Juanita, who was born in Morgan County, Kentucky, one of 12 children, recalls her mother hanging quilts she was working on from the ceiling near the quilting frames. When she would finish her stitchery for the day, she would simply roll the quilt back up to the ceiling.

"I've seen as many as eight quilts hanging at a time," says Juanita. "People used to go from house to house and quilt together," she recalls.

In more recent years, Juanita has kept her own family of nine supplied with quilts. She also has introduced her 7-year-old granddaughter Juanita Katherine, to the craft.

"I was baby-sitting with her one day, and she was getting bored," recalls Juanita, who watches her granddaughter on school nights until her mother gets home from work.

So Juanita found some quilt scraps, cut out some squares and showed the little girl (a student at Taft Elementary) how to start on her very first quilt.

"She finally learned to get the thread through the needle, but I had to tie the knot," says Juanita.

The finished quilt is about a yard long and 18 inches wide, she estimates. "-about the size of a doll quilt." The stitches are long and crooked, but they are Juanita Katherine's. And one day, she will treasure those first childish efforts."

We'll have to quilt it for her," says Juanita Katherine's Aunt Vonda, who still uses her mother's old wooden frames to hold her quilt tops. She "tacks" the tops with the same small hammer Juanita's mother once used for that purpose.

Juanita earned $14 a month making clothes and quilts for the National Youth Administration (in Canal City, KY), when she was 15 years old.

She has no idea how many quilts she has made since then. Nor has she any plans for giving up her pastime.

"I'll keep at it as long as I can thread a needle," she says with a good-natured laugh. "I take care of my house and do my own shopping. But I don't drive. I never had the urge to drive. My daughters take me shopping ... and to hunt for quilt pieces."