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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.

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.

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.

A lady from Montgomery commissioned a queen-sized quilt, wanted it in her mother's old dresses and a Sunday shirt her daddy used to wear. I charged her $450 and felt a little bad about it at the time, like I was asking a lot. Well I counted it up honest. Sorting those dresses, taking them apart at the seams so the cloth laid right, the piecing, the quilting, binding. Sixty-one hours across three weeks. That come out to about $7.38 an hour and I supplied the batting and thread out of my own pocket. And I still felt bad asking for the $450. I told my granddaughter and she just looked at me like I'd lost my mind. She said grandma, you spent a whole week and a half of your life down there at that machine. And she wasn't wrong. But it's a funny thing, this work, you grow up where the women never charged for a quilt, you gave one for a wedding or a baby or to somebody whose house burned. Money on it still feels a little bit like shame to me sometimes. I know better in my head. Getting there in my chest is another matter. That $450 quilt is on her bed right now with her mama's plaid and her daddy's Sunday shirt all in it. And I'd do it again for the same money, if I'm honest. That's the part that really ought to bother me. 🙂

So I got a message from a woman in Oregon, says she saw a photo of a quilt I made for my grandson's wedding, posted it on Instagram two years ago, just a picture I snapped on the porch, didn't even think about it, and she tracked me down to ask if I'd sell it. I told her honey that quilt's been slept under and washed and loved on, it's got a wine stain from the reception and a cat hair woven right in there somewhere. She said she wanted it more for that reason. So I called my grandson, he said he'd make me a new one if I wanted to let this one go. So I did. She paid me more than I ever charged for a quilt in my life and sent me pictures of it hanging on her wall like it was a painting. And I'm sitting here thinking, I been sewing sixty years and the Lord let me live long enough to see folks call my grandmother's way of doing things "fine art" and buy it off a telephone. I don't know what to do with that. But I know if you had told Grandma Viola her granddaughter would sell a quilt to a stranger in Oregon who saw it on a picture box, she'd have laughed and said you were touched in the head. Anyway. Anybody else got a sale that felt like it came from another planet?

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. 🙂

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?

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.

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.

I got a call last week from a woman I didn't know. Said she found my name on a label sewed into an old quilt she bought at a church flea market over in Tuscaloosa. Asked if I wanted it back. I knew exactly which one before she even described it. That blue and yellow improv log cabin I made in '93, right after my youngest left for school. I was so lonesome that year I just sewed and sewed. Sold it for $40 at a craft fair at the county annex, first quilt I ever sold to a stranger. I remember watching the woman walk off with it folded over her arm and thinking I might've made a mistake letting it go. Anyway she mailed it to me and I opened the box and there it was. Still sturdy. Still a little crooked in places. I sat and held it in my lap a good long while before I could do anything else. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it now. Might keep it. Might hang it where I can see it. That quilt been out in the world longer than my own children lived in this house. Lord.

I sat with that all evening after I got home. That quilt took me three weeks, hand-pieced, hand-quilted, every scrap of fabric out of my grandmother's scrap bag and some from my own mama's housedresses I'd been saving. $350 is already low if you figure materials and time. But she patted my hand like I was a sweet old lady doing a little hobby. I didn't say anything to her. I smiled and thanked her and wrapped it up nice. But I been thinking, folks see the quilts and they see me and they think "bless her heart" instead of seeing the work. I been doing this since I was seven years old. That's 56 years. You don't get to call that cute. I raised my prices $50 after that. Felt wrong in my chest but I did it anyway. Anybody else have to fight the urge to apologize for what you're worth?

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.

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.

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 🙏

My baby girl's wedding was last month and I finished her quilt two days before the ceremony. Two days, y'all. I been sewing since I could hold a needle and I still cut it that close. Every night for six months I was in that sewing room after supper, listening to my old radio, ripping out seams and re-doing them like a brand new girl. She asked for her great-grandmother's pattern, the one my grandmother made for my own wedding back when we didn't have two nickels. I didn't have that quilt no more, but I had a scrap of it. Mama kept one corner of it all these years and gave it to me, and I sewed that little piece of history right into the center of hers. She cried when she saw it and so did I, and neither one of us was ashamed. It ain't perfect. One seam on the back is a little crooked and I could see it clear as day every time I looked at it. But my grandmother used to say a quilt's got to have a mistake in it somewhere, because only the Lord makes things perfect. So I left it. Now I'm just glad it's done and out of my house before I had to look at it one more time, ha.

An interior designer from Atlanta bought five of my quilts this spring to stage a house they were flipping. Paid full price, no haggling, wired the money same day. Not one word about the piecing, the history, the work itself. Just wanted the colors to match a rug. And you know, at first it stung a little. Here I spent fifty years learning to make cloth talk and she wanted a throw pillow. But then I thought about it, because she asked me to cut them loose and let her hang them on a wall instead of a bed, that designer's clients are going to see my work and their grandmothers are going to ask who made it. That's the seed. Same with that gallery show I had in January. The lady who bought the biggest piece told me she'd never owned anything by a Black woman artist and honestly I didn't know whether to feel honored or put on a shelf. I told my granddaughter about it and she said "Mae, they're not buying the quilt, they're buying the wall." And maybe that's the truth of it. The work carries more than I get credit for while I'm standing there. All these years I'd get a little quiet when somebody talked about my quilts being "art" instead of what they are. But the money talks, honey, and the money walked right into my checking account. I guess what I'm saying is don't turn your nose up at the sale that feels a little off. That one may carry the next three.

Y'all, I don't even know how to sit still right now. Back in 1963 my grandmother made a crazy quilt, all those scraps, every shape you can think of, hand-stitched with that tiny perfect stitch she had. She used pieces from my mama's old school dresses, my uncle's Sunday shirt, a flour sack from a brand that don't even exist anymore. I grew up under that quilt. Slept under it when I was sick. Knew every patch like I knew every face at the dinner table. She passed in '89 and I kept it in a cedar chest for years 'cause I couldn't bear to have it wear out. Well, my granddaughter talked me into entering it in a show up in Atlanta. I sent it off with a prayer and tried not to think about it. Called me yesterday. It won. First place in the heritage category. I sat on the floor in the kitchen and cried. That's not like me. But I tell you what, my grandmother never got to see anybody call her work art. She just made beauty from what she had because that's what women did. And here's a room full of people sixty years later saying "yes ma'am, this matters." I know it's just a show. But it ain't just a show to me. Somebody finally saw her. That's all I wanted.

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.

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.

Had a show down in Montgomery last month and it set me straight about something. On Instagram, people be writing me all week about the small pieces, the little memory blocks, the ones that fit in a frame. Those sold out quick, no fuss. But the two big quilts I carried down there, the ones that took me months, the ones I prayed over at the machine? Those got all the looking and none of the buying. Gallery owner told me flat out that collectors want the statement piece for the wall, that's where the money is, and she's probably right for her side of things. But here's what I told her. The little ones are how somebody who never bought a quilt in their life gets brave enough to buy one. That's how the young folks start. That's how the next generation of collectors gets made. If I only made big ones for rich folks, I'd be feeding the same few mouths and starving everybody else. Funny part is, the two big ones did end up finding homes. Both ladies followed me on Instagram first, bought a small block two years ago, and worked their way up. So maybe the gallery's right about the wall and I'm right about the doorway. You got to have both.