[piano intro] - [Narrator] Georgia Bonesteel and Jan Karon, Our Minds Never Stop is made possible by Bernina, made to create, and by Moda Fabrics + Supplies, manufacturing and distributing fabrics, notions, books, patterns, and quilting supplies.

- [Host] What a joy it is to gather together and have a conversation.

On this day, two living legends, quilt teacher, and author, and longtime television host of "Lap Quilting," Georgia Bonesteel, and number one New York Times bestselling author of the Mitford book series, Jan Karon, sat down together in Hudson, North Carolina, to talk about their lives, their inspirations, and how their minds never stop.

[gentle music] [audience applauding] - Good afternoon and welcome.

I'm Sarah Thomas.

I'm the director of the Mitford Museum here at the Art Center in Hudson, North Carolina.

And I want to welcome you to Art, Craft, and Story, a conversation with two incredible women who have taken their chosen craft, whether quilting or writing, to incredible heights.

Today we're talking with Georgia Bonesteel, whose "Lap Quilting" program debuted on PBS in 1978.

From there, she went on to become one of the most watched and notable teachers in American quilting, as many of you know well.

We also have Jan Karon.

She is the number one New York Times bestselling author of the Mitford series and founder of the Mitford Museum.

I think you're going to soon discover that these two amazing women have a great deal in common, the least of which is a remarkable ability to respect tradition while inspiring creativity.

So what we're going to do this afternoon is I'm gonna pose a series of questions to these ladies.

We're gonna have a fun conversation up here.

And then towards the end, we'll give you a chance to pose a few questions of your own.

So ladies.

[laughing] - Oh dear.

[laughing continues] - How about we begin with your childhood?

And we're not gonna do the math, but both of you grew up largely in the 1940s, and you were both raised by strong, resourceful women, Jan by your grandmother, and Georgia by your mother.

So let's start over here with Jan, and just tell us a little bit about your grandmother and how she influenced your writing.

- My grandmother was a storyteller, and she could talk endlessly, and I would sort of sit at her feet, or she would be rolling my hair up for school, or tying the bow to go in my hair.

If any of you in here could possibly be as old as I am, then you remember that we used to wear bows in our hair.

And she would be telling stories all the time, stories of her childhood, stories of her courtship with five different men.

She had five proposals of marriage.

[audience laughing] She was so proud of that.

She had a proposal from a doctor who had a bay mare and a fine buggy, that's the story.

She kept all the letters, and my grandmother didn't throw anything away, after all World War I and then the Depression.

And so my grandmother kept empty jars, old newspapers.

And I have become the same kind of person, of course, because that's how we have the Mitford Museum.

It's full of things that I simply could not let go, like the churn that I used from my great-grandmother on the porch two miles from here.

I came to school in this building for seven years, just two miles down the road.

So I'm a part of the culture here, even though I've been away for a long, long time.

And it's sweet to be back and to look up at the balcony where I received a kiss from Alan Setzer in the, [audience laughing] in the seventh grade.

- But Miss Fannie, talk about how she influenced your writing.

- Well, it was all the stories I heard.

Faulkner says, "If you're going to write," he says, "read, read, read, and then write, write, write."

Well, I was a reader, an omnivorous reader, but I was a listener.

Most of all, I think I really listened.

That was the, sort of the primary way of learning.

And if you've read my books, and I think most of you have, you'll see that I love dialect.

I love how people speak, how they form words, even how they hold their mouth while they're talking.

And I learned so much of that right here in Hudson.

I would go, my grandmother would send me with my grandfather to swap mules or hunting dogs.

So I got to hear the way men talk, and men don't talk about much of anything.

[audience laughing] I mean, they seem to have this wonderful connection without having to talk about anything very serious, except maybe baseball, that's one exception.

But in any case, that's where the Turkey Club in the Mitford novels came from, from all that I heard when I would go off with my grandfather.

My grandmother was a wonderful woman.

My first exposure to literature was with the Old Testament.

Frogs, locusts, every, you name it.

I mean, it scared me to death, it just did.

I was so glad to get over to the New Testament.

[audience laughing] - Well, so Georgia, talk a little bit about your family and how that impacted your art.

- Jan, my mother was a storyteller also.

We have that in common.

And I will never forget having the opportunity to be close and live near my mother for her last 20, 25 years.

I had a chance to take her on a couple of quilt trips.

I drove to Statesville, North Carolina to give a lecture, and she was in the audience, and I got a chance to introduce my mother.

I'm proud to say my mother is here, and I had just said, "And I learned to sew at my mother's knee.

Mother, would you please stand up?"

And she stood up and said, "And I hated every minute of it."

[audience laughing] I said, "Mother, mother, that's not what you were supposed to say."

She said, "Now wait a minute."

She said, "I had to sew because it was during the war and I had to make both you and your sisters' dresses."

And sometimes they were lookalike dresses, and we did have to wear them.

But that is the essence of thinking about World War II.

I went to first grade in Lexington, Boston in Massachusetts, and my father called to say, "Virginia, you won't believe what just happened."

He was getting ready to tell her about Pearl Harbor.

And mother said, "Now wait a minute, Jill just took her first step."

So we can always remember that when my sister took her first step was the day that Pearl Harbor happened.

- Wow.

- So those are the memories that I distinctly remember about World War II.

We then, I moved a lot as a child growing up.

My father was a lawyer with the government.

And anytime a new case had to be tried, we were off to another town.

During the war, we got to Dallas, Texas.

And I can remember, as a young girl, going down around White Rock Lake and seeing prisoners behind a chain link fence.

They were German prisoners.

I mean, that was, that stayed in my mind.

So I think frugality and I think making do with what you have was part of World War II.

And that somehow became ingrained in your soul and what you were doing.

And, of course, I did love to watch, and sit and watch my mother make doll clothes or whatever.

But she was, my mother could do anything.

She could upholster furniture, and eventually she went to work.

Our mothers normally didn't work then.

Your grandmother probably didn't work, she stayed home in the farm.

So mother finally went to work and I resented that.

Who did she think she was not to be there when I came home from school?

Do you know, I realized years later she was working to put my sister and I through college.

You didn't make much money when you worked for the government, and so mother made a lot more money selling real estate.

And I think my father had to deal with that.

I mean, that was a man thing that, mm.

So here's to women and here's to mothers.

Yes.

[audience applauding] - And Jan, this conversation about World War II and frugality, we've touched on some of that in the museum.

Do you wanna talk a little bit about some of the items there?

- Yes, a very dramatic part of my life, completely unforgettable, my father was somewhere over there, just like your fathers, and husbands, and sons, they were somewhere over there.

We would listen to the radio at night.

It was a radio shaped like that, and we would get right up close to it.

You had to slide up close to it, and all you could get, really, we lived so far down in the country, well, you could get static, but we liked that too.

I mean, that, [audience laughing] that had a certain charisma.

All we wanted was our father, son, brother, husband, to come home and to be safe.

I must tell you, before I forget to do this, that when you go into the museum, you will see in the second gallery a box on the wall.

There's one right up there, pardon me for pointing.

That was a loud speaker system that was in this school at that time.

I remember the day, I believe I was in fifth grade, when we heard the principal say, "Boys and girls, the war is over."

Can you imagine?

We were filled with joy, with glee, because our loved ones would be coming home, and because maybe we could get some chocolate again, [audience laughing] and eat butter without that margarine stuff with that little yellow capsule, you had to squash it all up and it turned yellow.

But still, the wartime memories, I'm fond of them.

We all were pulling together, even in our tiny little country household, it felt like we were closer, and warmer, and kinder to each other.

We had a victory garden, of course.

And that taught me something, was to just to have a victory garden.

I remember that I got a quarter, that was my allowance, and I felt rich.

And you know, a quarter was a lot of money back then.

So I can't say that the museum, by any means, is all about back then, but we do remember those years because they were part of my life and part of what helped shape the Mitford novels.

For example, our dear friend and board member Anne Smith, sitting on the second row, gave us a flour sack dress that her grandmother had made for her.

Do you all know what flour sacking is?

[audience murmurs in agreement] Shirts, dresses, tea towels, skirts, you name it.

So we are honoring that time by showing that little flour sack dress in the museum.

Did I answer your question?

- Yes, ma'am.

[audience laughing] I was angling for the flour sack.

So clearly, the people who raised you deeply influenced your quilting, your writing, but you've also passed on your love to your family and to your children.

You've both worked on projects with your children.

Georgia, you did a film with your son Paul, and "Jeremy: The Tale of an Honest Bunny" was with Candace.

Georgia, talk a little bit about what it's like working with your children.

- Well, I of course am very proud of our children that they now have raised their own families, which is very rewarding.

They're hardworking, they all are hardworking.

And our oldest son, John, has a nonprofit where he refurbishes laptops and gives back to the schools.

Amy is a journalist, and very articulate, and a companion, and wonderful to have her living closer by.

Paul majored in communication at NC State, right here in our state, and has gone on to develop quite a business.

And of course we're very proud of him.

I mean, what more can a mother and father want?

- So is it tough working with your son, who's like making sure your makeup's right and you're good?

- He's pretty tedious.

Yes.

[Sarah and audience laughing] It's pretty tedious.

Yes, yes, yes.

- Jan, how about you?

- My daughter Candace passed in July.

I share that with you because there's certain to be a parent in this audience who's had the same experience.

She was the light of my life.

And she was a photographer and she was gifted.

I don't mean talented.

I think talent and gift are two different things.

They're both valuable, but they're different.

A gift is more profound, I think, than a talent.

I think these Bonesteel people are all gifted, for example.

[audience laughing] And we, next year, will introduce our Candace Freeland Photography Award of Merit.

We want to help develop the gifts and the talents of young photographers, up to the age of 18.

For the winner, there will be one winner, no silver, no bronze, just a gold, and we will have an exhibition of that young photographer's work, all in black and white.

And there'll be a $5,000 cash award, because kids can use $5,000 to buy more film, or whatever you have to have now to be a photographer.

I don't think you have film anymore.

[Jan and audience laughing] In any case, I had a wonderful daughter.

I was speaking to her only this morning.

I take her picture with me when I travel, and I just look at her, and I just tell her everything.

Very helpful, saves about 125 an hour with a therapist.

[audience laughing] - Well, not only is family important to both of you, but community, and the way that you interact with your fans and with the people who enjoy quilting, who enjoy writing, who enjoy reading your books, it's just so generous, and such an important part of who you are.

How have you woven community into your projects?

And we'll start.

- Well, I will speak very strongly about the quilt guilds in our community.

They have done so much to knit together many people, and not just women.

I think if I sit down on an airplane and I say I'm a quilter, the first thing out of a person's mouth is grandmother.

But it goes beyond that today.

Yes, there are grandmothers in guilds, but we are seeking more younger people also.

And I think the feedback that they give, not only in making quilts for the hospitals, for the Quilts of Valor, and I think we feed off of each other.

I know when I was doing my series, I sought out inspiration going to the big shows, and to Houston, and I think it's a give and take with the quilt world.

I had joy this morning in seeing Joanne Nichols quilts.

And your quilt show is wonderful.

And anytime you have a visible inspiration, it spurs you on, it really does.

- So you're still creating, still coming up with new.

- Oh yes, our minds never stop.

- I know someone else like that.

- Oh yeah.

[laughing] - I'm just thinking how quilting is a community event.

It was originally, still can be.

- Yes.

- And even when you put all those many different patches on a quilt, that is a community of color, a community of story.

All your quilts have a story.

Isn't this a gorgeous quilt?

It's her teapot quilt.

And was that an inspiration?

How did that come about?

- Well, it was a request from the Sparta, North Carolina group that had, they had been donated a huge collection of teapots from the Southwest.

And so it was gonna be a big museum, it did not happen.

And that's the bad news.

The good news is the quilt I designed and we made together lives, and it's here and goes on, and can come to places like the HUB Station and decorate the walls.

- More community.

- Yes.

A community, yes.

- Well, as you're going out and you're interacting with your communities at events like this one, what are some of your favorite things about meeting other quilters, about meeting fans of Mitford?

- Well, I think when people come up and say, "I met you when," and then want to show me the quilt that they have in progress, and of course it's always on an iPhone.

This morning we answered a question about what to do, whether a quilt should be taken apart.

And I think just the feedback of going is the community part.

And to know that someone else has the same love that you do of fiber.

And when you stop and think about it, years ago, on tombstones, a man's death was put on there, but never a woman's.

And so we encourage quilters today to make sure to sign their quilt, put down that it was made, because that means that they have lived, yes.

- I love that.

And how about you meeting Mitford fans?

What is it that you enjoy about that and that fills you up?

- Well, it really validates my work.

Sometimes when I look at the volume of my work, I mean, John Grisham has written, I don't know, 57 books or something, but I've written 25, so that it's not a big number, really, given, looking across the whole literary scene.

But I will look at, just look at my books on the shelf, and just go, "I did that?

[audience laughs lightly] How did I do that?"

It's just amazing to me.

And so a fan will greet me and make it real that I actually did that and gave them something.

But the whole point of my work is not that I did it, and I'm not being coy, these are God's books, I'm a vessel.

We can all, are all vessels, one way or another.

Believer or non-believer, perhaps.

So I, it's all, C.S.

Lewis said the same thing.

He said, you know, it's not like I really did this, it's like I was told what to say.

Those are not his exact words, but that's kind of the way it is, it just comes.

A character just walks in and then, oh, like Buck Leeper.

Can you imagine?

- And I have a fan comment for Jan. - Absolutely.

- I wanna say that in reading Jan's book, I really feel that she glorifies the ordinary.

That is what Jan's words do for me.

And the words have such character, and you fall into them, and you just, you're always, when you finish, you want to go to the next one, you want to go to the next one.

Soon I'm gonna find out if, I haven't gotten to find out, if Dooley and Lace get together.

- Shh.

[Jan and audience laughing] - So worried about that.

- Well, you both are very gifted in your chosen profession, your chosen field, but you have other interests.

I know that's shocking, but there are some other interests.

Georgia, you are a master gardener, I hear.

- Yes, well we.

- Talk about that and how that informs your quilting.

- Well, we had a hardware store and a quilt corner in Hendersonville for about 20 years.

And after the big boys came to town, the Walmart, and Lowe's, and Home Depot, quilting had not gone away, but the sales of the hardware had certainly diminished, so we liquidated our store.

And so then I was, I moved my store several places around town and then finally closed that.

But I sought out gardening and I became a master gardener.

And since then, it has opened so many doors, not only to digging in the ground, but to helping take care of our property.

We live on about an acre and a half in Flat Rock.

But also to interaction with other people that enjoy digging in the ground.

And there is a rapport, there is a likeness.

And just learning about flowers and how to care for 'em, that's been important to me, yes.

- Does your skill in quilting, and how you design a quilt, and you block color, does that impact how you garden?

- Well, I think so.

I think so.

Quilters love color, and so my front yard, I call it reckless abandon, I think is what I call it.

And this year, the Queen Anne's lace has just gotten outta hand, I love that.

But yes, I have all colors in my front yard.

However, at the playhouse where I do gardening, part of the garden is what we call the white garden.

And there's a peacefulness in that also.

I've learned a lot in being a master gardener.

I also enjoy playing Rummikub, of all things.

I have a Rummikub group that we play, so we have some other fans there.

I play bridge, but I much prefer Rummikub.

So those are the other things that I do.

- Well, Jan, you are also an artist and a decorator.

Talk about how those work with your writing, inform your writing, or even provide an escape from your writing.

- My first love was drawing, that's definitely, art is my first love.

And it's hard to resist the temptation of a picture that I fall in love with.

And it could be done by a two year old, or a five year old, or a 90 year old, it just, if it comes from the heart, I sort of connect.

And I hardly have any wall space left.

I just love a completely covered wall.

You will find in the museum that we don't have that strictly modern look that so many museums have, you know, that they, a really great museum will give you plenty of room to breathe.

Well, we've just got it plastered, plastered, because we have a story to tell.

We have something to share with everybody, and you can't do it in two or three little signs.

You just gotta have a lot of signs and pictures framed.

We frame our pictures, usually, because it gives, I think, all of us a little more of a home feeling when we walk into the museum.

What else do I like to do?

I would love to be a gardener.

I used to be a gardener.

I used to be a cook.

I used to be a lot of things.

[audience laughing] All of that requires so much effort.

I can roast a chicken, I can fry bacon, and I wanna tell you, I can bake some cornbread, but that's it.

- I think those are the three major food groups.

[Jan and audience laughing] Well, you both came to your art a little later in life, after marriage, children, a career.

What finally spurred you to get serious about quilting over here, Georgia?

- I think maybe having all three children in school gave me extra time.

We lived, at that time, in New Orleans, and I had that background of sewing, and so I sought that out, and became the house seamstress for a department store named Krauss Department Store in New Orleans.

And so I would sew something at home, and then go down and model it on Saturdays, and say, "Oh look, why don't you make this?"

And through that connection, I was able to then win an audition to do a series called "Sewing is Fun," and it was for Sears and Roebuck, for Kenmore sewing machines.

And so all of a sudden, and then I got to be a guest on that series.

And it was during a time when they were, they had men's necktie patterns, and so I was making neckties for my husband, and he actually wore them to work.

I mean, some were polyester, I mean, they were not so swift.

But that led me, believe it or not, into an unusual circumstance.

The star of the show, I was doing some of the sewing in the background, the star, her son-in-law owned Wembley Tie Company.

And so when you make a necktie, and most quilters know, it's made on the bias, you end up with a pretty good size triangle.

And so one day I said to her, "What do you do with that, all that beautiful silk that they use to make ties?"

"Oh," she said, "we just throw it away, or give it to some church groups."

And I said, "Well, could I have it?"

So I ended up giving, getting boxes of fresh tie silk.

I mean, my hands shook when we took that box top off.

They were absolutely beautiful.

And they said, "Here, do something with them."

So I ended up making little handbags, crazy patch, kind of like you showed me in that English version.

And we sold them for a time in the French Quarter, and it was called Cajun Quilters.

And so before I knew it, well, I tried doing one model, and they were flat, and so the star, her name was Terry Flettrich, she said, "What about if you put something in the middle, like a batting?"

The minute we put the batting in was my first lesson I learned about quilting.

When you connected those three layers, you then had shadows on the surface, and that is what the essence of a quilt is.

The quilts in this show would be just patchwork.

It's when you put the quilting in and connect them, whether it's by hand or a machine, that you create the shadows.

So I learned a big, a big lesson then.

So then I brought those skills to North Carolina, and I became interested in full-size quilts.

And before I knew it, I was quilting in what is known as the Opportunity House in Hendersonville.

And they were mostly senior citizens who were quilting quilts.

It took 'em about three months or so because they were on the old-fashioned frames, for people that would come in and say, "I have this top."

So I would quilt with them.

And I'm sure when I walked out the door, they took my stitches out [audience laughing] because I was just learning.

So that led to me teaching classes at our community college.

And that was where I, that's where I formed the core of people, and the quilts that I was able to take over to UNC-TV and brag about on TV, and they were my earliest quilts from my people, my quilt people.

- Great story.

Great story.

- Well, that's how it happened.

[Georgia and audience laughing] - So how did you fall into writing?

- Well, they had a contest at Hudson School.

Then when I was here, it was K through 12.

Can you imagine that?

And so there was a short story contest, and I was in the seventh grade, and I decided to enter.

I can't say that I had really been writing, but I was reading up a storm, everything I could get my hands on.

And so as it turned out, I won the contest.

And I still can't quite believe it, but it was in the newspaper, so it must have been true, in the Lenoir News-Topic.

And I thought, well, gosh, that felt good.

And so at the age of 10, I thought, I'd just seen "Gone with the Wind."

How many of you are here from Lenoir?

Anybody here from Lenoir?

Okay, all right.

Center theater, yes.

- Yes.

I know it very well.

- Yes, Center Theater, I saw "Gone With the Wind," and I read it also, and I was off and running, and thought, you know, I can do that.

[Georgia and audience laughing] I did 14 pages in long hand and I quit.

That was just enough for me.

And also, as you might see in the hallway at the museum, I used the word that Rhett Butler so famously used, and I thought, wow, I bet if I put that in this book that it will sell.

[audience laughing] I hid my manuscript because I knew that I should not be using that word in any way.

My little sister found it.

Mary Jo Tate has heard this story a hundred times.

Found it, and came into my grandmother, and she says, "Mama, Janie's wrote a book and it's got damn in it."

[audience laughing] My grandmother says, "Go out there and get me a switch, and make it a little stinging switch."

Now, you know a stinging switch is worse than the other kind, but anyway.

So that's one reason I have no cussing in my books.

[audience laughing] - So what would you say was your big break?

I mean, there were some years when you were writing, and there were some books, but it was slow going in the beginning.

When do you feel like the big, big break happened?

- Well, the first publisher I had, and I won't use their name, bless their hearts, [audience laughing lightly] really didn't know how to publicize a book.

And so I put my first book, "At Home in Mitford," in the trunk of my car, and I went around and sold it as best I could to book sellers.

One would buy it, one wouldn't, and so forth, but I managed to sort of get my foot in in the door.

And I thought I've got to make this work because I'd left my advertising career, and that was money, and it was insurance, and it was all those things that we all want for security.

I said, "I have got to make this work."

And I was praying daily, I was bathing my work in prayer.

I just kept at it.

The Lord spoke to my heart and said, "Keep going and do not look back."

Essentially, I've got this.

So that's what I did, I kept going.

Book three, my work was so enjoyed by a Raleigh bookseller of an iconic bookstore, Quail Ridge Books.

Some of you may know it, very, a wonderful bookstore.

She said, "You know, you need an agent."

I was doing my contracts, just like I knew what I was doing.

$7,500 for my first book, I thought that was big.

And I thought, well, I got that the first book, I'll just ask for it again for the second book.

Then by the third book, I wanted 10,000.

That's the way, you know, all by myself.

She said, "I've got an agent for you."

It was a big agent in New York, and that scared me, but it worked.

She took my work to Penguin.

Penguin, what a great company they are.

And that's when I got my break.

They really, here is a secular book publisher who really got books that talk about Jesus, that talk about prayer, that talk about people trying to lead a Godly life.

They loved it, they'd never seen anything like it.

So it became what's today called a crossover book.

And that was my break, thanks be to God.

- So we live in an age of technology, and you know, they're not buying film anymore.

[audience laughing] But you both are involved in arts that are pretty basic, fabric, a needle, some thread, a pencil, a piece of paper.

I know people are using laptops now, but these are, storytelling and quilting are both these arts that really have been around a long time.

How do you feel like you fit into today's world with your old-fashioned arts?

- That's a very good question.

I have watched the phase of quilting develop, when that person on the airplane would say, I'd say quilting, and they'd say grandmother.

And then the word hand stitching would come out.

And I think it has evolved.

A lot of people thought a quilt is not a quilt unless it's totally made by hand.

Well that's, we've eliminated that idea.

Now you can stitch those pieces together on the machine.

Now you can machine quilt them.

And then you go a step further, and you can long arm quilt them.

And then you can go even a step further, you can have that long arm connected to a computer.

And this is unbelievable, but on a computer, you can put down the design that you want done on the quilt that's over here and the computer is here.

So I think it has become accepted.

We've gone from scissors to rotary cutter, and we've all accepted that, and we've grown with it.

And it doesn't mean we don't still cherish that great-grandmother's quilt done by hand.

And by the way, I want your agent, I don't know who that agent was, [audience laughing] but that was a good deal.

You didn't ask me, but I'm going to say this.

My first break was not only television, UNC-TV, and I will give them a nice plug, but also Oxmoor House, who did my books.

And they, I did seven books with them.

And that's Southern Living.

And a lot of you have been supportive of those books over the years.

And that's hard, they knew how to distribute, and publish, and it's hard doing what you did to begin with.

And we need to depend on other people at some point to help us in our progress, there's no doubt about it.

Now I'm depending on Paul, you see.

[Georgia laughs] But it's been interesting.

I will tell a cute story.

We were one of the first stores in Hendersonville to have a long-arm quilting machine.

And it was so fascinating when people would come in.

The men would just gravitate to see this huge thing, this mechanical thing.

And the first quilt that we quilted on that long arm, we somehow put the wrong thread on it.

I was in tears crying to my mother one night.

She said, "Bring it down here, I will take it all apart."

So she took that quilt apart, and when she gave it back to me, she said, "I have the solution.

Anyone that is in jail on drugs, you give 'em a quilt like this, and they will never do drugs again."

[audience laughing] That was my smart mother.

[Sarah laughing] - I think that's an excellent solution.

- Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

- Well Jan, how do you feel about storytelling in this technological age?

- I just love Wordle.

Do you all do Wordle?

[audience laughing] - [Sarah] She got me hooked.

- I'm on to Spelling Bee now.

That's hard.

I, it's a love-hate relationship.

Probably that's true for most of us in this room.

But I don't really know how to use it enough to get the very best from it like younger people do.

So I'll just be with my Wordle.

I don't know how to get a book on my device.

But I can draw, I have an art iPad, so that takes a lot of, that takes a beating from me, 'cause I enjoy doing that.

- And you've used those for the museum.

We have some great art that you have done on your iPad at the museum.

- Yes.

- You all see my art, you'll tell me not to quit my day job, I can assure you.

[audience laughing] It does tell a story.

- And the technology has been incorporated.

So here we are in North Carolina, a place dear to both of your hearts.

What does the region mean for you, Georgia, and how has it influenced your quilting?

- Well, I'm not quite a native, although we've lived in Hendersonville over 50 years, so I wasn't born there.

But what it has meant for me is the stability of having a Mitford in my soul, that I can have a place that I can call home, and that I'm not having to make friends, and then, oh, now we're moving again.

And I seem to, I was seeking that a lot growing up.

My sister did fine with that.

Had a sister, oh, she, that didn't bother me to move.

Well, it bothered me.

So I guess what it means to me is to get to know people that are in the stores and say hi to them when I go in each time.

It's the familiarity of, the goodness, the soul of the town, the streets that I walk down, it's just, it's has a lot of meaning, it does.

- I think the mountains mean a very great deal to me.

I love the mountain culture, and Mitford draws upon the mountain culture.

It's the mountain culture come to town is what it amounts to.

I love the dialect, the old dialect.

I love to hear, on the rare occasion someone will say hain't.

"Oh, I hain't got none of that."

[audience laughs lightly] I mean, that gives me joy.

Doesn't take much for me, really.

And then there's tote, you know, and there are many, many other words I could use that remind me of my time when I was living in Hudson as a child.

The men were wearing overalls, and the boys were coming to school in overalls.

I mean, we were just all doing the best we could.

And the cotton mill, that was our economy.

Then up the road, the furniture people were our economy.

And down the road it was furniture.

I mean, this was a bustling culture at one time.

And I think it's becoming all of that again.

So I think you are here on the brink, actually, in this small town, of a renaissance.

- Well, both of you do something that I feel is quintessentially American, the quilting, and the storytelling about the small town America.

But there are European influences in your work.

I did not realize just how British quilting is, or the Scots-Irish and Appalachia for you.

So talk a little bit about that European influence in quilting.

- Well, that became well known to me when I started traveling, and going to England and to Scotland, and to hear the ladies brag there about how English piecing was where it all began.

Some of the oldest quilt artifacts are in the British Museum, which I have gone in to see.

So yes, I think there was a lot of that that started there.

But believe it or not, people that are excelling in England and teaching and carrying on, they come to America to learn some of the newer techniques too.

So it has become an exchange.

In France, not so many full size quilts are made, but they, they do quilt wall hangings and decoration.

It's not so much, I think they still sleep under duvets in England.

but quilts are well known over there, and I think it goes back and forth, it really does.

- May I interject something here?

As a child, one of my sweetest memories is lying in the bed, two miles from here at my great grandparents' house, under a pile of quilts.

Back in the day, it wasn't just a quilt, it was a pile of quilts, and the heaviness, and the warmth, and the snuggery, and even the smells.

You know, quilts being fabric and batting and all of that, they pick up the odors of all the years, and all the stories, and the people, which could be a good or a bad thing.

But in any case, [Jan and audience laughing] there's something so living about a quilt.

- Yes, well, I think my great-grandmother, who I did get a chance to meet, her descendants came from Germany, and I own two of her quilts.

And certainly she brought those skills, the family skills over with her, and it was important to them.

She was a farm lady, and I, my mother spent many summers there, and we have so many stories, just like the storytelling that carries on.

One of the best stories was my mother being sent out to gather the eggs, and she came back with a basket empty and she told her grandmother, my great-grandmother, "Oh no, there were no eggs today."

Well, she knew better, and she knew mother had dropped the basket completely.

So there had to be a confession that day.

And I think my mother learned a lot that day.

Like you don't lie about something like that.

So those stories and just the mere fact that those quilt tops came from that farm where she made 'em are very meaningful to me.

- So how about those Scots-Irish influences?

Father Tim is Irish.

- Yes.

- And you have a book where he goes to Ireland.

- Well I never really knew much about Father Tim, and it took me a long time to give him a name.

I knew his name was Tim or Timothy, but I couldn't find a last name.

I think it took me maybe into, toward the end of the first book to really figure out his name.

I got a long list of Irish names, I have to find one that feels good.

Like, you have to find the color, or the patch, or even the thread that feels right, and then when you get it, you know it.

So turns out, I wanted to know more about him, so I said, "I need to go to Holly Springs, Mississippi," where he was born and spent his youth, and so I did.

I just showed up in Holly Springs and just went around to the church that he would've attended, and the hardware store that he worked in as a young man, and it just all started being so real to me.

And I enjoyed that very much.

And then when we took him to Ireland, that was an even deeper knowing of who this person is.

The longer I wrote about those characters, the more I came to know them.

I mean, it's just like a human one-on-one relationship.

We know each other a little bit in the beginning, and then the relationship ripens, and it deepens, and it grows.

And that's the way it does with my characters.

And I confess to you that I miss them, but don't ask me if I'm gonna write another Mitford book.

[audience laughing] What I'd like to tell you today is that my new Mitford book is up the hall.

- It's the museum.

[audience laughing] We call it her book without covers.

I know, we get into trouble when we say Jan's latest book is the museum, and people think it's a book with pages.

The museum is a book without covers because it tells the next phase of the story, although we're still working on her.

Don't y'all worry.

Well, I wanna ask one last question before we open it up for Q and A.

So many people out here who know you, who have gotten to know you a little bit, maybe they dabble in quilting, maybe they've tried writing a short story, but quilting an entire quilt, a full-size quilt, or writing an entire full-length novel, that can feel very daunting.

What is your advice to someone who wants to attempt a quilt?

- Diligence, work at it and just stay with it.

I mean, many in this room have made full-size quilts, maybe don't set your standard that high, maybe going to something smaller to begin with.

But if you have, if you wanna make a quilt, I always say all you need is time and money.

[audience laughing] And the price of fabric today is pretty challenging.

But if you have the time, and the money, and the gumption, you can do it.

- There's a great word, gumption.

- So how about those folks who are thinking, I have a book in me?

- Well, Horace said, "A deed begun is a deed half done."

And I'm finding, even though I've been writing for quite a few years, that if you'll just sit down, just sit down and start, it doesn't even matter what you say because a couple of weeks later into it, you're gonna come back and change that anyway.

It's just to turn the faucet on, get the water going.

Each one of you in this room would totally surprise yourselves by just what a voice you really do have.

I promise you, try it sometime.

It's scary, but I give you permission to be scared and get over it.

[audience laughing] It's wonderful.

- In the museum, we have number two pencils, free for the taking, and that would be the tool that Jan used to write that first 14-page novel when she was 10.

So grab a pencil and see what you can do.

Well at this point, we'd love to hear if any of you have questions for either or both of our ladies.

So, can I see a show of hands?

We have a question right up front here.

- Is there a character in your Mitford series that is based on yourself?

I think I know, but I want to hear it from you.

- There are 725 characters in my books based on myself.

[audience laughing and applauding] My personal favorite is Ms. Rose.

[Jan laughing] - Jan, can you tell us about the development of the map of Mitford?

- Oh, that's a good question because, even toward the middle and end of the first novel, I was already getting confused about the streets.

I thought this needs a map.

So by the second book, I sat down with a piece of artist tissue paper and drew the town.

All the map iterations that you have seen came from that original pen and ink drawing.

- Artist.

Where is that pen and ink drawing, Jan?

- It was hanging in the museum at some point.

It's, we have it.

- Georgia, would you ever consider doing a class here at the HUB?

- Well, of course.

Of course I wanna come back.

[audience applauding] - Jan, I'm gonna ask you a question that I always ask your readers, but now I'm gonna ask you the same one.

What do you love most about Mitford?

- I love most the struggle that people have in Mitford.

- I want you to elaborate on that.

- I weep with my characters.

I laugh.

I can just be hilarious.

You know, I'm just typing, whoa-ho-ho, praying for Buck Leeper, I don't know, it's just, I'm so.

Eudora Welty said, "You've got to go into the skin of a character."

Black or white, young or old, you get in under their skin.

And that's what I do with all of those many, many characters, I get in their skin.

Even Edith Mallory, the witch, look what happened to her, look what our lives can become.

We can turn around a desperate situation.

And I love what she said, sitting on Main Street in her wheelchair, she could barely speak, said, "God is love."

[audience applauding] - I have a question.

- Oh, excellent.

- I got such a kick outta Doc Watson's corny jokes.

How in the world did you come?

- Uncle Billy Watson.

- Billy Watson?

Yeah, Billy Watson.

How did you come up with that idea?

I mean, it's just, they're so great.

- I've known some darling old men who just didn't know anything else to do but try to make you laugh.

[audience laughing] I just wanted to pay tribute to the great humanity of just wanting to make somebody laugh, if but only a moment.

You know, they told Uncle Billy jokes at his funeral.

You say you were telling jokes at a funeral?

Well, I thought that was the best funeral I'd been to.

[Jan and audience laughing] Thank you for asking that.

- Oh, I love that.

And I love the fact that there was a feature of Little Debbie's at the beginning.

And wouldn't you know, that came back to haunt Father Tim, 'cause then he couldn't eat 'em anymore when he found out.

So much is tied into your books that you don't realize.

And I perused them again to come over here.

I got to read them when I had that knee surgery, and I would recommend books, any kind of surgery, get her collection of books.

So many stories, so many stories.

- Well, we've had a wonderful audience today.

This is a beautiful, loving, see, I can feel your love.

We can feel it and we appreciate it.

And I ask that the Lord bless you in all the ways that some of you have even maybe given up on.

A dear friend of mine, when I was going through a hard time, she used to hold me.

She had a very pillowy bosom.

[audience laughing] And she would say, "Everything gonna be all right."

And it always was and always is.

Thank you for coming today.

- We do have one more, something that we would like to do here at the end.

- Oh, I'm so sorry, I thought we were saying bye.

- No, we have one more little something.

Georgia has something for you, and Jan has something for Georgia.

And I hate keeping secrets, so.

[audience laughing] Georgia, if you would like to present this.

- Well, Jan, you've been talking about the mountains, so I wanted to present to you, this is called "Moon over Mitford."

[Jan exclaiming] [audience applauding] And fortune would have it that I could find, on fabric, a red pickup truck that Dooley drove, and I had to put in pen, 1996.

And that is special to Jan. - Thank you.

- Well, Georgia, you wanted to know about Lace and Dooley.

- Yes.

- Well you can soon find out.

[Georgia and audience laughing] - Spoiler alert.

[Jan laughing] - They make it, they make it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

- Thank you.

[smooching] - Thank you all so much for coming.

[audience applauding] [gentle music] ♪ [gentle music continues] ♪ [gentle music continues] - [Narrator] Georgia Bonesteel and Jan Karon, Our Minds Never Stop is made possible by Bernina, made to create, and by Moda Fabrics + Supplies, manufacturing and distributing fabrics, notions, books, patterns, and quilting supplies.