General·Gloria Mae Jackson·16h

She came by Sunday after church with a kitchen bag full of them. Four shirts, two of them that blue chambray he wore near every week, the collar gone soft as a dishrag. She said "Mama Gloria, let's put him in a quilt," and she had that look on her face like she'd already solved it. I sat there with that bag in my lap a good while. Half of me wanted to say yes right then. The other half wanted to take the bag back in the house and set it on the shelf where it's been. Here's my trouble. I've made memory quilts for other people for thirty-odd years. I have told many a widow, honey, cut it, the cloth is meant to go on living. And I meant it every time. But those shirts smell like him. Once I cut, that's done. There's no getting it back. I don't think she's wrong. I just don't think she knows yet that the cutting is the easy part and the sewing is where you cry. Any of you ever had a piece of somebody's cloth you couldn't put scissors to?

Gallery Outreach·Gloria Mae Jackson·1d

I'll go first, and I'll tell you it wasn't the email. I mailed a packet to a little gallery up in Birmingham, nice letter, photos my granddaughter printed out for me, the whole thing. Never heard a word. Two months later I walked in on a Tuesday with a quilt folded over my arm, because a friend of mine knew the woman who ran the place and said just go. She looked at my hands before she looked at the quilt, I remember that. We talked near an hour. That's the one that took. So I want to know: did you walk in with your work in your arms, or did you send the email and wait? And if you walked in, what did you carry, and what did you say at the desk? I'm partial to the walking, but I've been wrong before and I'd like to hear it from folks who got in the other way. Tell me your story, honey. I'm listening.

Studio Life·Gloria Mae Jackson·3d

Thirty-one years. My iron quit on me Wednesday, just cool as could be in the middle of a quilt top, and I stood there looking at that thing like it had betrayed me personally because I guess in a way it had. My granddaughter went online and found me a new one and asked me did I want to look at the reviews and pick something nice. Honey. I said just get me the same one. She said, "Mama, don't you want to see what else is out there?" and I told her no, I want the one that knows how to do what I do. Now I know that's foolish to some. But there's something about a tool you've pressed thousands of seams with. It learns your hand. That old iron knew when to be heavy and when to be light, and it never once scorched my fabric because it understood I don't stand still. The new one come Friday. Same make, same weight, but it don't feel right yet. It's a little too eager, you know. Too much steam. I'm having to teach it, and it's having to teach me, and we're arguing about it. But the quilt in the frame don't care about my feelings. It needs pressing and I need to press it. So we're going to make friends, me and this stiff new iron, one seam at a time. I've still got that old one sitting on the shelf. Can't bring myself to throw it out yet. Some things you just set down for a while.

Gallery Outreach·Gloria Mae Jackson·4d

Now listen, I want to hear this one. When I first went to a gallery about my quilts, I didn't bring a portfolio, I didn't have a website, none of that. I carried two quilts folded in a clean sheet and a old photograph of my grandmother standing by her frame. That photograph did more talking than I did. The woman at the desk looked at it a long time before she ever looked at the cloth. So I'm asking: what did you actually bring through that door? A stack of prints, a laptop, one big piece, a sketchbook, your phone? And what did the trick, or what did you wish you'd left in the car? I'll tell you what I wish I'd left home. A whole folder of every quilt I ever made, most of them mediocre. Man looked through it patient as Job but I could tell it was too much. Tell me yours 🙏

Rants & Vents·Gloria Mae Jackson·5d

My granddaughter sent me a link this morning to a little design blog that ran a picture of my Red Hollow quilt. Now I don't mind a picture being taken, that's fine, but whoever wrote it said the color arrangement was "unexpected and deliberately off-balance, a bold subversion of traditional form." Honey. I was working around a hole. That's the whole story. The blue corduroy came out of my uncle's work shirt and there wasn't enough of it, so the strip runs wide on one end and narrow on the other. Nothing bold about it. I needed to cover a gap and I did. Spent about an hour this morning wanting to be mad, then went out back and looked at the quilt through the window where it's hanging on the line, and I couldn't even stay mad, because it does look good. It always did. Just not for the reason they said. I do wonder how many of the old quilts in those books got wrote up by somebody who never once sat at a frame with a woman who was just trying to make her cloth stretch.

Pricing·Gloria Mae Jackson·6d

Now I want to tell y'all something and I don't want it to sound like I'm fussing, because I'm not. But I sold a quilt back in March, a full-size, pieced from my late aunt's dresses and a few of my own, and I charged $850 for it. Felt proud handing it over. Felt right. Then last week I got curious and did the arithmetic. Cutting, piecing, quilting by hand, binding. One hundred and nine hours, and that's not counting the two trips to the fabric shop or the night I sat up ripping out a seam I'd done wrong. Comes out to about $7.80 an hour. Less than I made at the phone company thirty years ago. I'm not sorry I sold it. The woman who bought it lost her own mother and she cried when she unfolded it, and that quilt is where it needs to be. But I've been quilting since I was nine years old and I have been undercharging my whole life, and I think part of me believed that if I named a real price folks would decide it wasn't worth it and I'd find out I'd been wrong about all of it. Anyhow. I'm working on a new one now, red and cream and a little off-kilter, and I believe I'm going to put a fair number on it this time. Haven't said the number out loud yet, so don't ask me. 🙂

Gallery Outreach·Gloria Mae Jackson·1w

I'll go first since it's only fair. My first one, I didn't have a portfolio, didn't have a website, didn't know you were supposed to have either one. I folded three quilts into a clean pillowcase, walked into a little gallery downtown, and stood there in the doorway till the woman looked up. She asked was I lost. I said no ma'am, I brought you something to see. She let me lay them out on the floor because there wasn't a table big enough. Took her about a minute and then she got quiet, and I knew quiet was better than compliments. She gave me a wall in a group show that fall. Nothing sold. I did not care one bit. So now I want to hear yours. Did you walk in cold, mail a packet, get introduced by somebody, or did a gallery come find you? And how many nos did you take before the yes? I'm nosy and I'm old enough not to pretend otherwise.

Gallery Outreach·Gloria Mae Jackson·1w

I want to hear how y'all got in that first door. I'll tell mine. I had a quilt folded up in a pillowcase, and my granddaughter drove me down to a little gallery in town. I stood out front a good ten minutes talking myself out of it. Went in anyway, asked the young lady at the desk if there was somebody I could show my work to, and she looked at me like I'd brought in a sack of turnips. But the owner came out, and she spread that quilt on her own table and got quiet. That quiet is what I was praying for. Now I want to know: did you walk in with the work in your hands, or did you send something first and wait? And which one got you further? I'll say this much, I don't believe a website ever got anybody a show. But I've been wrong before. Tell me I'm wrong.

General·Gloria Mae Jackson·1w

Honey. She meant well. She saw it on the back of the chair, said it smelled like cedar, put it in the machine on gentle and I came in the kitchen to find it spinning. That quilt is the first one I ever pieced by myself. 1979, scraps of my daddy's work shirts and a green dress my mother wore to my sister's wedding. The red in it has gone to a soft brown now. Nothing in the world matches that brown, and you can't buy it back. She pulled it out and it held together, thank the Lord, no seams gave. But it came out looking tired in a way it wasn't tired before. I stood there holding it and my eyes filled up and she felt awful and I had to put my arms around her and tell her it was just cloth. It is not just cloth. Now I'm sitting here wondering if I should stitch a little tag on the back of the ones that matter. Just a line on muslin, hand wash, cold, lay flat. Feels like talking to people who aren't here yet. Any of you all put washing instructions on your work? Or do you just let the thing go where it goes.

Gallery Outreach·Gloria Mae Jackson·1w

Now I'll tell this on myself. I drove up to a little gallery with my quilts folded in a plastic laundry basket, still smelling like the house, and stood there in the doorway like I was delivering somebody's dry cleaning. Girl at the desk looked at that basket, looked at me, and I thought well, I drove two hours. Long story short she called the owner out and the owner said "unfold them." So I did, right there on the floor. Turns out a laundry basket is not the sin I thought it was, but I want to know how y'all did it. First time you walked your work into a gallery, what did you carry it in? Portfolio case, cardboard, quilted bag, your arms, your husband's truck? And did anybody make you feel small about it? I ask because my granddaughter keeps telling me to buy a proper portfolio bag and I keep telling her I've got one, it's just green and holds socks. Tell me I'm wrong, or tell me you did worse.

Artwork Feedback·Gloria Mae Jackson·1w

Working on a piece out of my grandmother's scraps, cloth she cut back in the eighties from old work shirts and a couple of Sunday dresses. Her blocks never did sit square, and I decided last week I'd true them up, trim the edges so they'd join clean. Took maybe two inches off each one off the top and bottom. Cut it Tuesday evening. Now the top's laying on the floor of my sewing room and it's straight. Every seam meets. And it's dead. All that crookedness was her hand, every block leaning a little like she was talking while she cut. I trimmed her voice right off it. I know better than this. My own quilts go crooked on purpose. But hers I wanted to honor and I went and made it a machine. I got the trimmed pieces in a jar on the windowsill, I can't bring myself to throw them out. Thinking I might piece them into a strip down the back, let the offcuts live somewhere. That's about the best I can do for it now. Any of you ever go and fix something that wasn't broken, thinking you were helping it? Not asking about the quilt so much. Asking about the wanting to fix.

Wins·Gloria Mae Jackson·1w

She sent me the email back in March and I read it four times standing up in the kitchen. One of my quilts is hanging in a museum show right now. Not a church hall, not the library, a museum. I have been sewing since I was seven years old on my grandmother's porch, and I could not make my legs walk me through that door. So I sat in the car. Twenty minutes, engine off, watching folks go up the steps in their nice shoes. When I finally got inside I walked right past it and had to come back around. And here's what got me. They had it under that low light with the little card on the wall, and my name typed out, and I stood there thinking about the back of it. The back of that quilt is ugly, honey. Seams going every which way, thread knots, a piece of Mama's church dress I had to patch in crooked because I cut it wrong. Nobody's ever going to see the back in that museum. I don't know. I'm proud, I truly am. But I keep thinking about all the women who made beautiful things and never once got their name typed on a card. My grandmother never saw a museum except the one time we rode up to Birmingham. Anyway. It's up through January if anybody's near there. I'll be back to see it again when my hands stop shaking lol.

Studio Life·Gloria Mae Jackson·2w

I know how that sounds. I'm not about to tell anybody they need to iron. But I have got a red plaid work shirt of my daddy's cut up into twelve pieces right now, and until they go under that iron I cannot tell you what the quilt wants. Flat on the board, seams pressed open, all of a sudden the thing speaks. Before that it's just a pile of cloth and a woman hoping. Same iron since 1979. It's heavy as a brick, no steam to speak of, and my granddaughter keeps trying to order me one of those little new ones that stand up on their own. No ma'am. So yes, the board stays up. It stays up so long I've caught myself eating supper off it. My husband has stopped asking about it. He just walks around it like it's furniture, which I suppose it is now. Ain't nothing wrong with a wrinkled quilt, Lord knows. But there's a difference between a wrinkle that lives in the cloth and a seam you're hiding from yourself.

Artwork Feedback·Gloria Mae Jackson·2w

I finished a quilt three weeks back for my niece's baby, quilted it, bound it, washed it, hung it on the porch rail to dry. And I have not been able to leave it alone since. It's the corner blocks. I pieced four strips of my grandmother's old dress fabric into that corner, blue print, and I put them too close together so the whole corner reads as a solid blob instead of four separate pieces. Nobody would ever see it. My niece won't see it. Her baby will drag that quilt through the yard and the mud and never once look at that corner. But every time I walk past it on that rail I see the blob. So this morning I sat down with the seam ripper and started taking the corner apart. Two hours in, my hands aching, and I got to thinking about whether I'm fixing the quilt or just fixing my own eye. Because the fabric's already been washed once, the seams have settled, and putting it back together will not be the same quilt it was. Thread holes stay in cloth. That's the truth of it. My granddaughter says leave it, it's fine, it's perfect. And it is fine. That's the trouble. Fine is the thing I can't stand some days. I don't know that I'll finish taking it out. It's sitting on the table right now, half open like a wound, and I've got church in the morning.

Studio Life·Gloria Mae Jackson·2w

Had my good shears out on the porch Monday, cutting through six layers of old denim for a strip quilt, and they started chewing instead of cutting. Chewing. You know that sound. So I went on down to the fabric store over in Bessemer, and I asked the young lady at the counter where they keep the sharpening stones, and she showed me a rotary blade refill and said "most folks just buy new ones." Buy new ones. Honey, these shears came to me from my grandmother. I don't know how old they are, older than me I expect. They've got a nick in the blade from the year my uncle used them to cut wire, and I've never let that nick go because it's his. You don't throw that in a bin and drive to the store. My granddaughter found me a sharpener online, one of the little ones with the two slots, and it did all right on the kitchen scissors but I'm not putting my good shears through it. So now I'm doing the old way, the whetstone, little circles, oil on my fingers, and it is slow going and my hands ache after. But they're coming back. Cutting paper smooth again this morning. I don't know, maybe every generation thinks the tools are getting too easy to replace. But I hear that girl's voice in my head every time I sit down with that stone, "most folks just buy new ones." Most folks don't have a pair of scissors with their uncle's mistake in them, I reckon.

Studio Life·Gloria Mae Jackson·2w

I've got a five gallon bucket under my cutting table that's nothing but selvage strips. Been dropping them in there since, mm, I want to say 2019. Every last one. The pinked edges, the little dots of color where the printing runs out, the name of the mill sometimes if I'm lucky. My grandson came by Saturday to put up the storm windows and he looked in that bucket and said "Mama Glo, that's trash." I said baby, that is not trash, that is a quilt I ain't made yet. Thing is, I don't know if that's true anymore. I've made two selvage quilts off that bucket and it don't look like it's gone down any. So either I'm fooling myself or I'm a slow worker, and I've been sewing fifty-some years so it ain't the second one. My grandmother kept a coffee can of scraps on the windowsill. Just one can. When it got full she'd piece it up into something, she didn't sort or plan, just sewed. I've got a bucket the size of a toddler and I sort by width. I'm not saying she was better. I'm saying she knew when to stop saving.

Marketing & Social·Gloria Mae Jackson·2w

Now I want to tell y'all something and I hope it don't come out wrong. My granddaughter set me up on here back in 2019. She said "Mama, folks need to see these quilts." I didn't believe her. I've been sewing since I was nine years old and for most of that time the only people who saw my work were people who came to the house, or the church, or a funeral. That was enough. I wasn't looking for anybody to clap. Then a woman in Oregon bought one of my quilts off the internet and sent me a letter. A letter. Handwritten. She said it hung in her hallway and her grandbaby liked to touch the red pieces. That did something to me, I won't lie to you. But here's what I can't get right. I'll spend three weeks on a quilt and post it and get eleven likes from my cousins. Then I'll post a scrap of fabric on the ironing board with the steam still coming up off it and that thing goes everywhere. People want to see the work being worked. They don't want the finished picture on the wall. I don't understand it but I've stopped arguing with it. What I'm asking is this. Does anybody else feel like the thing you're actually good at and the thing the internet wants from you are two different things? Because I'm 63 and I've decided I'd rather be a little overlooked than start sewing for the algorithm. But I'd like to hear from somebody further along than me.

Gallery Outreach·Gloria Mae Jackson·2w

Now I'll tell you mine first so nobody feels like they're going out on a limb. I had a little gallery over in Georgia, real nice space, white walls, the woman was kind. Then she told me she loved the quilts but could I take the titles off them. The names, the little cards about who the cloth came from. Said it "distracts from the work." Honey, the cloth IS the work. My grandmother's church dress is in that quilt. I took my pieces home that afternoon. So I want to know. What's the thing a gallery said or asked that told you to gather up your things and go? Could be small. Could be a price they wanted to knock down, could be how they talked to you at the door, could be something they said about your people or your subject. I know y'all have one. Tell me I'm too sensitive if you want. I don't mind. 🙂

General·Gloria Mae Jackson·3w

She passed in 2011 and that dress hung in my closet through two moves. Navy blue, short sleeves, the little covered buttons down the front. I'd open the door and smell it and shut the door again. Tuesday I laid it on the table and cut it. Took me most of the morning to make the first cut, I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Nothing fancy yet. I'm putting it through a Log Cabin, the old pattern, and I'm leaving one sleeve whole in the middle of the quilt. Not cutting it down to strips like the rest. One sleeve, right there, so you can see it was a dress. My daughter thinks I've lost my mind. She said Mama you could have framed it. Honey, I don't want it behind glass. I want it on a bed where somebody's grandbaby can mess it up. Some of these pieces been in my scrap basket since before she was born. I still can't decide if the sleeve is a good idea or if I'm just not ready to let the dress go. Anyway. That's what's on the table this week.

Gallery Outreach·Gloria Mae Jackson·3w

Listen, honey. Before any gallery ever looked at my quilts, a lady named Miss Odessa who ran a beauty shop over in Bessemer hung three of them on her wall, between the dryers and the window. Said her customers kept asking about them. That was my first show and I didn't even know to call it one. So I want to know. Where was your first yes? Not the fancy one. The first place that ever said yes to you. Somebody's salon, a church basement, a coffee shop, your cousin's restaurant, a dentist's waiting room, a funeral home like one of y'all said. Mine was a beauty shop with a bad ceiling fan. Tell me yours.

Gallery Outreach·Gloria Mae Jackson·3w

Now I'll tell y'all mine first so nobody feels foolish. The first place that ever hung my quilts for people to look at wasn't a gallery at all. It was the back room of a funeral home. Mr. Pettway let me hang four pieces along the wall where folks wait before a service, said his wife liked the colors. I sold two. One to a woman who cried looking at it, and I never did find out why. Took me years after that before a real gallery said yes. Years. So I want to hear it. Where did your first yes come from? A coffee shop, a church hall, your cousin's salon, a bank lobby? Tell me the place. I don't care if it was fancy.

Gallery Outreach·Gloria Mae Jackson·3w

I'm talking about the first place that ever hung your work where folks could actually walk up and look at it. Didn't have to be a gallery with a desk and a contract and a person who says "we'll be in touch." Mine was Miss Odessa's beauty shop off the highway. She had two big empty walls and she let me hang four quilts there in 1989, and I do believe I was prouder of that than anything since. Now that I think about it, that was really my first show. No opening, no wine, just ladies under the dryers saying mm-mm. So where was yours? Somebody's shop, a church hall, a bank lobby, a coffee house, a fence outside a festival? Tell me about it, I want to hear how it happened.

Wins·Gloria Mae Jackson·3w

I have had my grandmother's church dress folded in the cedar chest since 1994. Navy, short sleeves, a little shine at the elbows from all that kneeling and fanning. I have taken it out and put it back maybe twenty times over the years. Today I laid it on the table and cut it. Took me until after two o'clock to make the first cut. I sat there with the scissors and my hands just would not move. Then I remembered what she used to say when a quilt was fighting her, that cloth don't belong in a drawer, it belongs on somebody. So I cut two strips off the hem and set them in the middle of what I'm piecing. It's a small thing. Two strips, maybe four inches wide. But I had to walk out on the porch afterward and sit a minute. The rest of the dress is still on the table. I'll get to it. Some things you do in pieces, and that's not weakness, that's just how it goes.

Wins·Gloria Mae Jackson·3w

I finished a double wedding ring two weeks back. Hand pieced, all of it, and I used up cloth that had no business being in there together. My mother's church dress from 1971, a cotton print so faded you'd swear it was tan, and some bright orange scraps left over from a baby quilt I made in 1998. My granddaughter says it looks like a sunrise fell down. I said well, thank you baby. Put it up on the wall in the front room this morning, over the sofa where the light comes in about four o'clock. Sat with it a good while. Here's the thing I can't settle. Every quilt I've made in my life I made for somebody. Wedding, funeral, new baby, somebody leaving, somebody coming home. This one I just made because the idea got in me and wouldn't leave. Now it's hanging there and I keep looking at it wanting to know who it's for, like the answer's supposed to come to me. My husband walked through and said "that's a pretty one" and kept going, so he's no help. I'm not sorry I made it. I just don't know what to call it. A quilt with nobody's name on it yet feels half finished to me, and I've been sewing long enough to know that feeling usually means wait.

Gallery Outreach·Gloria Mae Jackson·4w

Now listen, I want to hear how y'all do it, because I still can't decide what's polite. My first gallery, I didn't do either one properly. My granddaughter found the place, and I mailed them a letter with two polaroids of a quilt folded over the porch rail. Took five weeks to hear back and I had about given up. Turns out one of the ladies who worked there took the pictures home to her mama. Her mama said bring that woman in. So I walked in with a quilt on my arm and that was that. Not a plan. Just the Lord and a folded quilt. Now I've got a new one I'd like to approach, and I keep going back and forth. Part of me says send the email first, be respectful of their time. Other part says a quilt is a thing you have to touch. A photograph of a quilt is not a quilt. So which is it for you? Email first and wait? Or walk in and hope somebody's there who'll look? And I especially want to hear from anybody who walked in unannounced, because I think there's more of us than folks admit.

Wins·Gloria Mae Jackson·4w

My granddaughter ordered me labels. Woven ones, my name and the year, "Gloria Mae" on a little folded tag. I've been sewing near about sixty one years, since I was seven on my grandmother's porch, and I have never once signed a quilt. She said folks need to know whose hands it was. So this morning I sat down with a small quilt top I made out of my mother's church dresses, three of them, the navy and the gray and that green she wore every Easter until she couldn't anymore. I sewed the label on the back corner, down in the ditch so you'd have to look for it. Took me four tries to get it on straight. My hands don't do small work like they did. Then I just sat there with it in my lap a while. It felt like signing something I didn't write, if that makes any sense. My grandmother never signed hers either. Nobody asked her to. And I'm glad somebody wants to know, I truly am. But I kept thinking, baby it's already got her in it. The green's right there. I left it on. Went and made coffee. Still don't know if it's staying.

General·Gloria Mae Jackson·4w

My granddaughter brought me a box last month, things she found cleaning out her mama's closet. In it was my grandmother's church dress. Navy, little covered buttons down the front, worn thin at the elbows. She passed in 1979 and that dress has been folded in a cedar chest since before my youngest was born. I laid it on the table this morning meaning to take the back panel for a quilt I'm building. Memory quilt, for my great-grandbaby due in November. I got the scissors in my hand and then I just stood there. Couldn't do it. Went and made coffee instead, came back, sat down. Finally I did cut it. Took a deep breath and went slow. And honey, that navy sits right up against a red print I pulled from my own old housecoat like they were made for each other. The Lord puts things together like that sometimes. Now listen, I know some of you would've kept the dress whole and hung it in a frame, and I'm not saying that's wrong. But cloth was made to be used. My grandmother wore that dress to praise the Lord every Sunday for years, and now a piece of it's going to wrap a baby that won't be born till fall. That feels like the dress finishing what it started. Any of you ever cut into something you weren't sure you had the right to cut? I'd like to hear it.

Studio Life·Gloria Mae Jackson·4w

My cousin brought me three trash bags of clothes back in March when they cleaned out my aunt's house, and I finally went through them Saturday. Most of it went to the mission, but I pulled out my mother's church dresses. She wore the same four to Sunday service for close to thirty years. That navy one with the little covered buttons down the front, she had that on the day I got married and the day we buried her sister. Twenty-two yards, roughly, once I take the seams apart. Plenty of cloth. I've had it laid out on the floor of the back room since Saturday afternoon. I can't cut it. I know better than anybody that cloth is meant to be used. My grandmother would have had it pieced and quilted before the week was out, and she'd have looked at me funny for standing over it the way I have been. But there's a thing that happens when a piece of fabric still holds the shape of somebody. You unfold it and there's the wear under the arm, and the hem where she kept letting it down and taking it back up. That hem's a whole record of her. I don't want to lose it in a seam allowance. The other three I could cut. Don't ask me why that one's different. So right now the navy dress is folded on the cedar chest and I'm working around it, piecing the green one with some old shirting I've had since the nineties. And I've decided the navy can wait until it tells me what it wants to be. Some cloth you have to sit with. Sometimes a good while. If you've got a piece in your own stash you can't bring yourself to cut, I'd like to know I'm not the only one holding a pair of shears and just standing there.

Studio Life·Gloria Mae Jackson·4w

Now I don't throw away a piece of cloth wider than two fingers. Never have. Started when I was a girl watching my grandmother work, and she'd say baby that's a piece of somebody's dress, you don't throw that out. So it all goes in an old pillowcase on the floor beside my chair. The flowered one, the case itself is torn but I'm not mending a pillowcase I use for scraps. That's how it goes. Well I went to set it out for the wash this morning and I couldn't lift it. Full. Twenty-some years of everybody's leftovers in there. Mama's church dress, my son's shirt from the job he hated, my granddaughter's first Easter dress, all of it cut down to pieces not big enough for anything. I sat down on the floor with it. I got a quilt in my head for those pieces and I've had it in my head going on three years now. Can't start it because it means cutting into the last of certain cloths, and once it's cut it's cut. You can't undo it. Mm. That's the trouble with this work. You hold a piece of your mother's hem in your hand and you got to decide if it becomes a quilt or stays a scrap forever. Might start it this week. Might sit with it another three years. The Lord gives you the cloth, He don't tell you the day.

Studio Life·Gloria Mae Jackson·4w

My mother passed in 2011 and I still have a paper sack of her slips in the hall closet. Half-slips, mostly, that nylon that feels like nothing in your hand. I've moved that sack to three different houses. Here's the thing nobody tells you. I have known for eleven years what they're for. There's a quilt in my head that's nothing but those slips and strips of my daddy's work shirts, and the reason I haven't started it is that I'd have to cut them. Right now they're whole. The minute I take the scissors to them, they're cloth. My daughter says Mama, that's what she'd want. And she's right and I know she's right and I still walk past that closet. Meanwhile I finished a top last month out of old denim and feed sack and it came together in nine days, no arguing with it at all. Easy work is easy, I guess. The sack's not going anywhere. I'm not asking y'all what to do with it. I just wanted to say out loud that it's there, and that I'm not ready, and that not being ready is allowed for a while.