I’m learning how to tell stories through quilting!

This past Saturday, I went to a quilting workshop at the Beach Institute in Savannah. First off, I was excited because I was supposed to been had learned how to quilt. Ms. Sadie Green (whose stories are in Krak Teet) was gonna teach me, but she passed away before she could.

When my boyfriend found out I went to a quilting workshop, he asked me if I was 33 or 93. If he don’t know that I have an incredibly old soul yet, then we need to go back to the drawing board. But that’s another discussion 🙂

Ms. Tina, who taught the workshop, started off by showing us a quilt that she recently made. I put the video of her explaining that on my Instagram and Facebook page. It was basically the story of Virginia Kiah‘s nephew coming to visit her for the summers and going to her vacation home on Singleton Beach. This was back in the ’40s and ’50s. Ms. Tina also mentioned that a prominent black doctor in Savannah named Dr. Henry Collier also owned a vacation home on Singleton Beach.

This was a big learning experience for me all around. I’d never heard of Singleton Beach, so I couldn’t wait to get home and dive into my research. If you don’t already know, my research starts on the internet, then to the books that I already have, and then the people. The people is my favorite kind of research. Since one of my mentors, Dr. Amir Toure, is from Hilton Head, he was one of my sources.

Other than that, I learned the actual art of quilting. That was very satisfying, because I’m a busy person. I’m sure we all are. And I’m a huge advocate of reminding ourselves and each other to slow down. Meditation is a way to slow down. It ain’t just sitting on the floor with the eyes closed either. Meditation is anything that calls for you to focus on one thing alone. That might be your breath, a candlelight, dancing, running, or, in this case, quilting.

“When grandma closed her eyes, saying she was just resting ’em, she was meditating.”

On the subject of grandma nem, I heard so many good old black folks quotes at that workshop. Two of my favorites were: “You live and learn then die and forget it all” and “You free ’til ya fool” (on the subject of being a free spirit).

I’m going to start off telling my own story. We started this patch in the quilting workshop. From there, I’m going to try to tell the story of all the places I’ve ever called home and how they all collectively make me who I am.

Quilting is such an old tradition. We kept ourselves warm with quilts, maintained our waste-not-want-not ways by turning old fabrics into new pieces with quilting, and we’d pass those quilts down. Neither my mother nor grandmother quilted (if anyone did before that, I just don’t know about it). But I definitely plan to continue practicing with my daughter, who was also at the workshop, and make pieces that maybe they’ll keep passing down one day.

Singleton Beach is no longer the black-owned bit of heaven that it once was, so it’s important to Krak Teet about what is and what used to be, but it won’t always be that way.