The John Hair Cultural Center and Keetoowah Museum will begin the second section of the “Getting Back to Basics” series when it begins its Fall classes on Quilting for Beginners. This section will be offered monthly on three Saturdays on September 9, October 14, and November 11, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Tribal elder and culture bearer Betty Holcomb will teach the quilting classes. She will share resources for the class and part of the content came from a 1977 Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Services booklet.
The Extension home economist in charge of the Indian program wrote, “Indian families today are looking back to a time when life was much simpler. We are becoming increasingly more interested in restoring many of the cultural ways that helped to create this nation of strong people. We have seen an interest and return to the home arts, one of which is quilting.”
And that is also true today. Assistant Keetoowah Museum director Barbara Girty Foster said, “As a result of the Cultural Preservation Assessment collected from UKB communities last year, we are offering a quilting class as part of our “Getting Back to Basics” series. Tribal members had the most interest in learning more about Keetoowah Traditional Lifeways and quilting.
“Today quilters generally make quilts as a hobby unlike the past when people made quilts out of necessity for keeping their family warm. I like hosting this quilting class because it brings people together and reminds us of the “good ole days” when our grandmas, aunts and neighbors would gather around a quilt frame hand stitching, telling stories and laughing, then before you knew it a quilt was finished and ready to share with someone in need.”
Did you ever wonder where the term quilting bee came from? It was this practice of “getting together” which gave birth to the community quilting bee. The ladies of a community would meet at one house to quilt, exchange patterns and the latest gossip, which as was told by the men of the community, produced a sound like that of a hive of bees.
There is still space available for the Getting Back to Basics quilting series. The cost is $75 for all three classes. For more info, contact Girty Foster at 918-871-2794.
