More Quilts

This one is called Sukey's Choice.

This one is made from flannels. I love flannel checks.

Here's a close up.

The next one is my own pattern. I named it Kentucky Burley after a tobacco patch near our home in KY that, as a displaced Northener, I found endlessly fascinating. The tobacco grown in KY is called burley. I set the patches in rows to give the idea of the rows of tobacco in the field. The size of the project reflects the size of the patch. Most tobacco patches in KY are, well, patches. They are small, family owned, hand planted (called "setting the tobacco" and hand harvested. The white half-square triangles represent a stage in the growth of tobacco when it "heads up" and forms a flower. These flowers are ruthlessly removed in a process called "topping." The brown half-square triangles represent the harvested tobacco leaves, which are cut by hand and gathered together on sharp, pointed stakes. The stakes are then hung up to dry in drafty barns.

Tobacco is a huge part of the culture and economy of south central Kentucky.



For anyone who is interested, here are some facts about the tobacco industry in KY.

Kentucky is comprised primarily of small family farms that have been handed down for generations. Currently Kentucky possesses the fourth largest number of farms in the United States, with approximately 59,000 of Kentucky's 88,000 farms growing tobacco. Kentucky has more farms growing tobacco than 37 states have total farms.

Across the eight state burley belt (which includes Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Missouri) over 250,000 farms possess quotas, with almost 75% of these quotas being one acre or less in size. Consolidation of quotas has occurred, but the latest census data reveal that the average tobacco farm in Kentucky grows 4.5 acres of tobacco. Ninety percent of Kentucky tobacco farms produce less than 10 acres of tobacco and Kentucky, by far, has the largest tobacco farms of any burley-producing state.

Overall, tobacco is produced in 119 out of Kentucky's 120 counties, generating sales of $800-$900 million annually, which translates into about 40% of the net cash return from ag sales in Kentucky.

excerpted from Testimony Before the
U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry