The New Georgia Encyclopedia is supported by funding from A More Perfect Union, a special initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Georgia quilt makers, such as the Busy Bee Quilting Club in Dalton, continue to make quilts for the same reasons as earlier generations: to engage in a satisfying creative activity, to produce beautiful objects of lasting value for family and friends, and to make connections with other people.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
A Chatham County quilt-making group, circa 1900, included (left to right) Avie Wheeler, Leona Wheeler, Sarah Wheeler, and Mary Jane Wheeler (seated). These women made the quilt that hangs in the background.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
ctm216.
Harriet Powers finished her Bible Quilt around 1886 in Athens. The third panel in the second row depicts the story of Jacob's dream, when "he lay on the ground." Enslaved African Americans identified with Jacob, for he was homeless, hunted, and weary of his journey.
Courtesy of National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Members of the Ladies Aid Society of Marietta at a First Baptist Church quilting in 1904.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
cob819.
An unidentified Waynesboro woman displays her handiwork at a show sponsored by the Economic Opportunity Agency, circa 1968.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #bur150.
Georgia potters picked up the European approach that uses a potter's wheel, kiln, and glazes in the early 1800s. Here a potter forms clay with his hands as the clay rotates on a potter's wheel.
Photograph by Fred Fussell
Mrs. J. A. Green and her son, Allen Burton, make tufted bedspreads on U.S. Highway 41 in Bartow County, 1933. Green was one of the first in the county to make chenille bedspreads.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #brt122.
Catherine Evans Whitener brought back the handcraft of tufting in the 1890s, which played an important role in the economic development of northwest Georgia as its popularity grew.
Courtesy of Shaw Industries, Inc.
The African American tradition of carving walking sticks with reptile and human figures is exemplified by the work of coastal Georgia artists like Arthur "Pete" Dilbert of Savannah. Photograph by Billy Howard
Courtesy of Georgia Council for the Arts.
A story cloth by textile artist and Hmong refugee May Tong Moua depicts Hmong villagers fleeing Communist forces (upper right-hand corner) in Laos and crossing the Mekong River to arrive at a refugee camp in Thailand. A resident of Lilburn, May Tong Moua is among a number of Hmong refugees who resettled in DeKalb and Gwinnett counties. The story cloth, made in 1991, is housed at the Atlanta History Center.
Courtesy of Atlanta History Center.
Hmong textile artist May Yang Moua, pictured in 1991, displays her finished flower cloths. Hmong refugees from Laos settling in DeKalb and Gwinnett counties have brought their needlework traditions to Georgia.
Courtesy of Georgia Council for the Arts, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Libraries.
