27 Those Sunday drives carried the family past a motel on the other side of the Cape Fear River. “There was a Jocko in front of the motel,” Hattie says. “We were always told if you saw a Jocko in front of a house you were not welcome.” With that memory, Hattie hunted for and found a miniature lawn jockey wearing a red coat and white pants, his black hand holds a ring where a lantern might hang. Hattie’s Jocko stands in her sewing room in front of a quilt she designed, “Will the Real Jocko Stand Up?” She tells her story of the real Jocko: “He was holding the horses for George Washington and froze to death. They possibly used him the statue as a lantern for underground slaves. Jocko is painted black, Jocko is painted brown, Jocko is painted white. My children say, ‘Mom, just forget about it,’ but it’s my history.” Her father, Cleo Williamson, a Wilmington merchant, landlord, longshoreman and trucker, was from Evergreen, on the Lumber River near Lumberton, North Carolina. Born in Mullins, South Carolina, Hattie’s family moved to Wilmington when she was four years old. “I remember Daddy taking us crabbing and clamming, we was always part of the sea and the ocean,” she says. Sea themes wend their way into her quilts as fabric representing moving water and shells or whatever the ocean might fetch up are used for embellishment. Memory quilts of her mother’s nursing club’s reunion, of her father’s Castle Street store, Greenleaf Café, showcase black and white photos, Hattie’s freehand drawings, cursive writing; all things she holds dear to her heart. In her sewing room she has six, seven or eight quilts in process at any given time. One is inspired by Faith Ringgold’s children’s book, “Tar Beach.” Ringgold exhibited her work at the Cameron Art Museum in 2006. As a member of the African American Quilt Circle of Durham, North Carolina, Hattie met the famous fiber artist in Greensboro, North Carolina during a North Carolina Art Teachers Conference, circa 2009. Hattie founded the First Culture African-American Quilting Circle, which meets weekly at St. Mark’s AME Church. She’s also a member of the Seacoast Quilters but does not identify herself as a traditional quilter. Hattie explains the difference between traditional quilting and African-American quilting as “pulling from the traditions and adding our stories to that — quilt art as well as quilting. I have done some traditional, but it’s not as creative to me. I’m not a fine point, line point quilter. If my lines are off, to me, that’s creation.” Other works in progress include a tribute to a quilting workshop she attended at her alma mater, A&T University, where she earned an undergraduate degree in 1963 in home economic education with a minor in cooperative exten-sion. After pursuing her career in South and North Carolina for several years, she relocated to Washington, D.C., to seek a better pay scale. For nine years she schooled international students in home economics, science, food and nutrition and after-school crafts. She also earned a master’s in education administration from Antioch and met her husband Jim Schmidt. S e a t h e m e s we n d t h e i r w a y i n t o h e r qu i l t s . . . www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM are found throughout her home, like this one that which she learned the art of corkscrew curl making.
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