Four Generations of Quilts Come Out of the Family ‘Treasure Chest'
Still living cheerfully in her own home in Fairfield, Texas, at age 98, Laverne Brackens likes to entertain a steady stream of visitors. She has a fast-talking health-care aide who comes by three times a week. She has two younger sisters, one younger brother, five children and more than 100 grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, most of whom also live in and around her hometown, and find their way to her front porch.
Then there are the quilt collectors who have been making the pilgrimage to her home along a county highway since at least 2011, when a National Heritage fellowship raised Brackens's profile. They come to see her energetically colored, highly improvisational, feel-good quilts. They can spot her house from a distance, thanks to bright vinyl signs hanging on the metal fence in front commemorating the mayor's proclamation of Oct. 13, 2022, as 'Laverne Brackens Day.'
But none of these visitors, not even her closest relatives, are allowed to open an old wood trunk with brass buckles that sits on the floor in a corner next to her sewing table. 'It's her treasure chest,' says Sherry Byrd, 74, Brackens's daughter, who is the next-best-known living quilter in Fairfield. 'And, no,' Byrd said of the trunk, 'I'm not allowed to touch it without permission.'
Brackens calls this her 'four-generations trunk,' and it contains her own quilts, rolled into bundles, alongside quilts made by her mother, Gladys Henry; her daughter Sherry; and several grandchildren. On top of one stack is a medallion quilt by Sherry that resembles a stained-glass window, its flashes of fiery colors barely contained by black frames. Next to it sits a puffy quilt that her mother made by cutting up and stitching together the velvety purple bags that Crown Royal whisky bottles come in — a gift from one of her son's hard-drinking friends years ago.
'He bet me $50 I couldn't make nothing out of these bags,' Brackens said. 'So I won the bet, and I've been making them ever since.'
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