Sewing With Nancy

Quilts serve many roles. They can keep us warm, tell stories, or they can build friendships. My "Nancy's Corner" guest is here to share the unique story of a modern-day quilting bee that brought six quilters together who learned a new technique while sharing history and the love of family. I'd like you to meet my guest Catrina. Catrina Sparkman, who's a playwright, novelist, and a quilter. Welcome, Catrina. Thank you for having me, Nancy. You have six new friends. You weren't all friends a year ago, right? No, we weren't. We knew each other from the community, but-- but no, we weren't all friends before we started. Share with our viewers the modern-day quilting bee that you started. And you had a goal after one year. Yes. Well, we decided that what we would do, we wanted to bring together artists, um... writers and artists, and we decided, "Let's make some quilts. Let's make some story quilts." And, I think 2 people in our group had actually ever quilted before. Sure. The rest were writers and various other artists in different art forms. And so we decided that we would meet once a month, we would tell our stories, and we would learn this new art form together. Well, we're gonna share with our viewers some of these stories in quilts, and yours is called "First Date." Yes. Tell us about it. Well, mine tells the story of-- it's a story that I heard growing up about my mom and dad's first date. Uh-huh. And how they come back from the movies. My dad took my mom to go see "Hang 'em High," and that's actually on that quilt. Ha ha! And he says they get back from the movies and he sees rifles everywhere. My mom's family is in the middle of-- with a feud with the family across the street, but he didn't know that. He thought maybe the rifle was for him, because he was late. Oh ho ho! But you had a happy ending. It had a very happy ending. The next quilt that we're gonna look at is called "Generations." Yes. And Edith Hilliard made the quilt. And share some of the images that are in this quilt. Well, if-- you notice on the quilt there is the continent of Africa there-- Mm-hmm. And there's Louisiana, and there's a space shuttle there. And her story tells-- her quilt tells the story of her family's migration to... to eventually to Wisconsin but to America. Mm-hmm. She talks about her ancestors who first came-- her great-great-grandfather, I believe it was who first came from Africa to Louisiana-- by way of Louisiana. Sure. And it also tells the story of her uncle, who was the first African-American... Astronaut. Astronaut, yeah, in the nation. All there in fabric for everyone to see and share. Exactly. And we have Cynthia. Your friend Cynthia Woodland made the next quilt. And that's called "Ingrafted." Yes. Inspiring. I like adoption quilts, so tell us about this. Yes. Cynthia's quilt tells the remarkable story of her own adoption and how she was adopted into a loving family and how also how her-- her, um... Her and her husband, also, they decided to adopt. And so, the beautiful thing, she made this-- this quilt for her daughter Solana Marie. And all of the women in Cynthia's family have the same middle name-- Marie. Oh, ok. And her daughter's name, the meaning of her name, is in the quilt with the rays of the sun. So, it's just a beautiful quilt. And quickly, we'll talk about "Summer Memories" and Wanda Tapp. Yes. So, Wanda's story tells-- her quilt tells the story of summer trips back home down South from the North and, um-- hot dogs. Hot dogs, pickles, picnic baskets. Oh, yes. All of the things that she loved about that as a child. These are warm stories. All in a year, these six women made six quilts and they each will be treasured for a long time. Thank you for sharing that with us, Catrina. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. I hope you've enjoyed this second program and our interview with Catrina-- our second program on beginning landscape quilting. We have one more show to do on this topic. Natalie Sewell will be back with me next time to finish up. We'll do some more designing, but also, we'll be doing the quilting and stippling part-- the part that you may not exactly know how to do. You can always go to

nancyzieman.com

and re-watch this program if you'd like. Thanks for joining me. Bye for now.