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You know, I was looking at my hands the other day, all these little nicks and needle pricks from years of sewing. They remind me so much of my grandmother's hands, the ones that taught me how to cut fabric just so, how to guide a needle through a stubborn seam. I'm working on a prayer quilt for my cousin's new baby, and I'm just letting the fabric tell the story. No fancy patterns, just letting the colors and shapes fall where they may, like the Lord intended. It feels good to let go and let the spirit move through my hands. Sometimes the most beautiful things come when you stop trying so hard and just trust. MM-hmm. It's a good feeling.

I always put a label on the back of a quilt. Name, year, and a few lines about where the cloth came from. My granddaughter put one of those labels on the internet for me, just the label, no quilt in the picture. Man from Chicago bought it. Two weeks later. Meanwhile the picture of the whole thing sitting on the fence out back got 41 likes and not one word from anybody. I don't know what to do with that. I really don't. I pieced that quilt out of my uncle's work shirts and a dress my mother wore to a funeral in 1971, and what moved him was me writing it down. I keep thinking maybe I been selling the wrong half of the thing all along, but I don't know how you show somebody the back of a quilt without showing them the front. I'm 63 and I only got on here because my granddaughter said folks should see them. So tell me plain. Is it the story or is it the cloth. Because I can't tell anymore.

Went looking for a particular piece of fabric today and got sidetracked into a trunk I haven't opened in years. Found a quilt my mother made back in 74, right there at the bottom. Brown and orange squares, the kind of colors you wouldn't put together unless you were living through that decade and had no choice. The thing is, there's a coffee ring on the corner. Faded now, but you can still see it. She always sewed with her cup right there on the table and I can just see her setting it down while she pinned a seam, not even thinking about it. I stitched around it today. Left it right there in the quilt. Some folks would want that ring out, but no. That's her. That's the whole story of the piece, really. I told my granddaughter about it and she said I should write it down before I forget it. I said baby, I ain't forgot nothing yet. That's the thing about cloth, it'll hold on to a person longer than memory will. Long after I'm gone somebody's gonna find my coffee ring on something and know I was there. Maybe that's all any of us are really doing. Leaving our ring on the corner.

So my granddaughter set up my Instagram a few years back, and I just post what I'm working on. I don't know all the tricks, I just put the quilt up there with whatever I feel like saying about it. And this young lady from California, she's a curator at some museum, I had to look it up, messages me and says she found my work through a hashtag I didn't even put on there. #improvisationalpiecing, something somebody else tagged me with. She said she'd been looking for quilters working "in the Gee's Bend lineage" and couldn't find nobody who wasn't already famous and priced out of reach. I sold her a quilt for $800. She found it through a tag I didn't even know existed. I got regular customers, Lord bless 'em, the ones who buy baby quilts and lap quilts for their mama. That's steady money. But the people who find me through these art-world tags, they're a different kind of buyer entirely. They want the story. They want the history. They don't blink at the price. Makes me think I'm posting for the wrong audience half the time. But I don't have the energy to chase two worlds at once. Y'all got any advice on that?

I got to sorting my scrap basket this morning. Lord, it was a mess. I mean a honest-to-goodness tangle of strips and triangles and odd-shaped pieces I told myself I'd use someday. And I got to noticing how I sort 'em, by color family first, then by what they came from. That little blue floral, that's from a dress my niece wore to Easter Sunday back in ought-eight. That mustard yellow, that's a man's shirt from the thrift that I unpicked for the good seams. I don't just sort fabric, I sort memories. And I thought, well that's me all over. Can't throw nothing away if it carried a story. My grandmother was the same way, she had a button tin that was more family history than any photo album. I told my daughter this morning, I said, I don't know if I'm a quilter who saves things or a saver who quilts. She just laughed and handed me her old jeans with a tear in the knee. "Here, Mama," she said. "Add me to the pile." I reckon that's what I'll do this afternoon. Turn her jeans into something she'll give her own girl one day. Y'all got a scrap basket that's really a memory basket too? Or am I just the old woman who can't let go? 🙂

Y'all remember that gallery that took my quilts, hung them nice, and then I didn't hear a single word from them for eight months? Not a phone call, not a hello. Then my show closed and suddenly the woman there is calling me up sweet as pie, "Gloria, we just love what you do, we should talk about next steps." Mm. Eight months of nothing and now she loves what I do. I walked in that first time and I told her plain, I said "I don't need you to love me, I need you to sell my work and tell me the truth about when it doesn't." She looked at me like I'd grown a second head. So here's my question for y'all, what's the most disrespectful thing a gallery has ever done to you, and did you stay or did you walk? I walked. The Lord gave me that much sense if nothing else. But I want to know if I was too hasty, or if some of you out there stayed and it worked out. Tell me your story, honey.

My youngest granddaughter, she's 16 and I been inviting her in here since she could walk. She'd poke her head in, look around, and find something else to do. Didn't push her. Just kept the door open. Saturday she walked in, didn't say a word, sat down at the machine. I went on about my business, let her be. Couple hours later she'd pieced this little top, not even a foot square, all zigzags and off-kilter, like she'd been watching me my whole life and just never told me. I asked her where she learned to sew it up like that. She said she didn't. She said she just let the fabric tell her where to go. I had to turn my face away for a minute. That's my grandmother's words coming out of that child's mouth, and she never even got to meet her. Told her I'd help her quilt it this weekend. She said good, and went back to her phone like nothing happened. But that little piece is sitting on my cutting table right now and I keep finding reasons to walk past and look at it. That's the whole story, honey. Sometimes they come to you on their own. That's the sweetest kind. 🙂

My first real gallery show came about the oddest way. A woman came to a church fundraiser where I had some quilts hung for the bake sale raffle, and she asked who made them. I pointed at myself and she handed me her card. Didn't even know her gallery existed till that afternoon. She told me later she'd been watching me take them down, the way I folded each one and handled the corners. Said she could tell I loved them before she ever looked close. So here's my question for the ones of you who've been at this a while: how did YOU actually get in the door the first time? Was it planned and careful, or did it just fall in your lap like mine did? I love hearing the stories, and mine still tickles me when I think on it.

Y'all ask me all the time how I got my quilts into galleries, and the truth is I didn't go looking for them at first. A lady from a folk art center came out to my church's bake sale of all places, saw a quilt I'd made for my granddaughter's wedding on the table, and asked could she show it. I thought she was joking, honey. I nearly laughed in her face. Took me two years of her asking before I said yes to the first real showing. Felt like I was showing up in my Sunday best to a place I didn't belong. So what about you? How'd that first gallery happen for you, did you knock on doors, did they find you, or did a friend drag you in? I want to hear the story. The awkward ones especially.