Pioneer Electric Cooperative
Community Matters by: Angela Green A Day With The Mount Willing Unity Quilting Bees... There’s nothing like listening to more than 500 years of wisdom and I’m not talking about hearing a historian read passages from an ancient book or listening to a curator at a museum. In the community of Mt. Willing, in Lowndes county, there’s a group of women whose talents for quilting go hand in hand, with their words of advice for younger generations. Every Thursday, a dozen or so women (and helpers) spend hours together creating masterpieces at the Mt. Willing Baptist Church. They create hand-stiched quilts, and they say they do it just to simply get out of the house. The women are retirees, and they all have stories of how they learned the art when they were only children. “We did it because we had to,” said 65 year old Maddie Robinson. “My parents had 18 kids, they couldn’t afford blankets, so our mother taught us how to do it,” she said. The women are senior citizens, all aged between 65 and 90 years old. With steady hands and patience, they say nothing will slow them down. I casually made a comment about how precise they were in their stitching and asked if it hurt their hands. Why would I even think to say that out loud? It prompted several of them to question my “domestic skills,” which included if I knew how to sew. I decided not to answer that, but instead turned my answer into a question, and asked them if they were shocked that more younger women weren’t into creating such wonderful works of art. “I hear many young folks say quilting is too boring,” said 79 year old Bessie Smith. “My mother didn’t let us sit around the house,” she added. Willie Rudolph explained, “I would watch my mother in everything she did. Quilting was a family affair and now I even have two sons that know how to quilt. I wish more younger folks would come help us and get involved. We’ll teach them.” In one day, I learned a lot about quilting and got some words of womanly advice. At 90 years old, the “elder” of the group, Bertha Smith told me she works 4 days a week and still comes to quilting. “You just have to know what you’re doing,” she explained with a huge laugh. “If you put it in your mind, you can do it.” The Mt. Willing Quilting Bees sew nearly fifty quilts a year and they donate them all to charity. They collect donations to buy the needed supplies. Eventually, they would like to start teaching classes to pass along the skills of an art that they’ve perfected over decades of experience. If you’d like to know more about the group, you can contact the church at 334-227-0011. A Top Right: The group shares a laugh with their “helpers” Pastor Dale Braxton and John Gibbs. Middle: Katie Coleman and Bessie Smith tell stories of how they learned how to quilt.
Alabama Living
2013 august.indd 7
AUGUST 2013 7
7/17/13 5:30 PM