My grandmother Florence was born in 1915. In the 1920s, Florence & her parents & brother traveled in a horse-drawn covered wagon. They went from their home in Texas to New Mexico, in search of land to farm. They were unsuccessful & returned to Texas, where she lived for the rest of her life.

Her mother, Mamie, made all their clothes & other fabric items by hand. By the time I was a child, I didn't encounter anyone doing this any more. Even my grandmother never learned. But Florence still had several quilts, which she entrusted to family.

My ancestors were poor and uneducated. I grew up far from where they lived, and we have little shared experience. The quilt is the only material thing I have from that side of the family. I've brought it to every home I've had in the US.

The quilt has a diamond pattern & is made from feed sacks & fabric scraps. At that time, sacks for feed, flour, fertilizer, etc had elaborate patterns & prints, because the contents sold better when the fabric looked good. People bought them for a dual purpose, because women, primarly, repurposed/upcycled the sacks into clothes & quilts.

This quilt is about 100 years old & the fabric is fraying & thinning all over, as visible in the photos. Those hand stitches, though, remain completely intact.

portraits by Emerald Dove Photography

photos of back of quilt by Skyeris

conceptualized by Skyeris & Emerald Dove

Implicit in this history, of course, are both the privilege of my white ancestors, even amidst very meager economic means, as well as erasure of the Native peoples whose land rights have been denied for centuries. These details are not directly part of the creation of the quilt, but naming that context matters.