HATTIE SCHMIDT
MEMBER, AFRICAN AMERICAN QUILT CIRCLE OF DURHAM
Hattie Schmidt is an African-American storyteller and fiber artist. She is a quilt historian. She draws, paints, sews, and quilts.
She is a retired educator who says she learned quilting from her grandmother and mother and on her own. She says her world is challenged by design, expressed in embellishment. In her sewing workshop, she has different places to keep old things — buttons, jewelry — things that she’s been collecting since she’s been a home economics teacher, since the 1960s.
Her rich use of colors, texture, and a variety of mediums makes her story quilts vessels to draw observers in to search for the essence of their true meaning.
She is called a culture keeper because of her love of quilts and the stories they tell.
