Wilcox County
Hand Made Quilts
“It takes me about one week to complete one of my items. Sometimes a week and a half depending on my health and how I am feeling. But by the grace of God I’m still here.” Sarah Harris has been sewing since she was ten years old. Sarah explained she “just picked up my mother’s needle and thread and it started from there. It took a lot of hard work, but once I finished doing what I had to do for the house, I sewed.”
Sarah learned her quilting skills from her mother and grandmother. She said “growing up, looking back at life and how hard it is to get where we came from and how far God has brought us” … living in the Black Belt “makes you look at thing different. You appreciate things more.” Sarah is passing her quilting knowledge on to her granddaughters.
Sarah has a “chair that sits at my kitchen window and I watch the cars pass my house and I begin to think back on how we didn’t have a lot of things we have now.” These thoughts begin her creative process as she gathers her materials together. She uses woven cloth tops, old shirts, skirts and sweaters, cotton, needles, thread, pins, a tape measure, sewing machine, wadding and a steam iron. Sarah’s materials, like most of those used by her ancestors and others for generations, were sourced from what they had on hand to create what they needed.