Blocks and strips work-clothes quilt

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    Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio
1942
Cotton, corduroy, cotton sacking
90 x 69 inches
Collection of
National Gallery of Art
Museum purchase and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation
Description

The clothes belonged to her husband, Nathaniel, who died in 1941. Missouri's daughter Arlonzia describes the quilt: "It was when Daddy died. I was about seventeen, eighteen. He stayed sick about eight months and passed on. Mama say, 'I going to take his work clothes, shape them into a quilt to remember him, and cover up under it for love.' She take his old pants legs and shirttails, take all the clothes he had, just enough to make that quilt, and I helped her tore them up. Bottom of the pants is narrow, top is wide, and she had me to cutting the top part out and to shape them up in even strips."