To Bee or Not to Bee: Quilting Societies in Appalachia by Sandy Laws

Martha Marshall: Interpreting Area Lifestyles Through the Art of Quilting

Martha C. Marshall was a native of Johnson City.  She taught history at Tennessee High School, Bristol, for 40 years, earning the honor of National Retired Teacher of the Year in 2006.  She was an instructor at East Tennessee State University and the Vaten School of Arts and Crafts.  She held a B. S. Degree from ETSU, and an M.A. from Vanderbilt.  She was active in local historical, educational and civic groups, and was a charter member of the Sullivan County Historical Society.


Martha taught herself to quilt in the 1960s during a revival of quilting.   An avid quilter, and collector, her museum-quality quilt collection was exhibited in numerous venues including "Taste of Tennessee" at the Opryland Exhibit Hall.  Martha earned many awards for her quilting and has written numerous articles in magazines.   Martha was the author of several books including Many Patches Ago:  The Story of Quilting Within the Mountain Region. 

She is known for a quilt she made for the Washington County Bicentennial in 1996, which was selected as the official poster for the event attributed as a symbol of the heritage of the area.  The quilt boasts 18 panels of historic buildings from earlier life in Washington County.

A scrapbook with photographs of Marshall, a detailed description and newspaper photo of the Bicentennial Quilt, a Rose of Sharon quilt, as well as information about the exhibit "200 Years of Quilting," may be viewed here in the Martha Marshall Scrapbook, on pages 75-83.

The following recordings are from the Mildred S. Kozsuch Papers in the Archives of Appalachia. In it, Martha is speaking to a group in Jonesborough on August 4, 1990, describing quilts she has displayed at the meeting and the history behind them.

Note:  Martha tells the group how people used to send a piece of material to celebrities, and they would sign their name and mail it back.  She discusses autographs from Bette Davis, Coretta Scott King, Ronald Reagan (actor), and Elvis Presley, to name a few.


Marshall, Martha: Interpreting Area Lifestyles Through the Art of Quilting (August 4, 1990), Mildred S. Kozsuch Papers, Archives of Appalachia, East Tennessee State University

August 4, 1990

I’ve been looking forward to this morning. We are fortunate in having a guest speaker, exhibitor. Many of you know Miss Martha Marshall. Not only is she a teacher at Virginia High, pardon me, Tennessee High, she’s an author and especially, she’s interested in quilting and mountain folklore. These quilts remind me of when I was a little country boy, in Lost Cove, my mother’s quilting frames and afternoon quiltings.  All the women would get together and each one brought a quilt, and then when that quilt was completed, they’d have a “cat shaking” – get the old cat– bring all the single girls in and fix the cat in the middle of the quilt and the girl the cat jumped closest to would be the one to get married. 

Miss Marshall was born in Washington County.  She graduated from Science Hill, Bachelor’s Degree from East Tennessee State, correct me if I’m wrong, and a Masters from Vanderbilt. She’s done graduate work in North Carolina and Hawaii, among others. 

It would take ten minutes, I won’t do that because it takes so much time, but uh, we are very fortunate to have Martha Marshall. Through the years, I’ve heard many things about her, all good, but we’ve never become acquainted although we live just a few miles apart, but we are fortunate having you and uh, we’re looking forward and it’s all yours now. 

Good morning. I’d like to welcome you to the quilt show and looking at them. It’s always my pleasure to talk about the quilts.  If I say something and talk about the quilt if you don’t hear me or you don’t understand it just raise your hands.  I’m very informal.  A very informal session.  I told Dr. Young and Mildred that uh, you don’t have formal quilt talks, you just talk about quilts. And that’s what we’re going to do today.  I’m just going to start and tell you something about the quilts that are on display first and then I have something else I’m going to talk about.

Well, now, let me see, I have this one right by my side, and I don’t know if there is anything more exciting than the Basket Quilt.  Somebody I talked to a while ago about different patterns, and certainly there are hundreds of basket quilts.  Now, this one I like because, way back in the Bicentennial years, whenever they were looking for outstanding things that would be important in stressing the crafts on postage stamps, they chose a little basket quilt like this.  In fact, it was more like this one I have over here.  Just a little country quilt like this.  And, when the stamps came out, they used two, two stamps, and uh … here, but I picked this out for another reason.   This is a country quilt. That’s obviously a country quilt.  But if you want to dress up your quilt, those of you who are quiltmakers, just add a fancy border, or put it together a little bit differently, and it goes from your country quilt to your more, um. Notice how this one is put together, this is the way the postal stamp uh, quilt was done, has the handles together, and of course you have your block of four here, and you see now these are in rows, and there are different ways you can put them together.  All ways you can experiment with things and make them a little bit different, more, in fact that’s your postage stamp quilt.
 
This is a quilt that I have made.  I have been working with the quilts for about 25 years.  I just kind of uh, got into it because the quilts were being done in the magazines and I thought well, surely, I can do that.  Because I’ve always done a little bit of sewing, and so I just started. The first quilt I made, it was huge.  It was as big as one side of this room, but I didn’t know that I could measure off the bed and put the quilt together that way.  I just started making it.  And so, then from there, I developed this hobby.  I do quilting, but I don’t do all the quilting. I do the types, I have a few antique quilts that I’ve collected, and others I’ve collected as well. Sometimes people say, well, they like a little bit of money, and so, I just, I pick up a quilt here and there.  Occasionally at a yard sale I’ll see one.  But I have a number of them, and to me every one is beautiful.

Now let’s see, come on over here. Everybody.

If I can help you lift any of the quilts.

Alright, I will in a few minutes.

I’m just gonna talk about these real briefly for a while.  Just about everybody that came in said something about this quilt.  This is a wreath quilt.  I have several wreath quilts. I like to appliqué myself.  And um, this quilt, I remember from my grandmother who died when I was just a baby.  That’s been a long time ago.  And she had a quilt of this nature, and I sort of made it up, and uh, tried to get the effect of the old quilts.  All of my quilts are classical, nearly all of them, are classical or traditional quilts.  I don’t make modernistic [sic] kinds of quilts.

If you pass by my yard, you’ll notice some maple trees, and this is a maple leaf, but here again, it’s put together different from most maple leaves and uh, if you um, uh, fold it, you’ll see this uh, design in the center, but it’s a maple leaf, they’re hanging upside down.  You see a maple leaf?  






All right, this over here is a copy of a museum quilt.  It’s called the “New York Beauty.” I’m gonna pull it over here and let you see it.  It’s an all over design, and um, the original to it is in the New York City Museum.







In the old days, people made quilts and named them from what they saw or what they knew, so you have hundreds of flower quilts, you have hundreds of butterflies, bees, ladybugs and all these things. You have all kinds of trees. I have about, I think I have enough tree quilts to put on every bed at Christmas.  

Um, this is one of my favorites. It’s, I just call it a tree, but I think the pattern is called the Norwegian Pine.  

This is one of the oldest designs, as far as I know, this is the oldest design that came into this area.  It’s called the Rose of Sharon.  And for a dress up quilt.  This is what you put on the bed when the minister came on Sunday.  For the dress up quilts, people imitated this quilt.  And it has some variations.  You can see the Rose of Sharon, and it will vary, and all of these quilts will vary somewhat from place to place, and time to time.  And um, this is Rose of Sharon.  It is still popular and it is still beautiful.  Although people don’t usually make quilts this involved anymore.  I have one that’s more involved than this. I started to bring it, but, uh, I’ll bring it another time.

This one – everybody knows that.  

It’s a turkey track.  

Turkey Track.

And they had Bear Paws and they had Duck Feet and all these names, Corn and Beans and Churn Dash and all these names.  This is a Turkey Track.  And you sometimes see this done in appliqué.  This one is pieced, and that’s why I got it, for the variety of it.  

The story goes that when this quilt first came out it was called wandering foot.  And the women were afraid to let their husbands or their sons sleep under it.  So they changed the name and they called it turkey track.

This quilt is another copy of a museum quilt.  I ordered this in a kit.  You know, usually you can recognize quilts that have been made from kits.  This one is a very rare one, you don’t see it much.  And it’s called the American Glory.  And it is magnificent. 

Over here, sorry, I, this one, this is a folksy little quilt and it is used a lot by quilt makers in shows.  It’s called the Hands All Around.  And it represents the quilters. And I’ve got this, let me show you something. Most of the quilts, uh, do not have strips in them.  They have two designs.  You have to study them sometimes to see what the design is.  

This one the first thing you see is white and red, but that’s not the design.  The design is here, wait a minute, the design is here, and that’s your hands all around.  But to just look at this quilt, the first thing will impress you is this red and it looks like that’s your design.  That’s true of all the quilts that are not stripped off, or have blocks, solid blocks in them.  I’ve looked at pictures.  Back when I started working with the quilts, they were not so, it was not an exacting science. You got something from your neighbor and that’s what that little book is that you all are passing around. You got something from your neighbor and you put them together.  And lots of times you saw a picture.  And I’ve got pictures that I’ve gotten from places that I’ve visited, and it’s hard to look at the picture and determine what the square is, and you’ve got to have the square before you can do the quilt.

This one goes off into a literary incline. No, the Delectable Mountains.  and I thought that since it’s here in our area, since the mountains are here in our area, that uh, I would bring this. I ran back upstairs this morning and got it, I had intended to get it out and write about it.  It’s the Delectable Mountains and it is an all-over design. There’s a lot of quilts. You see the mountains here? 

People can see better.

It’s hard to tell. I’m going to fold it up small, like now. 

Short pause…

During the Bicentennial years, my friend at school, uh, asked me about doing something for the Bicentennial because I was involved in it and uh, I said well, why don’t you make me a bicentennial quilt? So, I taught history, I don’t think I said, so the teachers had made this square and it turned out for the bicentennial, and if you look at it, some of them are really pretty, and some of them are kind of um, different, but you see the story of America, over here you see Daniel Boone, _____ bear, this ‘course shooting Cornwallis?, the fallacy of that and had the woman, to uh, sew it on for him, uh, the constitution and various things, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, Molly Pitcher and Washington praying at Valley Forge, and this one was done by the art teacher, and uh, it’s had the spirit of ‘76, I don’t know if you can see it, but it’s not appliqué, its embroidered, isn’t that adorable? So dainty. And alright you see Franklin Roosevelt here, something, Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin.  So this is called an album quilt.  

An Album Quilt became popular in the last part of the 1800s.  And they did just what these people did for me.  They had a central theme, and people did their squares, and uh, put them together for some purpose.  Now also, I say that, whenever somebody, anybody important had a quilt named for them or done for them, and so I was highly flattered. But this, a minister, might have a quilt, you see those patterns sometimes that are called circuit riders, and uh, but it was a creative thing for the women of the community, because they didn’t have money to buy things and what’s better than a quilt? And so, they would give their interpretation of this person, and you can see those in museums all over the country.  Washington, Lafayette, Judge Smith, everybody.   And this is an album quilt.  

Now, I promised I would give, I promised I would give you some different ideas, and I like to do this, and I hope you’re interested some in the history, because it’s um, I’ll try not to take too long.  There are hundreds and hundreds of quilts that follow patterns.  Like I said, these people made their quilts like what they what they were interested in.  

Now you can run into hundreds of patterns of religious nature: the cross and crown, Jacob’s ladder, I had one I was going to bring but I didn’t find it this morning, and um, all kinds of star quilts, the star of Bethlehem, the North Star, all kinds of religious implications.  Now I didn’t bring those.  You can find them on the flowers and the nature type things.  I didn’t bring those. Some samples of them.  These are all kind of political or historic. And since this is the historical society, I thought that this would be interesting to you maybe.  If you don’t hear me just raise your hand ‘cause I can be pretty loud.  

This is the Story of America, and these quilts, you’ve seen them all, you’re very familiar with all of them ‘cause I could tell y’all are quilters.  This is the Cross Canoes. When the people first came to America, of course, the Indians with their Cross canoes.  I’ll tell you this, you can see the canoes just as easily as anything. But that’s not true with all the blocks.  Some of them you can’t tell, unless somebody tells you.

This is a copy of a little quilt called the Mayflower quilt.  This quilt, they say was done in blue and was probably brought over on the Mayflower.  It’s a little bit like a pine burr quilt if you’re familiar with that which is an old, old pattern, and very involved to make.

Remember Priscilla.  This is Priscilla’s Patch, done over.  These are copies of what they did.  

That look like anything to you?  No.  That’s the tail of Benjamin’s kite.

Is this sort of a version of Jacob’s Ladder?

Right, right.  There are a lot of the quilts that have these strips running through them.

Let me tell you, uh, I didn’t bring one, but the nine patch, five one color and four the other squares, they were the basic, now it was a little bit like this, there is a nine patch there almost, right here.  Those little patterns, those pieces, were the basis of nearly all the early quilts.  They were squares.  And that was a copy of an old quilt. I’m gonna tell you about it in just a minute.





This is Martha Washington’s Star.  All kinds of star quilts.  Hundreds of them.  

During the American Revolution, I’ll tell you about this quilt right here now, during the American Revolution, there were quilts named for everybody.  I’ve got one that is called the Valley Forge quilt, that’s a copy of what Washington had at Valley Forge.  By the way, talking about the Washingtons, Martha Washington received from her husband forty quilts one Christmas.  She had a lot of reason to have them because she said they never sat down at the table to eat for twenty years without having guests there.  Some of them stayed a long time, too.  

This little quilt here is a type of country quilt, and it’s called Burgoyne’s Surrender.  And if you remember the American Revolution, you know that Burgoyne was an English General who came down from Canada, to capture the country.  And uh, they wanted to commemorate the fact that he did surrender.  And, Gentleman Johnny!

Also during the American Revolution, we got lots of help from people and among the most dashing and interesting people who came to America was a Frenchman, 19 years old, by the name of Lafayette.  They say that he arrived in Philadelphia the same time the oranges did. And all the ladies, were, they could just hardly wait until the time when they met this young general who was such a good friend of Washington. They took their pieces of oranges, orange peel home, and they made themselves a quilt to uh, remember always that they had met Lafayette. This is the Lafayette orange peel. It’s also similar to another quilt called Rob Peter to Pay Paul. You’ve heard about that, haven’t you?

And I want to say that this type quilt with these rounded pieces came in some time about 1800. Uh, before then, they didn’t, like I said a while ago, they were using more of the squares, uh-huh, right. 

This is Dolly Madison’s work basket. Another star. Four points. Uh, the Colonial Lady. Colonial Lady has uh, lots of things. She has an umbrella, she has books, she has fans. You see different versions, and sometimes, you see a quilt with all of them. 

This is Andrew Jackson’s star. It’s very similar to another one I’m going to show you in a minute. 

Explain. Why would that be Andrew Jackson?

Somebody just named it. Just like they would name some of these others. Like the Benjamin, the one I showed you a while ago, somebody’s named it that. And most of those old names are ones that went a a way back. 

This is a Confederate Rose, a pieced rose. Don’t see very many of those.

And everybody knows this, ‘cause this is so popular now. Yes, the Log Cabin. Different versions of the Log Cabin. This one is more of the period, a little more intricate than some of the others I showed you. Uh, the earliest use of quilts was utility, mostly, except for the special quilts they used, like when the minister came or something like this, or if they were wealthy and kept them on the beds. But a lot of them, or most of them were utility quilts. They made them. They used them. They threw them out. That was that.

What is that design? 

This is the Mariner’s Compass. Uh-huh, I’ve got another Mariner’s quilt that I wanna show you. 

Remember Old Tippecanoe? This is Old Tippecanoe. I don’t have Tyler too, but that’s Old Tippecanoe. Many of the rose quilts, this is a version of the Whig rose. 

A Texas Star. You can’t tell this from where you’re sitting, but there is a piece, an octagon shape in here that makes it the Texas Star. That’s just a star, isn’t it? I call it the eight-pointed star, but they don’t always call it that. When, during the period of the expansion of the West, people were going west, they needed something pretty. They weren’t going to be seeing too much pretty, they wanted something pretty. They wanted something fast or very fast. There was a man down in Louisiana, his name was LeMoyne, I guess. He was probably French, and uh, he had this design done in red and yellow on his home, it was like a shield for his family. Well, they called this the Star of LeMoyne. But these people going west, they didn’t know very much French. And so, they began to say Lemon Star. And so down through the years, you’ll see this called the Lemon Star. Most of the time, you see it done in two colors, alternate colors. Then, they added to it and to it until they got the great sunburst quilts and Lonestars and so on.

This is very similar to the one I showed you a while ago. And this is Clay’s Choice. Very similar to the Jackson Star that we were talking about a while ago. It’s interesting. You see, you’ve got triangles here instead of uh, your diamond. 

This is similar to your Road to California, Road to Texas, those type quilts. I went down to the uh, Crockett Cabin one day, and they had a quilt like this on the little bed down there. So, I just named it the Crockett Cabin Quilt. And uh, back then, I did a lot of writing to people from all over the country, I had done some articles in magazines and all, and they would pick up my name and wrote to me. So, one day I went home, and I found this little envelope, and this lady had written to me. She said I have this pattern I want to send you. She said, I know you’re interested in history. And it’s called the Crockett Cabin Quilt. And so, she sent my pattern back to me. She got it from some place, I think. 

I’ve got lots of fun quilt friends and this is Road to California. You can see the wagons going West. And uh, the Alamo. Don’t ask me why it’s called the Alamo, but you know, like I said. Now here’s your, you see this? That’s your nine patch there? Lots of quilts are based on that nine patch. 

This is your Spirit of ‘49. Gold Rush.  Your Underground Railroad. 

Lincoln’s Platform. Let me tell you about this quilt. If you put it together like I was showing you over here a while ago, if you put it together, you’ll end up with a design like this. You see that? You see this part right here? They’re all cousins. 

Remember Barbara Frietche who leaned far out the windowsill and shook her head? This is a Barbara Frietche Star. See I told you anybody that was anybody would have a quilt named for them. 

This is another rose, it’s called the Confederate Rose. The story was that in the Confederacy, the women became so upset that they took their beautiful quilts and they put black centers in them to show the oppression of the South. 

This came from an album quilt. Horace Greeley. 

This is an Indian, representing the Indian Wars in the West in the last part of the 1800s. And um, in 18 and 80, we had a president elected, supposed to be one of the most, um, prepared men, of the whole country. His name was Garfield. He served only a short period of time before he was assassinated. This is the Garfield monument. And that’s kinda sad, you know? But uh, here again, people are commemorating the most important events that they know of. It might be, you know, the election of somebody in your own community. But uh, these are national, more of the national. 

Lots of issues came up in the 1800s, you can imagine, that represents the Women’s Rights Movement. And another issue that troubled everybody, the Drunkard’s Path. Notice the…

Someone says something.

Uh-huh, and they have the circular, uh, I guess you needed a circle for those times. 

Uh, the youngest first lady was the most precious first lady. Uh, Frances Cleveland. And this is her choice. 

Remember Coxey’s Army? 

Is that a veteran?

Uh, no. You know Coxey, you know was a United States Army man, general, and uh, during the time when they had a big depression in ‘93, he got the people in the west, the men in the west to move to Washington, and um, camp there. And when, they arrested him for walking on the grass and wish we could take those times back, don’t we, and um, this is his quilt.

Dewey, Admiral Dewey, Harry, this is more complicated.  Steps to the White House.  Indian arrows. Can you see the arrows there? First World War. Purple Cross. 

This is a tumbling block. Two presidents were associated with a tumbling block, uh, Calvin Coolidge, when he was a child, he made his own tumbling block. The other president that’s associated with a tumbling block is uh, Eisenhower, he had one in his home and still does out in Abilene, Kansas. I told you some of them, you’d never guess what they represent. This is Lincoln’s Spirit of St. Louis. Doesn’t look like much, does it? 

It looks like the American Red Cross.

Oh, yes, is this Skyrocket? This is a very old pattern, and it went back to Roman times really as far as mosaics are concerned, but uh, it became very unpopular during the second World War and I don’t believe anyone has used them since then much. It’s a hooked cross. 

Now we talked about Garfield a while ago, when his assassination? And this one is for, uh Kennedy. The Eternal Flame. There’s your Tail Star. 

And finally, this little creation of my very own to represent the glory of our country. Now there’s two or three other things that I want to show you, then I’ll quit and let you…this one I promised to show you another Mariner’s Quilt, and I didn’t have room enough to display this so you could see it. And um, these are the clipper ships [see photo at top of page] and um, I kind of changed the name to the Tall Ships. When I made this quilt, quilts were selling for maybe 50-75 dollars? One time I went home and had this strange letter in my mailbox. I opened it up and it was a check for $200. This woman said “Please send me your quilt at once.” So, I wrote her back and said “No, I didn’t have it for sale.” But the quilts were real, they were very inexpensive then. 

Was that your design? 

This one, I made.  This one is kind of local history.  And uh, this one I made before these kinds became so popular.  And there are much better than this one now, but, anyway, this one’s mine and I like it.  And uh, it’s kind of historical with East Tennessee, and it has Rocky Mount, you see all these little wagons are going to Jonesboro.  

These are Jonesboro pictures?

Yes, there are different things, the inn over here, I’ve got it, okay, okay, and Washington College here, Davy Crockett House, and the Chester Inn over there. Um, Watauga Association.

Have you hung this in any of the public buildings?

I have. I take the quilts sometimes like this one.  Some of them I take, I had this one at Rocky Mount for one season, I used and uh, I’ve taken them different places.  I’ve had some of them in the museums.  One of them I put down in the uh, in the cabin at the YW, YMCA in Bristol.
Somebody came in one day and said, “We took your quilt out, and it’s gone to, on an exhibition around the state.”  I didn’t bring that quilt, but uh, they’ve been a few like that. I had a show at the museum down at East Tennessee State.  I had a quilt show down there, so.
I wish we could have this in our visitor’s center for a month. I think it could be worked out.

Well, you know, I have given many, many quilt shows like this. And I enjoy doing it. I don’t mind taking ‘em out at all. That’s what I enjoy.  That’s what I have them for.  

That’s very generous of you.

This one, this is a silly quilt.  I’m gonna show it to you, then I have one more after this.  This one has gotten popular.  I almost hate to show it to you after Mildred and I went to Asheville to the quilt show yesterday and we saw this fabulous one.  It was a wall hanging, but it was the same idea.  

This is the Village of Pleasantville. This is a novelty quilt, a fun quilt.  

Is this an imaginary thing?

Yes, yes. I just made this up.

It really looks like a place in Edenton, NC. North Carolina’s first government. 

I didn’t have anything in mind, I just started making it.  And uh, of course they have a mill.  I made another one of these since then.  I’ll have a quilt shown over here, you can see that, and that’s the courthouse and the train, the apple orchard someplace, and the school, of course, and different things.  

You were lucky to find this many colors and cloth. Now where did you find it? 

First of all, I must tell you about my house when I start something like this ‘cause you have, all of you that do quilts know that even if you have three things that you’re using, they are, you have a mess.  If you have a thousand things, you’ve got a thousand times more of a mess.  So, anyway, I pick up things when I see them, and I get an idea, I’ve just got one. You see these balloons right here? I’ve just got one on this.  Well, after I made this, I was in Kingsport one day and I saw this material had balloons on it like this, so that’s why I got this piece, and that’s what I do. If I see something, I’m always looking in stores, so if I see something, why I’ll uh… maybe it won’t be enough later on when I decide what I need it for.  

This is my most famous quilt and my most exciting quilt, and it is the first of a series that I have done.  I call these my Celebrity Quilts.  And when I started out in 19-, somebody said, “I thought you made that for the Bicentennial, why is it marked 1972? Well, I started it in 1972 and I thought I’ll get this done by ‘76 for the Bicentennial.  But it turned out so well that I got it finished in ‘72, the same year I started.  I started it in May, while I was getting ready to close down school, and by the time I started back, I had this beautiful, beautiful quilt.  What I did, and this is, it wasn’t an original idea with me because I saw one, a picture of one, that was made for the centennial back in 1876.  So, I thought, well that’s a pretty good idea. I’ll believe I’ll make me one.  So, I did.  And I’ve kind of worn it out.  It’s kind of dirty, but this is one I don’t really let out of my sight though, it’s…

Alright, the center design here is a copy of quilt that was done in 18 and 48.  This is a cross-section centerpiece of people who were important in 1972 and I did it, they were important to me for different reasons. Some of them were politicians. There’s a cross section of people, and uh, it is, uh, well, the two that I really treasure the most I guess, out of all the ones that I’ve done.  Like I said, I have the uh 19 and 08 quilt made, but I don’t have it put together.  This is Harry Truman and Bess right here.  There’s Harry. Where’s Bess? Oh, there’s Bess. I thought she was close by, and what I did, I took my little squares to these people, and asked them to sign them, and then I got them back immediately, back in those days it was easy to do. Now, it’s more difficult to do, and so they sent their little names back and I sat down and embroidered them, and that’s how I got many of these people. There’s the Trumans.  And uh, the Nixons are also on this quilt. In ‘72 they were still in office. I have all of the presidents since then and their wives. Right here, I see Norman Vincent Peale. And I wrote these, I wrote out letters by hand and sent them and told them what I was doing, briefly, and asked them if they would sign my square. 

Question asked…

Well, the first ones I did, I thought it would be better to do it with a pencil.  The first ones I did were the Trumans, and they did exactly what I said, they wrote with a pencil, but some of the words were beginning to fade off, so then I just kind of left it up to them, and so some of them you’ll see some of them used felt tipped and different things, but I said about Norman Vincent Peale, I had told him I had been in his congregation once.  And he wrote back and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you.  The next time you come, I want you to tell me who you are.”
And uh, let me see, Tennessee Ernie Ford. He’s a graduate of our school. I didn’t teach him, but uh he says “bless your little pea pickin’ heart.”

And let’s see, Mickey Mantle here.

You’ve got Love, Lucy. 

 Love, Lucy, Yes.

I think Ronald Reagan.

Yes. Right, that was before he was president.

Here’s Burl Ives. Y’all remember Burl Ives.

Burl Ives.

Bette Davis. You know, entertainers. This is-

Here’s Coretta Scott King.

Yes.

Irving Stone, the author.

Just a cross section.  Joe Frazier’s up there. You recognize that one?  

George Wallace.

This is, uh, Alfred Hitchcock. 

Is this Wallis the Duchess of Windsor?

Yes. Wallis Simpson.  She signed it.

Ohhh

Grace of Monaco, I have her somewhere.  Princess Grace.

Rose Kennedy up here.

Helen Hayes, Jimmy Stewart

Um, Elvis Presley was the first one I got back. Very lucky.  Very nice writing, too.

Um, Well, that gives you an idea.

Tell us what the insignia, circles…

Oh uh, the Nation’s Birthday, oh, these? That was a piece of material.  I got, I had two pieces of material.  I had red and blue and they were
stars.  In those days, did you know it was hard to get pieces of material that had stars in it like this patriotic type? And see this? I did, but I alternated the red and the blue here.  Now this was another piece of material, and those little medallions, I just cut them out. They were on some other type of background.

Comment from audience

I think there were four or five.  Or maybe six I guess.

So they don’t really represent anything?

Well, they really, since it was getting close to the Bicentennial, they were really revolutionary type thing, Like here’s the eagle and the liberty bell.  They had also a cannon, which I didn’t use, because that was the type when there was a lot of anti-war spirit and everything, and I didn’t use the cannons, but they were awful cute.

Now I’m going to tell you about one more if I can see it. Jesse Stewart. 

He was one of my favorites. 

Yes, mine too. Risë Stevens is here.

Oh, here, let me tell you about this one. Do you recognize that? This one? My sister took this to her office, and she said, this, her boss, lady, looked at the quilt and said “I can’t read of those names. There’s one I recognize: Henry Kissinger.”

Uh, Colonel Harlan Sanders. Kentucky Fried Chicken. 

This one I won’t tell you about this one. 

This is one of my favorites and it says “To Martha Marshall, Peace and Best Wishes.  Love, Joe Namath.” And look at those kisses. Thank you. 

Applause. Treasures!

This has been, I think, the best I think we’ve had.  Enjoyable.  Even the men enjoyed it, the two of them enjoyed it so much and I thank you.
People want to come up and see ‘em I bet.

Now don’t walk on ‘em. 
[STOP] 

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