, while one speaks to a Western experience, the other speaks to an African experience. As you listen, consider that the purpose of quilts continues to grow over time, serving as utilitarian objects, artistic expressions, political commentary, and so on.

Olivia Joseph: So I wanted to thank you, Patricia, for taking the time to be here with me today to talk about One Block, Many Stories, that is a segment that is a part of Unfolding, where we talk about the variety of stories that exist behind quilt pattern blocks, and so once again thank you for being here today with me.

Patricia Kelly: Thank you for inviting me.

OJ: Of course. Okay, so I wanted to start by getting a sense for your quilting journey and how you really got into quilting. How long ago did you begin quilting?

PK: I think I started about 20 years ago, but I didn't take it seriously until about ten years ago.

OJ: What would you say made you take it seriously?

PK: Probably about the time I joined the quilt guild. I joined about 10 years ago. Until then I was playing around.

OJ: *laughs* Love it. What made you interested to even start quilting in the first place?

PK: Well, about 20 years ago, I ran into one of my friends who had been at school with me in high school and junior high, and she told me she had started a quilt class. And so I joined the class really to be with other people that were sewing, because I started sewing when I was 12. And at that time, women had to–well, we were girls–we had to be in home-ec. Either you had to take sewing or cooking, and I took sewing, and my sisters and I, we all would sew and my aunt just for the fun of it.

And then when I got into high school, I started sewing with a group of girls, and we would sit around, plan our dates, plan what we're going to wear to the dances, to concerts, and it was a lot of fun. So that's why I started to enter the quilting class, mainly just to sit and talk to other people. I didn't think I was really going to quilt.

My grandmother was a good seamstress. She could sew, but we didn't have a real quilting background in our family that I knew of. I learned more about quilting when I joined the guild, and I heard a lot about the different quilting backgrounds. One thing was really surprising to me is how many men, and some of the members of the guild, how many men were actually quilting in their family. I had never heard that before.

OJ: Yeah, I’ll say for me too. Can you tell us a little bit more about that guild and how you got into the guild or interested in joining the guild in the first place?

PK: Well, our guild is the only predominantly African-American guild in San Diego County. We’re known for our large quilts, especially queen size, king size, and taking traditional patterns and altering them more with bright colors, African fabric, altering it more. So we'll take its traditional pattern and make it more colorful.

We have a show at least every February, and now we added one in June, so we can introduce quilting to the public.

And how I joined the guild was because unfortunately, my teacher had passed away, so the class was over. So she had been trying to get me to join the guild, but I was intimidated, because I had no idea what a guild was, first of all, and I knew these women were going to be very advanced quilters, and so I was intimidated to join, but I wanted, once again, to be with a group of women that were sewing, so that's why I end up joining, and I'm so glad I did I've learned so much.

OJ: How did you end up becoming the president of that guild?

PK: Actually it was after one of the shows. I was telling them different things I had heard guests say when they came to our show and they said, “You should be president,” and I thought, ‘What?’ Because I was not really a quilter, in my eyes. So that's how I end up becoming president, and I've been president ever since, because they keep saying, “You're doing a great job.” And I said, “Don't the bylaws say I should be out of here by now?” And they're saying, “We're voting you back in!” So that's how I became president.

OJ: I love that.

PK: So I started saying, we need to let other people and other communities know what we're doing, and that was how I started. And like once again, I don't feel like I was really doing that much quilting. I would think I was doing more promotion than quilting.

OJ: Would you say there was any particular quilter at that time that you found inspiring to you as you were continuing to go down your quilting journey?

PK: I think the first quilt that probably inspired me was the Underground Railroad quilt, and I never thought I was going to make one. The main reason is because to make that quilt, you have to follow a pattern, and I was always a rebel–my poor teacher. I would always just do what I wanted to do, so my blocks, a lot of times, weren’t matching, and to do an Underground Railroad quilt, you have to stick to the pattern.

Some people have done some variations now, but if you want to make an original one, you have to stick to the pattern. That was my first experience with it. It took a while for me to actually attack it, because I was still intimidated by doing it.

OJ: Was there anything that you think helped you feel a little less intimidated or feel like, ‘Oh, I could I could do this’?

PK: I still do feel like, because I know there are so many quilters that are way better than I am, even in our guild, but everyone is so accepting, even in other guilds. If you go to another guild, they are really excited about seeing your work. They're always encouraging. And in our guild, for example, they won't say anything negative, but if you ask for suggestions and say, “What could I have done to make this better?” They'll say, “Well, what about this?” No one ever looks at your work and says, “This is terrible.” They always are encouraging and excited, even like we have a person that just joined. She made her first quilt, and when she held it up, everyone cheered. So it was like I said, everyone's really encouraging in the guild.

OJ: I really love that. I think, one memory I have, when you invited me to one of your guild’s quilt shows, was actually going into the space, and just like you were saying now, everybody was so inviting and they were talking about their own personal stories. I feel like you could really feel the warmth and all the love that exists in that space. So yeah, all to say is, I completely understand that sentiment. I completely agree with what you say about that.

PK: But I think it's cultural too, because when somebody comes to your house, you're not going to sit there when somebody walks in and ignore them. But I feel like when they come to the show, it's like they're coming to our house. So everyone greets them. If you go up and talk to somebody or if somebody has a question about a quilt, I'll say, “Oh, that's so-and-so’s quilt.” And they'll run over and say, “Well, this is what I did.” They'll start talking.

OJ: Do you think that’s something particular to Black guilds?

PK: I'm told that it's not, because we did not know that it was not until someone said something about, “I'm surprised about how friendly the members were.” And then some people took it as an insult, and we were like, “What are they talking about?” And then we finally realized that sometimes you go to a show and people, no one ever speaks to you. No one approaches you. No one talks to you, and we were surprised, because we always have done that. So we didn't think it was unusual.

OJ: Growing up also around a lot of African and Black folk at home, it's like always homey. It's so warm. Everyone wants to know what you're doing. You're just constantly being asked questions, and so I think that's kind of why I asked that question—to gauge that and also to help listeners potentially understand the feeling, I think, really just the feel and the atmosphere of some guilds.

PK: Well, some people are afraid to come to our shows until they come, and then they're like, “Oh, that wasn't scary. I was welcomed in. I don't have to be Black to come to this show.” And they’re really surprised a lot of times.

OJ: Do you think identity—maybe as well as tradition or maybe the exploration of your identity—do you think that's something that you incorporate into your practice?

PK: I think I'm doing that more and more. I do what I consider protest quilts sometimes, African themed quilts, African-American themed, but then I like to also do quirky things that are kind of funny, somebody will look at and they'll start laughing. Sometimes they're religious, sometimes you know, evoke emotion, especially with panels, which is a whole different area of what we want to go into. So I try to vary it.

I don't want to just be seen as a person that's fighting and protesting, but sometimes you want to look at it and make people smile.

OJ: For me, it's been personally interesting to see the variety of ways that these textiles can be used. I think it's amazing the stories that can be tied to the way that they're used—if it's for utilitarian purposes, maybe you have stories around the making of it, and it is that familial feeling. With the art quilts, maybe you're diving into things that inspire you, and with the protest quilts, I think that sometimes speaks to things happening in society or even in your own experience.

Patricia brought in a quilt that I first saw at her guild’s quilt showcase. The particular quilt had a total of 15 quilt blocks, 12 of which had examples of pattern blocks, but the block that captured my eye was a block that had alternate African names, meanings, and origins. The quilt used black, yellow, green, red, and orange African fabrics, and the blocks were joined together by orange strips of fabric known as sashing.

OJ: I'm kind of curious about how you found that tradition or those names and maybe even why you decided to include them into your quilts.

PK: I think about five years ago, I was looking online and just looking at different quilters and one person is Miriam Galadima-Benson. She has a Facebook group called Quilt Africa, and I started looking at what she was doing. So she would have challenges every once in a while. I was there for the first challenge, I think it was.

But I think it was like probably the third challenge, she was holding up a quilt. The quilt was white, background, and it looked like batik print emblems on it, but it was probably African print. We would call that Flying Geese, but when she held it up, she said Wasoko. I hope I'm saying it right, because I don’t speak the language.

And the Americans on there started screaming and she said, “What did I do? What did I say?” So we said, “We know that as Flying Geese.” And she said, “No, those are not geese. Those are sickles.” And that was the first time I had ever heard about that.

And she said, “This is a block that originated in Africa.” And apparently when Africans were brought over to the United States and enslaved, the block was taken and renamed. So then she realized that we didn't know our history, so she decided to do a series on it. She did 12 blocks, and I wrote down as many as I could, and so I finally got the 12 blocks down, and then I recreated them.

And then there's a husband and wife team they’re called Luceina Rose Embroidery. He does labels–all the labels on my quilt are very beautiful. So I asked him to make a label. I had the label say the African name and definition and what the block became when it came over to the United States.

OJ: I feel like I probably had the same reaction you did when you initially saw the names where it's like, kind of a little shocked, like amazed.

Is that an intentional feeling that you're trying to evoke from people who do get to see this quilt that you have that has all of the individual pattern blocks? You have the names, and then you have the actual pattern itself on these quilts.

PK: Well, what was interesting is, about the same time, I was contacted by the math professors at Grossmont, and they said, “We're getting ready to expand our math department and we have…students of color. They will not take math as a profession because they don't think they can do math.” And so they wanted to know how far back you can go with quilting and to showing that, for example, they wanted to show that enslaved people could quilt and they were taught to quilt.

And luckily I had already learned from Miriam. I said that they had African universities before slavery. They had math before slavery, but I knew about these blocks, so I told her, “We can go back and tell them about Africans that knew math.” They asked for us to make, I think it was like, five Underground Railroad blocks, and when they did their presentation–or their permanent exhibit, I should call it–they included those blocks, and they also have something that says some of these blocks originated in Africa. So that was pretty exciting to be able to have students now at Grossmont Community College who at least know this and having people know it in general.

It was interesting, because when I first heard this, I ran back to my guild, all excited and they said, “Yeah, we know.” They said they already knew about this history, and I wish they had shared it more, and that's an example of losing history and losing things that happened.

OJ: I personally find that interesting, also surprising, also not too surprising. I feel like there is so much lost history. Really the first time I saw those names, those African names for those blocks, it was from you. I think a lot of the times with at least American quilt history, it ties to a lot more euro-centric trends or history with quilting, and so I wasn't entirely sure about the African-American and Black trends and history. Yeah, there's a lot of history that gets lost.

And I also wonder, since you do say that was common knowledge within your guild, is that at all a goal to share more of that African history?

PK: I hope it's going to be a start, maybe other people will start looking more into it. That's why, when I joined the guild and I said, “Oh, you are going to start letting the rest of the county and the rest of the world know that we exist," and I started inviting people to the shows, and they have been coming more and more. It's been really exciting to expand. So I want them to understand how important this is. That was the whole point of founding the guild–the founders wanted to have the history kept and to teach it to the next generation. So I'm trying to do that.

It's interesting because it's starting to be where I'm starting to be asked to speak at guilds, and I'm surprised how receptive they’ve been to this idea. Also we have a newer member that came into the guild that says she's going to start interviewing people. And so I thought, ‘Good, we're going to finally get this recorded history at least, not just written.’ If we can get some of it written down, because I said there's so much that the guild members knew that they didn't write down. Now that she's come in, she said, “I'm going to do a documentary.” So I've been really excited about it, especially if she can get any of the founders to speak on it.

But there are people in our guild, they have a history of what happened in their families that they can speak on, so I'm hoping to expand that. And then, of course, Miriam is international. Once she said that, I'm sure I'm not the only one that heard and took the series, so other people in the United States or maybe around the world are probably doing the same thing I'm doing.

OJ: I also noticed that you use some traditional African fabrics. I think some people might think of kente cloth, which I think usually tends to be in green, red, yellow, and black colors, but I notice that you also have another quilt that uses different colors, not those colors. But I'm curious, I guess, about your use of the African textile in the fabric itself in your quilt.

PK: I'm learning more, like when I learned about Miriam, she said the whole purpose of her Facebook group was to introduce the world to African print, and I did think kente cloth was basically it. So when I did the first challenge, she said, “You send $30 to me. I will send you 10 fat quarters.” Those are 18 inch by 22 inch rectangular shaped pieces of fabric.

So when she sent it to me, I thought, ‘What is this?’ Because it looked nothing like what I was used to. It had flowers. It had different types of prints I had never seen. I had never seen flowered African fabric.

So I go back online, and the other Americans mainly on there saying the same thing, “What is this?” And she said, “That is my point. All African fabric is not like kente print. We have all kinds of variety of fabric around the continent of Africa.” That was the whole reason why she did the contest and started teaching us different things about fabric.

OJ: I find that amazing, especially—I think that happens commonly where you have perceptions of what something may be or what may look like, and then sometimes you come across this culture shock moment and you're completely left wondering more, wanting to learn more.

PK: Actually, I thought I had been duped, because I had never seen fabric that looked like that!

OJ: I know you mentioned Flying Geese being one of your favorites, and we know the Flying Geese. It has, how I describe it as, the right triangles kind of V-shaped and usually stacked on each other. I also personally do like the Log Cabin pattern. Just to describe that for people, the Log Cabin has a square center. There's kind of like L-shaped strips of fabric that continue to go around this square piece, but you would use strips of fabric, sometimes scraps.

But I think with Log Cabin, at least for myself, what I've read, at least in the West, is that they usually associate it with like an actual log cabin, and then I know, at least sometimes, the center block has an associated meaning. I know red would be used sometimes to represent the fireplace or the hearth of the cabin.

I wonder if there's any associated stories that you think of in particular with these patterns.

PK: Right now, I mainly know the definitions. I'm just learning more about it. Like I said, according to Miriam, those are not geese, those are sickles. And so hearing that that had nothing to do with being in the air, it had something to do with the people actually working, so I thought that was interesting.

When they created the Underground Railroad quilts, what they did was they used them to send messages to people that were escaping. So the enslaved Africans took those meanings and turned them around, basically, and used them for their own good.

PK: Like I think the Log Cabin, once again, was showing that this is a safe place to go. And like you were saying about the color in the middle, I've heard that if the block in the middle is black, don't go in there.

They had different symbols, and that was something new to me, and I learned that from the person who does the longarming. She said, “You do know that if you have a red block in the middle, I think it meant it's a safe place to go, but if the block is black in the middle, it's not.”

And the other thing is, people have the idea that when you see the quilt all together into one piece, that that is how it was presented, but it's not because you can't follow the quilt if it all has all these different meanings. It was like one quilt–maybe the Log Cabin–is hanging on the fence, then you know this is a safe place to go. It only had the Log Cabin in that quilt. So I learned things like that.

OJ: I love that. I think I also read somewhere, at least for Underground Railroad and the quilting codes, that the Flying Geese might have indicated direction and where someone should go, I think, to seek potentially a safe place.

I love these stories. These stories are always so interesting.

OJ: Do you hope that there's something viewers, when they're seeing your quilt, could take away–or even doesn't even have to be in your quilt, maybe just generally–could take away from quilts, quilting practices, maybe even the quilt history?

PK: I hope they get inspired. If they want to learn more, I suggest going to like quilt shows. Not just our shows, but go to different shows when you see them coming up, and just look at what's being taught, look at what they're trying to interpret to you, and sometimes you can talk to the artists.

So I'm hoping that that's what will happen and they also will start looking at history and seeing the true history of how things started. And also quilting is ever-evolving. It's like I never knew that when I started. I thought it was just traditional. I thought I was just going to make these little blocks, but the more I'm in, the more I'm learning, that I'm never going to learn everything. There's always something new that someone comes up with.

OJ: I completely agree. I feel like there's always new things that emerge as more time passes by.

OJ: So I want to thank you so much for sharing about your practice, your quilt journey. It was very fruitful, and I'm glad that we had this conversation. I got to learn a little more about how you started quilting, some of the meanings that you're taking away from the quilts, and even just the history in general. And so, yes, once again, thank you for doing this podcast with me.

PK: Well, thank you for inviting me, and I hope we see you at our next show.

OJ: Yes! I will be there.