Center medallion strips with multiple borders

I was born in 1928, way out where at that time they call Primrose; later on, the part I lived on they called Young's Place. The boss man owned that land, Herbert Hall Wilkinson. Lula Pettway was my mother; Albert Pettway was my father. They farmed cotton, corn, peas, sweet potatoes. My daddy raised a lot of sorghum cane for syrup. I lived in a log-cabin house with about twelve of us children. We used to plaster the house walls with magazines and used to make our sheets out of fertilizer sacks.

I was staying with my mama when I first started to quilting. My daddy brought me some cloth from Camden where they was giving it away. I didn't cut it up or nothing; just quilted it like it was. I started cutting and piecing cloth when I was about thirteen, fourteen, something like that. I always wanted to be like a little lady, do pretty things. I was using dress tails, tear them up and put them together, anything I could find. I used the old pants legs from my brother Gaston clothes. That was about all I had back then, old dress tails and pants legs.

I never did like the book patterns some people had. Those things had too many little bitty blocks. I like big pieces and long strips. However I get them, that's how I used them. I liked to sew them however they be. I work it out, study the way to make it, get it to be right, kind of like working a puzzle. You find the colors and the shapes and certain fabrics that work out right. I always like cotton, but not the other stuff too much. Didn't like silk, or crepe, and didn't use wool much. I stayed with what I started with: old clothes that I could tear up. It always come out level.