Four squares of cloth, each holding a story someone chose to remember.
These stamps honour Harriet Powers (1837–1910), a formerly enslaved woman whose quilts are now counted among the masterpieces of American folk art. Born on a plantation near Athens, Georgia, she is believed to have learned to sew as a child; at eighteen she married Armstead Powers, an enslaved farmhand, and they eventually had nine children. After Emancipation they bought four acres in Sandy Creek, Georgia, where they raised cotton and vegetables. Powers completed at least five quilts; two are known to survive, both story quilts whose panels piece, appliqué and embroider scenes from local lore or the Bible. Her “Bible Quilt” was shown at a fair in Athens in 1886; after a teacher, Jennie Smith, displayed it at the 1895 Cotton States Exposition, Atlanta University faculty wives commissioned the “Pictorial Quilt” (1898) as a gift. Each of these four stamps reproduces a panel from it.
Cloth and thread, kept as a record.
PERFECT FOR: gifts for quilters and textile people, journal pages, Black History Month displays, museum-shop framing, and anyone who keeps a scrap basket.
