This week, we visit the Seeing Hand Association. They bring together people who are visually impaired to learn the craft of chair caning. Also, corporate greed has been gobbling up newspapers for years. Now, some of those same companies are taking a bite out of mobile home parks. They’re raising rents and letting repairs slide. And, as the Mountain Valley Pipeline nears completion, people who live near it say government officials are ignoring their concerns about pollution.
This week, we visit the Seeing Hand Association. They bring together people who are visually impaired to learn the craft of chair caning.
Corporate greed has been gobbling up newspapers for years. Now, some of those same companies are taking a bite out of mobile home parks. They’re raising rents and letting repairs slide.
And, as the Mountain Valley Pipeline nears completion, people who live near it say government officials are ignoring their concerns about pollution.
You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.
Employees restore caned chairs at the Seeing Hand workshop in Wheeling, West Virginia.
Photo Credit: Clara Haizlett/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
A lot of folks in Appalachia grew up with caned chairs in the house. Maybe your parents or grandparents had a set in the kitchen, but you don’t see the old caned chairs as much as you used to. Cane breaks down and needs to be replaced. Few people know where to go to fix their chairs. So, a lot of them are discarded or thrown away. But they don’t have to be.
At a workshop in Wheeling, WV, a community of skilled workers repair old chairs and show that not everything that looks broken has to be thrown out. Folkways reporter Clara Haizlett brought us the story.
Quilting In The New, Traditional Way
Shane Foster pictured with a quilt made by his great-grandmother.
Photo Credit: Liz Pahl/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Passing on traditional knowledge happens in different ways. Shane Foster is an optometrist in Ohio and an avid quilter. Quilting had been in his family for generations, but to learn this traditional craft, Foster chose a way that’s a little less traditional.
From 2022, Folkways Reporter Liz Pahl has this story.
David Vs. Goliath At A Mobile Home Park
After a new owner took control of a mobile home park in Mercer County, West Virginia, the rents went up, and it seemed like less was done to take care of problems. One resident started looking into exactly who this new owner was.
Mason Adams brought us the story.
West Virginia Flood Concerns
The floods of 2016 devastated several counties and it has taken seven years for them to be mostly returned to normal.
Photo Credit: Kara Lofton/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Flooding has always been a threat in Appalachia, but over the past few decades, severe floods have become more frequent.
Curtis Tate spoke with Nicolas Zegre, an associate professor of forest hydrology at West Virginia University, about why West Virginia is so prone to flooding.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by John Blissard, John Inghram, Tim Bing, Gerry Milnes, Mary Hott, and Tyler Childers.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Zander Aloi is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens.
You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
Quiltmaking is an artform that has been passed down for generations throughout Appalachia. But a few years ago, local community activist Emily Jones Hudson noticed that quilting wasn’t as popular as it once was, particularly in Hazard’s Black community.
This story originally aired in the Nov. 19, 2023 episode of Inside Appalachia.
Quiltmaking is an artform that has been passed down for generations throughout Appalachia. But a few years ago, local community activist Emily Jones Hudson noticed that quilting wasn’t as popular as it once was, particularly in Hazard’s Black community.
“[Quilting] is a big thing in the Appalachian culture. It’s a big thing in the African American culture,” Hudson said. “And one of the things that I was concerned about was that this tradition in the African American community was dying out.”
Each week for over a month, Hudson and others met at Appalachian Quilt and Yarn in downtown Hazard with the goal of making a quilt together. Many of the participants had never made a quilt on their own, but had grown up with family members who were quilters.
Hudson recalls her mother quilting, but did not have an interest in learning the craft when she was young.
Hudson’s sister, Sandra Jones, took a liking to sewing as a child. Jones had distinct memories of working alongside her mother as she made quilts. “I grew up watching my mom, helping my mom sew and quilt,” Jones said. “I would help her cut, I would help her iron. I would help her do other little things — like markings — so we could get the measurements right.”
Katie Glover, who is in her 80s, is another participant in the workshop. She reflected on some of her earliest experiences watching her mother and grandmother quilt. “I would watch them sit around and watch them make quilts. They would have this old quilting frame that would be hanging from the ceiling,” Glover said. “And now all the neighbors would come and help them sew. And they sewed by hand.”
Katie Glover shows the quilt she’s working on. Glover has made four quilts and has started two more. She enjoys making quilts for her grandchildren.
Credit: Capri Cafaro/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
While all three of these women had early experiences with quilting, it wasn’t something they pursued in their adult life. Most were too busy balancing work and family. And they no longer needed to make quilts just to keep warm.
Having little hands-on experience with quilting did not deter them from working together to make a quilt. Out of everyone in the group, Jones had spent the most time sewing, so she ended up leading the process. While she had never made a quilt, she had made clothes for years.
Still, there was a learning curve for Jones and the others. “When we started these workshops we didn’t really know what we were doing until we [sat] around and started talking about what was important to us,” Jones said. “And it just kind of unfolded.”
Rebecca Cornett, another Hazard-area resident who helped make the group quilt, said it was both exciting and emotional to watch the quilt come together.
“We eventually started cutting the fabric and putting it together,” Cornett said. “And then the reality hit. It was just overwhelming for me to see the completion of a quilt that was in our heads.“
The completed quilt tells a powerful story. The group selected a piece of fabric from Ghana as the focal point of the quilt. It depicts a woman working. The woman is surrounded by fabric in varying shades of green, printed with mountains. Below are outlines of faces in shades of brown floating in a sea of blue. And at the top of the quilt are orange and yellow strips of fabric to create a sunrise.
After days of cutting and sewing together, they created a piece that captured the struggles of the group’s African ancestors, their journey to Appalachia and the promise of a brighter future.
Jones said the quilt symbolizes the connection between Africa and Appalachia. “In the water you see heads floating. These are actually slaves who were thrown overboard. The mountains represent the Appalachian mountains because we’re tying in Africa and Appalachia culture.”
Jones explained the sunrise at the top symbolizes a new dawn for African Americans as they transcend struggle. When the quilt was finally completed, Jones breathed a sigh of relief.
“It was intense from beginning to end. But when I finished, it was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.”
The finished quilt wasn’t the only thing to come out of the workshop. During the process, Hudson said they also shared stories of their lives.
“One of the things that happens as we’re sitting around making this quilt is we share history. And we start talking about the history — the local history — of the area,” Hudson said. “One workshop as we were quilting, the topic just came up of Black businesses that used to be here in the area. Another workshop we talked about Black churches.”
It was important to the group to document the stories that emerged.
“If we don’t get the history documented, it’s like with each passing generation, it’s like we never were here,” Hudson said.
The quilting workshops created a sense of community that the group wanted to continue. So they decided to keep making quilts together. They’ve made two quilts and have plans to make one more. Jones noticed the participants’ quilt making confidence grew between the first workshop series and the second.
“Everybody was a little hesitant during the first workshop because they never used a sewing machine. They never quilted or sewn anything. So the second time around, you know, they were more excited about it,” Jones said.
The Stories Behind The Quilt workshops have reinvigorated an interest in quilt making within Hazard’s Black community. Just as Hudson had hoped.
For example, Katie Glover is now a committed quilter. She has made four quilts and has started two more. And she has a specific reason she’s making so many.
“I’m going to give them to my grandbabies,” Glover said.
Cornett thinks that sharing stories about making quilts with her kids is helping spark new interest in the younger generation. Now when Cornett’s children visit her, they ask to come to the quilt shop.
“They want to come down to see what I’m talking about. And so I think this is only the beginning of getting history being talked about, young people being interested. And I just think it’s the beginning of something good,” Cornett said.
As the workshops continue, there will be a chance for new people to join the process. They’ll continue the work started by this group of women, sustaining Hazard’s tradition of quilt making, one stitch at a time.
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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.
The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.
This week on Inside Appalachia, Karly Hartzman of Asheville indie rock band Wednesday, talks about songwriting, place and spending a lot of time with a band on tour. We also meet Emily Jones Hudson, who started a workshop to try and reinvigorate quilting in her community in Kentucky. Also, we check in with the Alabama Astronaut and learn about a uniquely Appalachian form of art – religious music heard only in snake-handling churches.
This week, Karly Hartzman of Asheville indie rock bandWednesday, talks about songwriting, place and spending a lot of time with a band on tour.
We also meet Emily Jones Hudson, who started a workshop to try and reinvigorate quilting in her community in Kentucky.
Also, we check in with the Alabama Astronaut and learn about a uniquely Appalachian form of art – religious music heard only in snake-handling churches.
The rock band Wednesday is based in Asheville, North Carolina. The band made big waves when its record, “Rat Saw God” came out in April 2023. The music site Pitchfork gave it 8.8 out of 10 and named it Best New Music.
Before Wednesday set out on a big European tour, Mason Adams caught up with singer/songwriter Karly Hartzman.
Stitching Back A Tradition Of Quilting
(L-R) Sandra Jones, Emily Jones Hudson, Rebecca Cornett and Katie Glover with the quilt they made together during the first Stories Behind the Quilt workshop series.
Credit: Capri Cafaro/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Quilts in Appalachia are often handed down from generation to generation and while some traditional arts have faded, people have never really stopped quilting. But the tradition can be patchy in some areas. Emily Jones Hudson noticed fewer quilters in her hometown of Hazard, Kentucky, especially among African Americans. So, she created a quilting workshop series to encourage people to revitalize an art and recapture some history.
Folkways Reporter Capri Cafaro brings us the story.
“The Moonshine Messiah” is the first novel of West Virginia native Russell W. Johnson.
Courtesy
November is National Novel Writing Month. All over the country, aspiring novelists have been writing their hearts out in hopes of penning the next best seller.
But the hard part to getting a novel into a reader’s hands might not be the writing. Author Russell Johnson makes his home in North Carolina, but his debut novel, “Moonshine Messiah,” is set in the West Virginia coal fields, where his parents are from.
Bill Lynch spoke with Johnson about writing and the long road to getting published.
All About The Alabama Astronaut
Musician, singer-songwriter, painter, podcaster and former preacher Abe Partridge.
Courtesy Photo
Usually, when you hear about snake-handling, it’s in an exploitative way, but the folks who handle snakes are more like people you might know. They also play a style of Appalachian music that’s largely gone undocumented. That music is the subject of a podcast released in 2022 called Alabama Astronaut.
Folkways Reporter Zack Harold spoke with co-host Abe Partridge about how a project intended to document this music ended up being about a whole lot more.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by Wednesday, John Blissard, Little David and Christian Lopez.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Zander Aloi is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens.
You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
On this West Virginia Morning, quilts have been handed down for generations, but the tradition gets a little patchy in some places. In Hazard, Kentucky, Emily Jones Hudson noticed fewer quilters, especially among African Americans. So, she started a quilting workshop to help recapture some history.
On this West Virginia Morning, quilts have been handed down for generations, but the tradition gets a little patchy in some places. In Hazard, Kentucky, Emily Jones Hudson noticed fewer quilters, especially among African Americans. So, she started a quilting workshop to help recapture some history. Folkways Reporter Capri Cafaro brings us this story.
Also, in this show, our Mountain Stage Song of the Week comes from one of the most prominent names in the modern jam band scene, Vince Herman. We listen to “Lost Lover’s Eyes” by the Vince Herman Band, which appeared on Herman’s 2022 solo debut, Enjoy the Ride.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.
Our Appalachia Health News project is made possible with support from CAMC and Marshall Health.
West Virginia Morning is produced with help from Bill Lynch, Briana Heaney, Caroline MacGregor, Chris Schulz, Curtis Tate, Emily Rice, Eric Douglas, Liz McCormick, and Randy Yohe.
Eric Douglas is our news director and our producer this week. Caroline MacGregor is our assistant news director.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
If you’ve ever driven in a rural area, you may have seen a wooden quilt block hanging on the side of a barn. There might just be a story behind that block.
If you’ve ever driven in a rural area, you may have seen a wooden quilt block hanging on the side of a barn.
Despite the name, barn quilts can be found on just about any building, not just barns. There are more than 300 of the colorfully painted barn quilts sprinkled throughout Western North Carolina — and that number is growing.
When Candace Wingo and her husband moved to Haywood County, North Carolina from Texas a few years ago, Candace knew she wanted a barn quilt to become a fixture of her farm.
“I’ve always wanted a barn quilt,” said Wingo. “I wanted to do something that would honor the Carolinas and being here, so I picked the Carolina Lily.”
Wingo commissioned a local barn quilt designer through the Haywood County Arts Council to create the massive 8 by 8 foot block. Most barn quilts are 4 by 4 feet.
Barn quilts usually riff on an existing quilt pattern. Artists tweak patterns to make the final piece completely unique. The reasons people put up barn quilt blocks are likewise unique. Some designs reference a person’s or place’s history, while others are purely aesthetic.
Putting a barn quilt together is usually a labor of love. In Haywood County, barn quilts are painted by volunteers for the Haywood County Arts Council. In each 4 by 4 foot block, there could be about 40 hours of painting, dozens of layers of paint between all the colors and the work of multiple community members.
The barn quilt concept can be traced to Appalachian Ohio. Quilter Donna Sue Groves put up the first barn quilt in 2001 to honor her mother. If you look hard enough the barn quilts can be found just about anywhere in the U.S. There are official programs in more than 40 states.
Sometimes individuals do paint their own barn quilts, but it’s common for community members to commission the blocks from local artists or art councils, just like Wingo did.
Candace Wingo
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Courtesy
Candace Wingo and her sister Glenda Kilgore helped paint the Wingos’ Carolina Lily barn quilt.
A former designer herself, Wingo knew she wanted to be involved with the process of designing and painting her block. With the help of barn quilts designer Lauren Medford, Wingo’s dreams of having a quilt block grace her red barn came true.
“Lauren was so familiar with it all. She did the research on if the design has been duplicated. She would send me her suggestions and I would tweak it. It was a real fun group effort with her,” Wingo said.
The duo designed the largest quilt block Medford had ever designed. The result was an 8 by 8 foot block featuring an adaptation of the traditional Carolina Lily pattern.
Candace Wingo
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Courtesy
The last panel of the Wingos’ Carolina Lily quilt block is going up.
Wingo’s barn quilt features eight Carolina Lily flowers, four on the outer perimeter and four on the inside. The red flowers have angular petals, made of triangles and trapezoids. Wingo said the design was inspired by her surroundings. She and Medford worked to pull in colors from Wingo’s barn and from the rest of the farm. In it, you’ll find reds, greens, black and white.
It took months to come together, but Wingo knew she was in good hands with Medford. Medford is a Haywood County native, and no stranger to quilt blocks, or quilting.
“My great-grandmother made quilts her entire life,” Medford said. “But my grandmother fell out of the sewing tradition, and my mom didn’t [sew] either.”
When some of Medford’s great-grandmother’s quilts were passed down to her, she decided to take a quilting class and fell in love.
“I made my first quilt, which was very fun. And it is very mathematical and technical, which I enjoy because I like hard lines and graphic aesthetics, so it was kind of a good fit for me,” Medford said.
For Medford, working with unique designs is gratifying, and she appreciates the connection community members often have to the quilt blocks they commission. She remembers one in particular that a woman’s family members commissioned for her.
“Her sister and husband had us make a design based on her cross stitch, and it’s very intricate,” said Medford.
Medford cites other unique barn quilts in the area. A Haywood County dentist, for example, has a quilt block with a repeating rifle pattern outside his office in honor of his family’s rifle-making traditions.
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The rifle quilt block outside of Dr. Michael Gillespie’s dentist practice in Waynesville, North Carolina was designed in honor of his family’s tradition of making Gillespie rifles. At first glance, the quilt pattern seems to be a rose, but if you look more closely brown and black rifles appear.
Lauren Medford / Courtesy
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A closer look at Dr. Gillespie’s rifle-patterned barn quilt.
Lauren Medford / Courtesy
There are others, too. One barn quilt depicts a man under water. It’s called “Dead Man in the Creek.” It was designed to remember the namesake of the Fines Creek Community in Haywood County. The quilt depicts Vinet Fine, who drowned in a nearby creek in the late 1700s.
Haywood County Arts Council
“Dead Man in the Creek” pays homage to Haywood County history. The barn quilt references the namesake of the Fines Creek Community, Vinet Fine.
The idea behind that barn quilt is morbid, but they have not always told stories in such a literal way.
When barn quilts first started popping up, most of them featured traditional geometric shapes and patterns, like stars. But over the years, people have gotten more expressive with barn quilts. This is something that intrigued volunteer barn quilt painter Linda Lappe.
“[Painting barn quilts] is just being part of the community and the history and the culture,” Lappe said. “A lot of our quilt patterns are very traditional, yet we have people who come in and design for specific quilt blocks.”
Part of the fun of having a barn quilt is that the organizations in charge of local barn quilt block programs create maps and guides, or “trails,” for people to follow in a certain area. Quilt enthusiasts, tourists and whoever wants can drive or walk along the quilt trails to see how people express themselves through the wooden blocks.
You never know what you might stumble upon while following a barn quilt trail. Ultimately, community members can be as creative or traditional as they want when they choose a barn quilt, says Medford.
“It could be like, ‘I just like the color blue, I want a blue star,’ or it could be really meaningful. There’s not really an overarching theme other than that quilt blocks speak to Appalachia and craft and tradition,” said Medford.
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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.
The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.
For his day job, Shane Foster is an optometrist in Athens, Ohio. But lately he’s also become a quilter—with help from some friends he’s never actually met.
Shane Foster is one of those folks who always had strong memories of quilts during his childhood.
“It’s just something that was always in my family, my great-grandmothers on my mom’s side,” Foster said. “Both were quilters. They had done it for years, decades. And I always had a quilt on my bed growing up. So I just assumed that everybody had. When I grew up and learned that they were down comforters and things like this, I had never really experienced that, because we just always used a quilt that had been passed down from one of our great-grandmothers.”
As time passed, the matriarchs in Foster’s family had stopped making quilts. This was a result of lack of interest or passing away. Foster realized that the tradition might die out within his family.
“I’ve said for years that I wanted someone in our family to start quilting,” Foster said.
But no one did, until Foster himself contracted COVID-19 in 2021. He recovered well, with the exception of some lingering post-COVID symptoms like anxiety and high blood pressure. His family doctor suggested he find something that would allow him to de-stress. With that news, Foster figured it was time. So he began the journey of learning how to quilt.
There was just one problem: Foster had no guidance from his grandmothers to teach him their craft. The solution? YouTube.
“And it really helped me through it,” Foster said. “I think in a way, it’s like having somebody there showing you how to do this. Like if I had learned from my grandmother, and my great-grandmother, saying, ‘No, this is how you do this and then I’m going to show you how to do this part.’ But it’s on demand, and it’s in a way that is easily accessed by anyone.”
Shane Foster’s story stirred the question: If you learn an art from YouTube, is it still Folk Art?
Yes, says Zoe Van Buren, the folklife director at the North Carolina Arts Council.
“We always use new technologies. If a new technology emerges, it is against human nature to not wonder if maybe it could make your life a little bit easier,” Van Buren said.
She has spent a lot of time thinking about the ways people pass on traditional practices.
“It’s very romantic to kind of think that every tradition bearer has or should come to their practice through the same route and that that route always has to start with somebody in their immediate community or family, kind of sitting them down and having that knee to knee teaching moment,” she said.
Van Buren says today’s practitioners grew up with the internet at their fingertips, and that they’ll eventually become our elder culture keepers.
“We had a very cool project at the North Carolina Arts Council that is ongoing, but it was the Millennial Traditional Artist Project, and one of the big questions was: ‘What do we do for and with the digital generation and how?’” Van Buren said. “How does the access to digital technology, to mass communications, to YouTube, to social media, change the way that we talk about traditional arts and how they’re taught and how they’re learned?”
“And I think some of the anxiety around using YouTube in a traditional learning context is, what are you not learning?” she said. “As folklorists you know, we embrace the change and we are more interested in the conversation around it rather than coming up with a definitive answer itself. The answer isn’t the thing that matters. The thing that matters is that we are worried about our culture, we’re worried about our practice, we’re worried about knowledge, we’re worried about what the next generation knows. So it doesn’t matter if we land on one definitive answer. What matters is that we care enough to sort of debate it.”
Besides, the digital world has strong connections with the real world. Just look at Shane Foster. He learned how to quilt from YouTube videos, but that knowledge has allowed him to connect with a real-life quilter: his great-grandmother. She passed away many years ago, but Foster is now working with fabric that his great-grandmother cut out for a quilt that she never finished.
“Now I’m taking those pieces and I’m honoring her memory and doing it in the way that she intended, but also putting my own twist on it by using some fabrics that I chose,” Foster said. “And so it did come together with this. This amalgam of different fabrics to make it kind of a combination work between her and me.”
Now that Foster has many projects under his belt, he’s looking forward to exploring the quilting medium as a source of artistic expression. All, of course, with a nod to both great-grandma and YouTube.
This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, which is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to Inside Appalachia to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.
