arkansas | Evening in the Garden Quilts

We stopped in Little Rock to see Central High School.

I had taught about it for years, and it was amazing to stand on the steps where such a change began for our country. It is a truly beautiful building which should be preserved regardless of its history, and it is still an active high school, so tours are by appointment only. Across the street, the National Parks Service maintains a small but excellent Visitor Center with great audio/visuals of the events that occurred there. All so peaceful now.

A wonderful surprise was a display at the Visitor Center of a number of quilts by an artist new to me, Sabrina Zarco. The exhibit is called “American Spring: A Cause for Justice Quilt Exhibition”.

I found these two quilts especially arresting.

I love that she made this one from a vintage tablecloth (thought I was the only one who did that).

I’m told all the quotations are things that have been said to her.

Great embellishment. Buttons!

These are nine patches, with paint and stenciling over top, besides the large “applique”.

We had lunch downtown in their River Market District, then continued toward home.

It was unseasonably cold when we left Ohio Monday morning, and we passed many frosty fields. When we arrived in Missouri, the fields again looked frosty, but they turned out to be frosted with ripe cotton. We have traveled in cotton country before, but never in the fall.

I’m used to corn lining the roads at home, but here and all through Arkansas, there were acres and acres of cotton in various stages of harvest.

In some fields, the effects of the drought were evident, with sparse crops.

Still, they seemed to be harvesting a lot, some in these huge rectangular bales, and some in large round bales that were each wrapped in bright yellow plastic. Rail cars waited on sidings and trucks hauled bales around.

When we stopped to take these pictures, I felt the “lint” on the plants. It reminded me of wool: soft and a little greasy. Of course, I was thinking about all the quilt fabric this could produce, but I forgot that cotton seed meal and oil are important parts of the crop. Anyway, this is one of the places where our beautiful fabric gets its start!