Quilt of leaves collected in Norris, TN

For many years Bettye Kimbrell was a guest artist at the Museum of Appalachia’s Fall Homecoming Festival near Norris, Tennessee. While there she gathered leaves from trees and plants growing in the museum’s demonstration garden and surrounding grounds and imprinted them to a quilt top. She used a wooden mallet  to transfer the pigment of the leaf  to the fabric, a technique called Cherokee leaf pounding. Her detailed hand-stitching of outlines, stems, and veins brings each leaf to life and the incredible number of stitches in the background gives the quilt a rich texture. An image of this quilt was used as an invitation to the banquet at the Library of Congress sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts to honor Bettye and ten other National Heritage fellows in 2008. (Photo courtesy of Alan Govenar)

41” W X34” L (2004)