Have you have ever paid trees any attention? Some of them are light green, dark green, greener green, yellowish green. Have you ever paid how the leaves are blowing? They have a glimmer in it. And I called it silver because it be wavy. (SINGING) I don’t want nobody to praise me when I’m gone. Mm. Then some time at night, when I’m laying down in the bed, I’m dreaming about something. And I have my pencil and my paper beside the bed. And I just sketch that out on paper. (SINGING) Lord, I don’t want nobody to praise me when I’m gone. Whoa. It’s just something to keep your mind occupied. That’s all. And then you quilt for your children. (SINGING) — whiles I yet live. (SINGING) If you want to put it on — Make me a quilt. (SINGING) Lord, to help me. Yes, if I — At first I wanted to leave home. But then when I got older, I began to like it a little more. And then I began to fall in love with it. The biggest of my challenges was farming. I picked cotton. I didn’t like it, not at all. But it was life. We had to do what we had to do to make a living. When my parents finished their farm then we go over and helped our neighbor get their farm. We just worked together. [humming] I started cooking at age of 6. Would you believe that? I was the only girl, but my mom gave all of my brothers a chore in the kitchen. She made them learn how to cook because she told them you might not get a wife and at least you’ll know how to cook. [laughter] Don’t that make perfectly good sense? Gee’s Bend, Alabama, is a rural community. How’d Zeus manage to get over there? [goats bleating] I opened the gate. You have to go 50 miles to shop. But to live in a community where everybody knows everybody, that’s a good thing. [goats bleating] I am Essie Pettway. Everybody call me Toot. China Pettway. My name is Mary Lee Bendolph. My real name is Rita Mae, but most people call me Rabbit. If one not related to the other one, they’re related to the other one. And we all know one another. We are kin people. My mamma died when I was 4. And my grandparents, they didn’t want to raise me. My granddaddy said when I started walking, I just jumped up and went a-running. And so that’s why they called me Rabbit, because I was so fast. My grandmother taught me how to quilt. It’s keep me occupied from doing other things that I might not need to be doing. Sew it like that. That’s what you call the housetop. I was born and raised here. I went to New York and stayed for two weeks, but I came back. Mhm. And I’ve been here ever since. I remember when my mom and my grandmom and their neighbors used to come by to quilt together. And I used to just sit there and look up under the quilt and wonder how they was going up and down, up and down with that needle. They wasn’t even sticking their fingers, but — I said, I’d have stuck my finger to death. But it was real exciting to see that as a child. And I say when I get older, I’m going make me lots of quilts so I can have them to keep my kids warm. [humming] They would teach us when we was under the quilt listening to them, praying and talking to God about their children, how they wanted them to grow up and be mens and womens. (SINGING) Lord, have mercy. To love their children and to teach them the value of life. (SINGING) Lord, have mercy. They understood what it was about family. (SINGING) Save my soul. You could feel the love. Sometimes you’re walking along the highway, you see a little piece of material. You pick it up and run home and give it to my mamma. And she put it in a quilt. Somehow are our old blue jeans. And I just took them and cut them up and made this, turn it into a quilt. Look at what your mamma made me. That’s the way you do it. I do all my sewing by hand and so — I have a sewing machine, but I don’t — I use it when I have to use. And then go to stitching it. When I’m doing my quilt, my mind is totally into it, and I don’t have to be perfect. It give you a piece of mind. You can take time out and talk to God and say thank you. (SINGING) Father, I stray. My hand to thee. O.K. There we go. There we go. I get to make the decision of whether I want to put this in there or take it out. And if nobody else like it, so what? It going on my bed because it’s mine. (SINGING) Swing low, sweet old chariot, coming to carry me home. Swing low, sweet old chariot, coming to carry me home. I looked over Jordan; then what did I see — whoa — coming to carry me home? When we were young, we worked a whole lot. Sure. I worked at school at the lunchroom. But the rest of the people were working in fields and picking cotton and stuff like that. We was living on a white man’s place at that time. We didn’t want to live in the same old rut. We wanted to move. I did. Don’t know what everybody else wanted to do, but I wanted to do better things. When I went to march in the civil rights movement, I didn’t know the police and everything was there, taking people to jail, beating them, and all that kind of stuff. I didn’t know. But I really wanted to become a registered voter. You know, when you become a voter, you could do something. It’s O.K. now, but not like it should be. I was always held back because of where I came from, who my mother were, who my father were. But I realized I am somebody. I can do anything that I put my mind to doing. It make me feel great. I never thought quilts would be in no museum, no way. That’s mine, that picture right there. Mhm. That’s the first year I started. There’s my quilt there. There’s a quilt there. And this is Essie, her quilt. It just was a joy to see. It’s just like something just burst open because I never thought that a quilt would be an artwork, people would think that was beautiful, that something we’d done could be shown all over the world and people get joy out of it. Oh, girl, I just loved it. You can look at a quilt. It can give you a feeling of something. You know, it gives you love. You can see love. You can see peace. You can see joy in different quilts. I just loved to see my beautiful quilt hanging up there. And I don’t know what happened to them, but — (SINGING) Oh, please. Oh, please. He asked me, was it all right for him to sell my quilt? I tell him, yeah, because you sent me some money, but he ain’t told me nothing else since then (SINGING) Oh, please. Oh, please. We’re going leave this all behind one day. It’s not ours in the beginning. We just only borrowing it for the time we are here (SINGING) Oh, thank God. Oh, thank God.