Bettye Kimbrell

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Bettye Jean Whitson Kimbrell (November 22, 1936 – October 18, 2016) was a master folk artist from Alabama who made quilts. She helped start the North Jefferson Quilter’s Guild in Mount Olive, Alabama, and is known for turning quilting into an art form.

In 1995 she received the Alabama Folk Heritage Award, the top honor for traditional arts in the state. In 2008 she earned the National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States’ highest honor in folk and traditional arts.

Kimbrell’s quilts are celebrated for their intricate needlework and careful design. She used classic techniques such as trapunto, broderie perse, and leaf pounding, creating both original designs and traditional patterns. Her work was shown at the Birmingham Museum of Art in 2008 and later travelled to Belgium and China for exhibitions.

She grew up on a cotton farm in Berry, Alabama, the oldest of five children. Her grandmother taught her to quilt when she was 10, believing that idle hands were the devil’s workshop. Bettye married Calvin Kimbrell when she was a teenager, and they moved to Birmingham in 1954 before settling in Mount Olive.

In the 1960s a friend encouraged her to finish quilts for Loveman’s Department Store in Birmingham, which helped her see quilting as an art. She won her first blue ribbon for quilting in the early 1970s after raising five children and caring for her sister.

In 1979 she organized a quilt show for the Mount Olive community center, which led to the formation of the North Jefferson Quilter’s Guild. She was active with Quilt Alabama and served as a master folk artist for Alabama’s folk arts apprenticeship program. Kimbrell also taught quilting at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina and at the Alabama Folk School in Camp McDowell, and she sometimes restored old quilts.

Bettye Kimbrell passed away on October 18, 2016, at age 79, after a series of strokes. She left a lasting impact on Alabama’s quilting community and the folk arts she loved.