Black Quilting, Black Folklore with Dr. Patricia Turner

Professor Patricia Turner is a folklorist, professor, scholar, and researcher at UCLA. She’s written many books, including Crafted Lives: Stories and Studies of African American Quilters. Pat joins the Stitch Please podcast to share why it's important to understand the broad diversity of Black people through quilting and what it means to think about quilts as artifacts to be studied within a cultural context. This opened up our conversation as we talked about the nine patch quilt block and how she used this common quilting pattern to communicate the breadth of the African-American experience through the quilter. Pat shares her views on urban legends, why they appeal to us, and what it means to think of something as a legend versus a fabrication. Pat also explains why it’s important to cherish and recognize the full humanity of Black folks and why that's something that often gets overlooked. This episode is an enlightening lesson on legends, reality, and anthropological literary perspectives of black quilters. So tune in, get curious, and get inspired by this incredible conversation.