[peaceful choir vocalizing]
[birds chirping]
- Quilting is very relaxing.
I mean, it really just frees your mind
from things that might happen
in your life, like someone die.
You having a bad day,
and you can just get up in the morning
and just go directly to quilting
because you know, it just really frees your mind.
- Most of the time when I'm sewing,
I can tune out the entire world.
I don't hear anything and don't see anything but that quilt.
I can sit there for hours
and not even think about anything else but quilting.
[wooden quilt frame creaking]
- When I retired, I didn't have anything to do.
I went to Piggly Wiggly for groceries one day
and I met Patty on my way out.
And she said, "Oh Miss G, what are you doing these days?"
And I said, "Being bored.
I'm not doing anything."
And she said, "Why don't you come
"to Mississippi Cultural Crossroads
and learn how to quilt?"
- Woman: Let's see, Mrs. Buck says she had to go.
- Patricia: Cultural Crossroads got started
because we knew there were quilters in the community
and we wanted to celebrate a traditional art that is here.
- I know, but what you doing-- - Quit doin' it.
The fact that we have a center where women quilt,
where women come, keeps the tradition thriving.
- I have a little niece live in Kankakee, Illinois.
She came down last summer and we pieced about three rows.
- Woman: Mm-hmm. - I helped her to do it.
We put it together.
I'll let you know, she has done an entire quilt on her own.
- There's something very unique about Cultural Crossroads
because the people, it's just like they welcome you in.
It's like you have known them for a long time.
And since Tammy is the youngest...
- This is a community that has a history
of being segregated in the past.
There are very few avenues where Blacks and whites
in this community sit down and work together.
- 'Cause I would piece it during the summer
and then quilt on it when school started and have it ready.
- People know this is a place that everybody's welcome.
- Woman: Close to it.
- Nobody told me that you would be addicted to quilting.
[group laughs]
I don't like that I can't go on and do my other work
because I want to see how this is going to come out.
[peaceful instrumental music]
- I was just gonna go in there more than once.
Just, you know, go around and then come back out,
go around, and then just keep doing it.
- Woman: No, no. - You don't want that?
- No. - Woman: In the big box,
do like a corner like that.
- Woman: Can't everybody do a long elbow.
- Everybody can't make a good square.
[group laughing]
[peaceful choir vocalizing]
[sewing machine whirring]
I do remember when I first started quilting,
and after I would cut out the pieces,
I would have all these little strings left, and someone
at the Cultural Crossroads asked me to give them my strings.
And I said, "Sure, you can have my strings.
What are you gonna do with strings?"
And Mrs. Rankin said, "Miss Gustina,
don't ever give your strings away."
And I said, "Why not?"
And she said, "Because you can use them yourself
to make a string quilt."
And that's when I was introduced to the string quilt.
[soulful guitar music]
- My great-grandmother was in the kitchen.
And when she was cutting out scrap material,
she'd give my mother the strings, what was left.
And she said, "You can keep them.
I'll show you how to make a start, make your top."
See, I put 'em together.
I started here.
And okay, now here I'll be dark.
- Mrs. Rankin learned to quilt from her grandmother,
who she says learned from her grandmother.
And it was a utilitarian quilting.
She used what she had at hand to put quilts on beds.
Women from a certain generation
find it bizarre that people will cut up
little pieces and then sew them together.
When you have this big piece, why not just use it?
Mrs. Rankin didn't think of herself as an artist.
She thought of herself as a woman
who was taking care of her family.
- My grandma, Alice, she taught you
how to quilt to help keep the young ones warm.
We had to have cover for the beds.
The design later on in life,
I began to add a little more to it.
[soulful guitar music]
First, I better start here.
Dad and Mama picking cotton.
They're picking cotton, yes sir.
Oh, yes, that's...
Killing the hogs.
See, that was our main meats back then.
[soulful guitar music]
This is walking to school.
We over in the ditch here.
This where the white kids riding the bus.
- There are white children on the bus going one way.
And there are Black children walking, going the other way.
And for her and so many African Americans
growing up in this state, they walked to school
when they could get to school, and the school buses
carrying the white children would just pass them by.
So that that image sets off her history
and her particular time in this community.
[soulful guitar music]
- Woman: When Miss Rankin was quilting,
she really inspired me.
It was the way that she used colors.
She could just take some material
that I would call just ugly and before you knew it,
she'd been a made something really beautiful out of it.
["Simple Gifts" by Yo-Yo Ma]
- Patricia: When the quilters win prizes,
that validates the work they do.
A lot of times, women see that somebody they know
can do this well, and they say, "Oh, I can do that too."
You know, that there is something to this making quilts.
["Simple Gifts" by Yo-Yo Ma]
Mrs. Rankin received the National Heritage Award
from the National Endowment for the Arts.
This is an award that's given every year
to about 10 traditional artists in this country.
- When I got a $10,000 award,
they cabbed me to the White House.
"Lord have mercy, I'm at the White House."
That's what I'm sayin' in my heart.
When Hillary Clinton, when she come by me,
she was so nice, God.
She just like one of my daughters come by me.
I wasn't nervous or nothing.
I didn't have an idea a quilt would go so far in life.
Just thinking about it.
How far can a needle carry ya?
[gentle string music]
[sewing machine whirring]
- Narrator: Quilting has long been an art form
practiced in groups.
In 1987, this notion was taken to an extreme.
Thousands of people contributed pieces
to the original AIDS quilt,
making it the world's largest community art project.
[gentle string music]
The work connected panels of all skill levels
and people from all across the country.
[gentle string music and vocalizing]