﻿- Quilting is very relaxing. I mean it really just frees your mind from things
that might happen in your life, like or someone die. You having a bad day
and you can just get up in the morning and just go directly to quilting because you
know it just really frees your mind. - Most of the time when I'm sewing I can
tune out the entire world. I don't hear anything and don't see anything but that
quilt. I can sit there for hours and not even think about anything else but quilting.
- When I retired, I didn't have anything to do. I went to Piggly Wiggly for groceries one day and I
met Patty on my way out. And she said, "Oh Miss G, what are you doing these days?" And I said,
"Being bored. I'm not doing anything." And she said, "Why don't you come "to Mississippi Culture
Crossroads and learn how to quilt." - [Woman] Let's see, Mrs. Buck says she
had to go. - [Patricia] Cultural
Crossroads got started because we knew there were quilters in the community and we wanted to
celebrate a traditional art that is here. - I know, but what you gonna--
- Quit doin' it. The fact that we have a center where women quilt, where women come,
keeps the tradition thriving. - I have a little niece live in Kankakee,
Illinois. She came down last summer and we pieced about three rows. I helped her to do
it. We put it together. I'll let you know she has done an entire quilt on her own.
- There's something very unique about Cultural Crossroads because the people,
it's just like they welcome you in. It's like you have known them for a long time.
- Tammy is the youngest. - This is a community that has
a history of being segregated in the past. There are very few avenues where blacks and whites in
this community sit down and work together. - 'Cause I would piece it during the summer
and then quilt on it when school started and have it ready.
- People know this is a place that everybody's welcome.
- Close to it. - Nobody told me that you
would be addicted to quilting. I don't like that I can't go on and do my other work because I want
to see how this is going to come out. - I was just go in there more than once.
Just, you know, go around and then come back out, go around,
and then just keep doing it. - [Woman 2] No, no.
- You don't want that? - No.
- [Woman 3] The big box do like a corner like that.
- [Woman 4] Can't everybody wore an elbow. - Everybody can't make a good square.
I do remember when I first started quilting and that I would cut out the pieces I would
have all these little strings left and someone at the Cultural Crossroads asked me to give them
my strings. And I said, "Sure, you can have my strings. "What are you gonna do with strings?"
And Mrs. Rankin said, "Miss Gustina, "don't ever give your strings away." And I said,
"Why not?" And she said, "Because you can use them yourself "to make a string quilt." And that's when
I was introduced to the string quilt. - My great-grandmother was in the
kitchen. And when she was cutting out scrap material she'd give my mother the strings,
what was left. And she said, "You can keep them. "I'll show you how to make a start,
make your top." See I put 'em together. I started here. And okay, now here I'll be dark.
- Mrs. Rankin learned to quilt from her grandmother, who she says learned from
her grandmother. And it was a utilitarian quilting. She used what she had at hand
to put quilts on beds. Women from a certain generation find it bizarre that people will
cut up little pieces and then sew them together. When you have this big piece,
why not just use it? Mrs. Rankin didn't think of herself as an artist. She thought of herself
as a woman who was taking care of her family. - My grandma, Alice, she taught you how to quilt
to help keep the young ones warm. We had to have cover for the beds. The design later on in life I
began to add a little more to it. First, I better start here. Dad and Mama pickin' cotton. They're
picking cotton, yes sir. Oh, dear that's Killing the hogs. See that was our main meats back then.
This is walking to school. We over in the ditch here. This where the white kids riding the bus.
- There are white children on the bus going one way. And there are black children walking,
going the other way. And for her and so many African-Americans growing up in this state,
they walked to school when they could get to school and the school buses carrying
the white children would just pass them by. So that that image sets off her history and
her particular time in this community. - [Woman 5] When Miss Rankin was quilting,
she really inspired me. It was the way that she used colors. She could just
take some material that I would call just ugly and before you knew it she'd been a
made something really beautiful out of it. - When the quilters win prizes that validates
the work they do. A lot of times women see that somebody they know can do this well and they say,
"Oh, I can do that too." You know that there is something to this making quilts.
Mrs. Rankin received the National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts. This
is an award that's given every year to about 10 traditional artists in this country.
- When I got a $10,000 award, they cabbed me to the White House. "Lord have mercy, I'm at
the White House." That's what I'm sayin' in my heart. When Hilary Clinton, when she come by me,
she was so nice, god She just like one of my daughters come by me. I wasn't nervous
or nothing. I didn't have an idea a quilt would go so far in life. Just thinking
about it. How far can a needle carry ya? - Quilting has long been an art form practiced
in groups. In 1987, this notion was taken to an extreme. Thousands of people contributed
pieces to the original AIDS quilt, making it the world's largest community art project.
The work connected panels of all skill levels and people from all across the country.