Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus.

You are hearing the voice of Marianne Petway, a quilter in Boykin, Alabama.

And I know this sounds strange, but you're also listening

to an actual quilt. One made not by Marianne, but by another quilt artist in Philadelphia,

almost a thousand miles away. And yeah, I know that's hard to wrap your head around.

In today's episode of Fibernation, we listen to how that artist, Eliza Hardy-Jones,

transcribes women's voices, women's songs, note for note, with just strips of fabric.

And those quilts she makes, in turn, tell stories about the singers, where they came from,

their history, and why music is so important to them.

To stay here, steal away.

These song quilts will take us from Nebraska to the Russian Arctic to the American South.

We'll hear songs and stories and get a smattering of Russian weaving techniques.

And we learn that when you wade into cultural waters that aren't your own, you need to be prepared for some splashback.

I ain't got long to stay here.

I'm Alison Kourleski, and you're listening to Fibernation, tales of textiles, craft, and culture.

So, before we get to the musical stuff, I need to take a little time and describe these

quilts.

We do have a link to them on our show notes page, and you really should go there and look

at them.

I want you to imagine long, narrow strips of fabric, sewn together in rows.

Each row is a series of rectangles, squares, and triangles, and their arrangement isn't random.

Certain sequences repeat in a kind of visual rhythm, and they march across the quilt in a single direction,

...