WEAVING About the Red Woven Coverlet and Alice Cobb

Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 15: ARTS and CRAFTS
Weaving at PMSS
Series 09: BIOGRAPHY
Alice Cobb Staff, Trustee
“Red Woven Coverlet”

VII 65 Life & Work. Bed with red woven coverlet. [65_events-visitors_043.jpg]

TAGS: weaving, red woven coverlet description, Alice Cobb, Katherine Pettit coverlet, red dye, woven coverlets, looms, hand weaving, Ludie Day, Sol Day

ALICE COBB : About the Red Woven Coverlet and Alice Cobb

TRANSCRIPTION

About the red woven coverlet – Reminiscence of Alice Cobb Staff person at Pine Mountain Settlement School in 1930’s.

The date I can’t remember — it must have been in the early thirties — but I do remember watching while Ludie Day sheared the sheep in her yard to make the wool, and that was a scary experience because the sheep made a great fuss. I also watched Ludie wash the wool and spin it on the spinning wheel that stayed out on her porch in the summertime.

“Ludie” Day. Spinning wool from her sheep. [kingman_013b]

Ludie’s yarn, if I remember rightly, was considered unusually fine. she lived with her sister Nance in a log house within easy walking distance not far from the Divide, and at the foot of Pine Mountain, We often went over there, I believe Ludie and Nance were sisters of Black Sol Day; he had a huge black mustache,

Also, I chose the color for the dye — red madder— but I don’t remember watching the dyeing process, and I selected the pattern. The weaving was done by Pine Mountain students in the Girl’s Industrial Building, upstairs, and the teacher was Miss Sue Brooks. I came in nearly every day to see how my coverlet was coming along. We were all terribly proud of it.

The coverlet was made for a Christmas gift for my mother, and if I remember rightly, I paid the great sum of twenty-five dollars for it!  [Today it would be several hundred, I guess.] It stayed in my home in Seymore, Indiana for several years, and until we sold the old house and moved to North Carolina. From Hendersonville, [Singing Brook} it came to Nashville, and thence to Pine Mountain. It has many memories for me.

 

SEE

WEAVING Guide

ALICE COBB Staff, Trustee
ALICE COBB Correspondence 1930s and References
Alice Cobb Correspondence 1940s
ALICE COBB GUIDE to Writing, Collected Stories