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I made a wedding ring quilt for a young woman at my church back in 2012. She didn't have much, her mama had passed and she wanted something of hers to carry into the marriage. I charged her $75 to cover the fabric and not a penny more. And I was glad to do it. Problem is, now I've made about seven of them since then for folks at church and I still can't bring myself to charge what it's worth. A queen-size wedding ring quilt takes me three, four weeks of evenings. Piecing those curves, all that handwork in the ditch. I know what the materials cost now, I know what my time adds up to. But these are church people, family, people I sat next to at potluck. I charged a woman from Atlanta $1,200 for a piece last spring and she didn't blink. And I'm sitting here hemming and hawing over whether to ask $200 from Sister RuthAnn for a baby quilt. My granddaughter told me I'm letting the church folks take advantage and I told her hush now, it's not that simple. But she might have a point I ain't ready to sit with.

The little church my mother took me to as a girl is finally getting its proper restoration work done. Twelve hundred years and the place has survived earthquakes, fires, the Ottomans, a war and now a bunch of conservators with lasers and lime mortar. I should be thrilled. I trained in this exact thing. I can't bring myself to walk in and watch. It's not the work itself, I trust the people on it, they're good. It's that I know it at a different scale. I knew that floor when you could see where footsteps had worn the tesserae smooth in the same path for three hundred years. There's something about the cleaned-up version that makes me feel like the church I remember is being erased to save it. My mother would call me a fool and tell me to go help. She's probably right. But the day they take the scaffolding down something is going to end, even though the building will stand another five hundred years. Anyway. If the work looks sterile afterwards, that's on me for not being brave enough to go and get my hands in it.

So I did the fall craft fair at our church hall last Saturday. Table was $35 for the day, which is why I keep doing it. I had a stack of small 9x12 acrylics, mostly the field and barn scenes I do when I don't have the brain for anything bigger. Priced them at $65 each. Sold four. Felt great until I got home and actually added it up. Eleven hours behind the table plus the framing plus the mats plus the booth fee, and I came out at maybe $9 an hour for work I did over about three months of Sunday afternoons. The thing that gets me is the woman who bought two and said "these are so reasonable." She meant it as a compliment. And I just smiled and said thank you because what am I going to do, argue with her in a church hall? I keep telling myself $65 is what the market here will bear for a small piece. But I've never actually tested that. I've never once put $110 on a painting and seen what happens. I just skip straight to the number that feels safe so nobody walks away from my table. My husband asked why I don't just try it at the spring fair and I didn't have a good answer.

my mom keeps taking photos of my paintings to her church fundraiser and telling people they can "have one for a donation" and i found out because one of her friends texted me asking if i could do a custom piece for her grandkid's nursery for $40. FORTY. DOLLARS. for a custom watercolor portrait of a toddler. that's like a week of work and $60 in materials if i do it right. i love my mom so much but she has zero concept of what this costs and every time i try to explain she goes "oh honey, it's just for fun, it gets your name out there!" and honestly i think she genuinely believes exposure is a currency. which like. it isn't. i paid $400 for my last batch of paper alone. i told her today that if anyone asks at the bake sale she should tell them my prices start at $150 and she got all quiet and said "well that feels steep for people at church" and i almost lost it. i love her. she means so well. but i cannot keep getting "$40 for a portrait" texts from strangers who think i'm a hobbyist because my own mother is out here pricing me like a lemonade stand. how do you tell your mom she's undercutting your entire livelihood without making her cry. i am losing my mind.

Was at the church fundraiser sale Saturday selling a few of my smaller pieces, and this man stands there awhile watching how I had the quilts laid out. Comes over and says, real helpful like, "You know they make machines that can do all this for you. You'd get through twice as many." I told him I had forty-three years and my grandmother's hands already doing it just fine, but thank you kindly. He wasn't being mean. I know he wasn't. But there's something about a man who has never threaded a needle in his life explaining to me how to get my work done faster. Faster for what, now? I'm not on a clock. I'm putting my daughter's wedding dress scraps and my great-aunt's apron into something that'll outlive me. You can't rush that and you can't machine it either. Folks see the time in a thing as a problem to solve instead of the whole point of it. Some things are supposed to take as long as they take.

Went to the church bazaar Saturday to help sell pies for the youth group, and a woman stopped by the quilt table. Picked up one my grandmother made back in the sixties, before she passed, turned it over, looked at my stitches, and said "honey, you know they make machines that could do this in a weekend." I just smiled and said "yes ma'am, they sure do." Didn't tell her that machine never had my grandmother's hands in it. People see the wobble in the stitches and think it's a flaw. That wobble is the whole point. That's where my grandmother's elbow rested, where she was thinking on something, where her fingers held the needle for four decades. A machine can't put that in. I aint mad at her, she didn't know. But I stood there holding my grandmother's work and I felt that cold little snap in my chest, the one you get when somebody hands you a thing that's holy and calls it slow.

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.

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.

Lord have mercy. I'm still chewing on this one. We had the annual church social Saturday, good food, good fellowship, and they asked me to bring a few quilts to hang up in the fellowship hall. So I brought three. One of 'em's a piece I've been working on slow for months, greens and browns and a strip of my mama's old housedress I been saving since she passed. Improvisational piecing, the way my grandmother taught me. Nothing in it is supposed to line up like a grid. That's the whole point. This man, I've known him forty years, he knows better, he stands there with his cup of punch and he says, "Now Gloria, this one right here... you know if you just squared those blocks up, it'd really be something." Just like that. Like I'd been trying my best and come up short. I said, "It already is something, Leonard. It's a Gloria Mae original. That's worth more than a perfect seam and you know it." He laughed it off but I was hot about it the rest of the evening. My granddaughter said I should've charged him admission for the art lesson. She's not wrong. Y'all. The squares aren't supposed to line up. That's the music in it. That's the breath. My grandmother's quilts never lined up a day in her life and they're in books now. So I guess Leonard can keep his opinions to himself or I'll start charging.

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.

I've had my grandmother's church dress folded in the cedar chest going on thirty years now. Navy, little covered buttons down the front, she wore it every first Sunday till the fabric got thin at the elbows. I've been telling people I'm going to put it in a quilt. Been telling myself that a long while. Finally laid it out on the table this week. Cut the back panel free and set it in the middle of a piece I'm building, that deep navy against some red I pulled from a housedress of hers too. It looks right. It looks like it was always supposed to be there. And I walked off from the table and left it sitting there two days. Can't make myself pick up the rotary cutter again. Here's the thing nobody tells you when they hand you a stack of somebody's clothes and call it material. The cloth still holds the shape of them. You can see where she wore it. And the minute that blade goes down, that's over with. Now it's a quilt. It's not her dress no more. I know that's the work. That's the whole tradition, taking what somebody left and carrying it forward in your hands. My grandmother did it with her mother's things, didn't blink, said cloth is for using. But I keep hearing her say it and I still got a dress sitting on my table half cut. Any of you ever worked with something that belonged to somebody? I'd like to know how you got your hands to move.

My good iron gave out Tuesday morning, middle of a seam, just quit on me. So I pulled out the old one that come from the church basement when they cleaned it out, heavy as a brick, cord wrapped in electric tape. That thing gets hotter than my new one ever did. I had to learn it all over again, how it sits, when to lift it. Been working on a strip quilt for my youngest grandboy who's going off to Tuskegee in the fall. Reds and that deep indigo, some cloth from his daddy's old work shirts cut in there. He don't know that part yet. His mama does. Anyway. There's something to an old iron. It don't have a light on it, don't beep, don't shut itself off on you while you're thinking. You just have to know it. Feels like half the tools I love best are the ones that ask me to pay attention instead of doing the thinking for me. Might keep it out even after I get a new one. It's ugly as sin but it presses a seam flat as anything.

Now I love Sister Ruth, I do. She caught me in the fellowship hall Sunday after the second service, held my arm, said my quilt on the altar rail for homecoming was the prettiest she ever saw, and then said the thing. "Can you make me one just like it? Same colors, same blocks. I'll pay you." Same colors. Baby, that quilt is my grandmother's apron and three of my daddy's work shirts and the yellow dress I wore to my sister's wedding in 1979. There is no "same." There's one. I told her I could make her one of her own and she looked at me like I'd offered her a rock. Same look my cousin gave me when I said she couldn't have her mama's dishes split four ways. I'm not mad at her. I'm just tired of being asked to make a copy of the only thing in the world that can't be copied. Twenty-nine years since my grandmother passed and I still can't walk past a certain blue madras in a fabric store without my chest going tight. Anyway. Going to go lay it back out on the floor and finish it. Lord willing and the thread holds.

We got together Tuesday night at Sister Odell's, six of us around the frame, working on the missionary quilt, and one of the younger ladies brought out a rotary cutter and a mat and says we could have all these strips cut in an hour, why do I still use scissors. Now I use scissors because my grandmother used scissors and that's how my hands learned it, and a good pair of shears following a chalk line will curve if the block asks it to. Rotary wants everything square and fast and same. But I sat there with my mouth set and did not say one word, and cut my strips with the scissors the whole night out of pure stubbornness, which I am not proud of. Thing is she's not wrong about the hour. We was there till near ten. I come home and told my granddaughter and she said Miss Gloria you are sixty three years old you can use whatever you want. And I said that's the trouble, baby. I don't know which one I want. I know which one my hands want. There's a strip in that quilt that's crooked because of it. I'm leaving it.

Sister Bernice cornered me after service today. Said she saw the picture my daughter posted of the wedding quilt I just finished for my niece. "Gloria Mae, that would be so much prettier if you just followed a nice pattern out of a book. All those crooked pieces just look like you made a mistake." I stood there holding my pocketbook and just smiled. Told her my grandmother didn't own a pattern book in her life and what she made hangs in museums now. Bernice's face went tight as fresh starch. Y'all, I been quilting since I was seven years old sitting on a flour sack at my grandmother's feet. The "mistakes" are where the breath gets in. The crooked pieces are where the spirit moves through. Bless her heart though. She means well. She's just used to quilts that lay flat and quiet. Some of us like our quilts to have something to say.

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.

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.

Back in the lean years I took a restoration job that paid a commission, not a flat fee. The contractor was a friend, the project was a Byzantine floor in a small church up near Kilkis, genuinely interesting work, and I was eating rice and beans so I said yes without asking the number that mattered. Eight months on my knees, in and out, matching tesserae that some other hand had set in the 6th century. Lovely job. When it was done he came by with a cheque and it all felt very brotherly until I did the division in my head driving home. €2.10 an hour. I knew the whole time it was cheap. I didn't know it was that cheap. I think some part of me didn't want to do the math because then I'd have to leave, and the work was the only thing keeping me sane in that period. I still take friends-and-family work at a discount sometimes. But I always write down the hourly number before I start, in the margin of the sketch, so I can't pretend later. If it comes out under minimum wage I either raise it or pass. The church floor was worth doing. The price was not.

Was in a church in the old town today, not for work, just wandered in. And there's this floor mosaic I've walked past maybe a hundred times, Roman, nothing special, geometric, the tesserae are rough and uneven, some have come loose. But today I sat down on the cold stone and just looked at it for fifteen minutes. Some woman thought I was having a crisis. I was having a crisis actually. Crisis of admiration. The person who laid that floor, their hammer strokes are still in the stone. Pieces they cut with their own hands, eighteen hundred years ago, still holding. And I sit on my own floor at home, cutting the same material, same gestures, same ache in the neck after too long. I don't know why it hit me today and not the other times. Maybe I needed it to. Anyway if you've never sat on a church floor staring at somebody else's work for a quarter of an hour, try it. Feels strange and good.

Met a man at the community center show yesterday. He stood in front of my piece for a good long while, this one I'd been working on for weeks, pieced from my grandmother's old housedresses and my aunt's aprons, all those soft faded florals. He looked at it. Nodded. Said how much for this one. I told him. He about choked. Said "that much? My grandmother made quilts for free her whole life. Just gave 'em away." I said well sir, your grandmother probably did it in a time when nobody thought her work was worth money. And she was wronged by that same thinking. But I am not my grandmother in that way. He walked off. And I stood there thinking, that man thought he was telling me something about value. All he told me was that his grandmother never got paid for her gift. And somehow that's supposed to make me lower my price instead of raise it. My grandmother never sold a quilt in her life. She gave them to every child, every cousin, every newborn in the church. And they'd say thank you and put it on the bed and wear it thin. And she died never knowing what her hands were worth. So no sir. I'm not doing it for free. I'm doing it for both of us.