Jazz With A Needle and Thread Storyquilt

Sherry A. Byrd is an African American M-provisational Folk art quilt maker from Freestone County,Texas. She was born into a family of quilt makers i 1951 and is a fifth generational quilter in a lineage that boasts six generations of quilters.
The quilters are all descendants of the slave, Edward "Ned" Titus, whose family was transported to Freestone County,Texas in 1852 by the Simeon and Nancy Lake Family, from South Carolina.

The above reversible story quilt follows in the foot steps of Sherry's grandmother,Gladys Celia Durham-Henry, who during her life time created a painted bible story quilt which Sherry now owns and had the unique opportunity of watching her create in 1969 .This was the very last quilt that Sherry ever saw her grandmother create. Sherry had learned quilt making by watching her grandmother execute the process for the first eighteen years of her life.

For twenty plus years, Sherry gathered quilt blocks, etc. from known quilt makers in her family. She had in mind to create a sampler quilt from them,but as time went on and she started to discover the wonderful quilt making lineage in her family....the pieces were used to create this wonderful reversible story quilt, which chronicles the family history and preserves quite a bit of the handiwork of at least four generations of the quilt making lineage.

This story quilt has been featured at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in 2006 ,in the exhibit "It (Still) Ain't Braggin If It's True".