The Country Patchwork Quilt Guild’s quilt show this fall — hosted at the YMCA — will feature at least six quilts and three quilters from the famous Alabama quilting collective, according to show coordinator Norma Jeane Ferguson of Marshall. Ferguson said the special exhibit fits the theme well — as a counterpoint, perhaps — because the Gee’s Bend quilt designs are rooted in the place they were created. What they had in terms of materials were, according to a 2002 art review in The New York Times, “old britches, cornmeal sacks, Sears corduroy swatches and hand-me-down leisure suits — whatever happened to be around, which was never much. Kimmelman heaps high praise on the work of the collective, noting that their quilts represent “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced.

Contrary to statements made in this article, no historians believe the quilt code existed in the antebellum period, and no such code helped enslaved people flee slavery. The authors of the book Hidden in Plain view are not historians, and their flawed and inaccurate work has been criticized for years by most historians who study American slavery, the Underground Railroad, Abolition, textiles, and quilts. The great tragendy is that across this nation people prefer to promote the quilt code as a substutue for the very real stories of actual people who faced incredible adversity and put their lives and the lives of their families at great risk to attain freedom for themsleves and for others. The quilt code has no basis in historical events, the quilt patterns are mostly late 19th and early 20th century designs, and the methods used to convey the code are nonsensical and racist. By sharing the very real stories of people who escaped, and those who helped them (including other slaves and free blacks in the community), we will all discover and celebrate the courage, brilliance, and determination of real heroes and role models.

Hill’s great-great-grandmother, Maggie Young, was a slave. A photo of a young Hill with her grandmother hangs over an antique Singer sewing machine and a box of scrap fabric. In these pieces, the women smile and laugh, and Hill has a story about each of them. Hill is bubbly and outgoing, a self-proclaimed “goofball,” and obviously an asset to any quilting circle, and not just for her know-how on a sewing machine. Twenty-eight years old and devoted to quilting, Hill represents the hope that this time-honored art will continue to flourish. He describes the exhibit as a way of “walking back in history, but then history meets the present.

Multiple readers have asked where the Sunday quilt pattern is in the new Star Magazine. Specifically, they’re looking for the February block to the 2009 quilt project. With the redesign of the magazine, the quilts have moved to the H + H section. The February block ran on Page E-4 on Feb.

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