Folk Art Quilts

Judith Braggs creates fabric art based on memories of her plantation childhood

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Growing up in Cherie Quarters, Judith Braggs experienced rural life much as it was in another century. She was delivered by a midwife in the wooden cabin of her parents, Beatrice and Moses Braggs—the fourth of their nine children. 

The Quarters, as Braggs calls it, was home to sharecroppers at River Lake Plantation in Oscar in Pointe Coupée Parish, across the river from Baton Rouge. Back then, some twenty cabins lined the gravel road. All are gone now, and the church/school has been moved to the property of Cherie Quarters’s most famous former resident, writer Ernest Gaines. (He and his wife Dianne built a house nearby.) “I made a picture of the church and decided to give it to him and Dianne,” said Braggs in a recent interview at her home studio, which is filled with her work. 

Braggs has made a name for herself as a fabric artist, creating brightly colored patchwork wall hangings of people and activities she knew growing up: baptism in False River, crawfishing, picking cotton, feeding chickens, jumping rope, having her hair combed. “They’re all based off memories,” she said. “Just old stuff. I always liked the Quarters.”

She worked in the fields as a teenager. “Every Saturday we picked cotton. All our cousins, the Edwards and Brooks families, would do it together. It was more like fun for us. We kept the money we made. We’d walk to the store to buy lunch.”

The family moved to Port Allen, Erwinville, back to False River, and finally settled in Baton Rouge, where Braggs now lives. She recalled her father, who died in 2009, as a hard-working entrepreneur who variously worked at a dairy farm, in construction, and as a welder. He also made and sold cracklins.

She learned to sew after her dad bought a sewing machine in the hope that his seven daughters would save him money by making their own clothes. Judith was the only one who heeded the call. At five feet, ten inches tall, she could never find pants that were long enough, so she started making her own, with help from home ec classes in high school. She also sewed for her sisters and her mother. “I made my dad a jacket, burgundy-and-white-striped seersucker,” she said. “It was hard work. I had to put stiffener in the collar. I threw that pattern out, because I never wanted to make another one. But he liked it. He loved to tell people I made it for him.”

After graduating from Rosenwald High School in New Roads, and taking business classes, Braggs applied for Civil Service jobs. She was hired as an account auditor by the state Department of Revenue and spent thirty-three years there, retiring in 2005.

She continued to sew while working, making patchwork vests and jackets as well as “cute little ruffly dresses” and baby quilts for friends and relatives. “I wasn’t trying to sell them, but people would want me to make them for their grandchild,” said Braggs, who was soon making quilts to order. 

[Also read: Silk Compositions, a look at Megan Barra's hand-sewn fabric art.]

After retirement, she stepped up the sewing and also began making wooden benches, using skills she had learned in shop class in high school. In 2009, she rented booth space at the monthly Arts Market downtown, selling benches she made with help from her brother Michael. Wanting to branch out, she stitched a wall hanging about two feet square of a woman in a floral-print dress. “The Lady was the first one I made,” said Braggs. “I took it to a friend to see what she thought. I was looking for something to sell downtown along with the benches. She not only liked it, she wanted to buy it! I sold it to her for, I think, a hundred dollars.”

By 2010, Braggs was selling wall hangings in her booth at the arts market. She phased out the benches in favor of fabric art. Early on, she decided not to include features on the faces. “I did one face when I made a piece of my dad,” she remembered with a laugh. “My sister Hattie told me, ‘Don’t do faces!’ I can’t draw.”

Much of her work is based on photographs. She treasures the few photos she has of her father, including one taken at a fair in New Roads, where he leans against a prop column. She made a wall hanging based on it. Another was inspired by a snapshot of her parents on their front porch in Erwinville. Her three-bedroom house serves as a gallery for her work. In fact, she started out simply to make art to hang on her walls. “I like large art that makes a statement.” The house is filled with her patchwork, from wall hangings to chair seats to a shower curtain to an ironing-board cover. 

“I don’t buy a lot of any one fabric. I buy used tablecloths. If I find an old shirt, I’ll tear it up and make it into clothes for my works, like girls’ dresses.”

Her technique is different from the work of artists who use batting to stuff their quilts. Preferring a heavier filling, she stitches together layers of fabric to make the stuffing, giving them a heavier feel that reminds Braggs of the heavy quilts of her childhood, a much-needed source of warmth in drafty cabins heated only by a fireplace. “It gives it more body, more like a tapestry,” she said. “And it’s easier to sew through than batting. You have to cross it a zillion times. Sometimes it takes longer than you think. You want it to be a certain weight. Since I started quilting, I buy pink and blue fabrics to use as batting. I’ll do five or six layers that I sew together in wavy lines, not straight. I do the backgrounds, then the clothes, then the hair, then the shoes.” 

For faces, arms, and legs, Braggs prefers duck cloth or canvas. “It’s got to have a little more body, weight, or texture,” she said. Her sources include her own stash, pieces friends give her, fabric stores, and clothing and quilts from resale and thrift shops. “I don’t buy a lot of any one fabric. I buy used tablecloths. If I find an old shirt, I’ll tear it up and make it into clothes for my works, like girls’ dresses.”

She often clothes her figures in white, but she wants the dresses and shirts to look old. “I dye fabric with Rit dye in buckets. I dye it brown to make them look like old dresses that got stained, so it has a vintage look to it.”

She works in her studio every day, sometimes watching favorite TV shows such as Choppers and American Pickers as she sits at her Janome machine. “I need to be sewing all the time. I work on at least three pieces at the same time. If I make five a week, that’s good.” 

When a piece is ready to sell, Braggs adds a tag with her description of the work. About a piece called Big Mama, she wrote, “Every family has one, well we did. Big Mama was always cooking or baking bread. Big Ma liked looking good, but she always managed to get a snag in her stocking and she rolled them under her knee. She gave us coffee water before my parents even knew. It was good with our biscuits.”

“I like to write the little stories,” she said. “I also like to write down why people bought a piece.” 

Though Braggs depicts her own childhood, images of the rural black experience can invite uncomfortable associations with slavery and the Jim Crow era. “I’ve had repeat customers, and I have just as many white customers as black,” she said. “One woman asked me, ‘Is it politically incorrect?’ I never thought about it, because to me it’s just art.”

Some of her pieces, such as Big Mama, strike a chord with people, who commission one like it. “Sometimes I’ve made the same piece three or four times. The Lady was also very popular. I started making them smaller because people holler about not having enough space for the bigger pieces.” 

Braggs was baptized in False River when she was sixteen, along with four sisters and a brother. She has two pieces in progress based on that experience. One is of five girls and a boy in white robes and head cloths for the baptism. In the other they have changed into white church clothes. “They only had baptisms once a year, in the summer,” she said. “I’m scared of snakes and leeches and everything else. I wouldn’t go out there now.”

[You may also like: As Seen by Clementine, an account of the Melrose Plantation auction the artist was present at.]

Braggs has enjoyed growing recognition for her work. In 2014, she was featured on the Louisiana Folklife website, with an interview and multiple images of her work as part of the larger Baton Rouge Traditions project. The year 2016 brought mixed blessings. In the August flood, Braggs’s house took on eighteen inches of water. She had to move out while it was being repaired. “I spent four and a half months with my sister. I lost a lot of fabric that got wet. I had to throw it out. Talk about heavy! We had to use dollies. I threw away four sewing machines. I had to buy a new machine so I could have quilts to show.” Despite the chaos, Braggs pulled together pieces for the Yellow Leaf Arts Festival in St. Francisville in late October, where she was the artist in residence.

Last March, she was invited to participate in a three-person show at the Black Heritage Gallery in Lake Charles. She sold three pieces and was commissioned to make a large piece of the woman she calls Big Mama. 

While at the opening, Braggs was interviewed by a writer from Quiltfolk, a quarterly that features quilters from a different state in each issue. Issue No. 7, which is on newsstands now, has an article about her work and that of other Louisiana artists, including the late Clementine Hunter.

Braggs never minds having a wall hanging left over from a show or market and is happy to be surrounded by her work. “If a piece doesn’t sell, that just adds to my collection.” 

judithfolkartquilts@hotmail.com. Ruth Laney can be reached at ruthlaney@cox.net.