Jacob dreams about the angel on a ladder.ħ. Cain going into the land of Nod to get a wife.Ħ. Cain kills his brother Abel, and blood pours from his neck.ĥ. Adam and Eve in the garden of Paradise, at the moment when the serpent is about to tempt Eve. The individual panels, starting in the upper left:ġ.
Since the watermelon pink background fabric has faded, it is difficult to discern the figures that were cut from lighter colored fabrics. Smith recorded these descriptions in her personal diary. Powers explained the imagery of each of the eleven blocks on the quilt Ms. She was only in measure consoled for its loss when I promised to save her all my scraps.
Harriet powers pictorial quilt full#
After giving me a full description of each scene with great earnestness, she departed but has been back several times to visit the darling offspring of her brain. After going out to consult with her husband she returned and said “Owing to the hardness of the times, my old man allows I’d better take it.” She offered it for ten dollars, but I told her I only had five to give. She arrived one afternoon in front of my door in an ox-cart with the precious burden in her lap encased in a clean flour sack, which was still enveloped in a crocus sack.
year I sent her word that I would buy it if she still wanted to dispose of it. Smith’s “financial affairs were at a low ebb and I could not purchase.”
Four years later, at the urging of her husband, Powers offered to sell the quilt, but Ms. I offered to buy it, but it was not for sale at any price. Her style is bold and rather on the impressionists order while there is a naievete of expression that is delicious… The scenes on the quilt were biblical and I was fascinated. She is about sixty five years old, of a clear ginger cake color, and is a very clean and interesting woman who loves to talk of her old mistress and life before the war… There was a large accumulation of farm products… and in one corner there hung a quilt – which captured my eye and after much difficulty I found the owner, a Negro woman, who lives in the country on a little farm whereon she and husband make a respectable living. I have spent my whole life in the South, and am perfectly familiar with thirty patterns of quilts, but I had never seen an original design, and never a living creature portrayed in patchwork, until the year 1886, when there was held in Athens, Georgia, a Cotton Fair, which was on a much larger scale than an ordinary county fair, as there was a ‘Wild West’ show, and Cotton Weddings and a circus, all at the same time. Powers first exhibited her Bible Quilt at the Athens Cotton Fair of 1886, where it captured the attention of Onetta Virginia (Jennie) Smith, a local white artist who was then head of the art department at the Lucy Cobb Institute, a girls’ school in Athens. A one-inch border of printed cotton is folded over the edges and machine-stitched through all layers. It is both hand- and machine-stitched, with outline quilting around the motifs and in random intersecting straight lines in the open spaces. Powers’ Bible Quilt (1886) depicts scenes from Bible stories, and is made of 299 separate pieces of fabric stitched to a background of watermelon pink fabric, which is now extremely faded. These three layers are then quilted together, either by hand or by machine, using tiny, even stitches in lines or patterns throughout the quilt.
The individual blocks / scenes are then sewn together to create the patchwork quilt top, which is then assembled into a quilt sandwich: the quilt top + batting material (the stuffing) + a backing fabric that is the same size as the quilt top. Each block creates a different scene or design. The background is usually a solid color and may be the same or different for each block, while the figures and shapes are most often cut from printed fabrics. African women brought with them a knowledge of strip weaving, applique techniques and storytelling, which they adapted to their lives in the southern United States.Īpplique is a technique in which figures or shapes are cut out of cloth are sewn onto a larger piece of background fabric, which is called a block. Patchwork consists of sewing together cloth that has been cut into strips, strings, rectangles, triangles or squares. Patchwork and applique are the techniques used primarily in African American quilts.