SRPING PLACE, Ga. — Lula Cochran learned to quilt from her mother.

“I watched her when I was just a young girl,” she said

On Saturday, she and about a half dozen other members of the Vann House Quilters worked on a quilt with a “Dresden Flower” pattern inside the museum of the Chief Vann House State Historic Site in Spring Place.

“We’ve been working on this for a long time, at least three years,” said Ruth Young. “We just work on it a little bit each week.”

The quilting bee was part of the annual fall quilt display which is taking place through Thanksgiving at the Vann House.

“This group, and many of these ladies, have been with us for many years, demonstrating their skills during the annual Vann House days,” said Irina Garner, interpretive ranger at the Vann House.

Built by Cherokee Chief James Vann in the early 1800s, the two-story brick house is one of the oldest buildings in north Georgia and hosted many visitors to the Cherokee Nation, including President James Monroe. It is now a state historic site.

For the next few weeks visitors to the Vann House will be able to see a number of historic quilts that are brought out only for the fall quilt exhibition.

One of those quilts, in a “Compass Rose” pattern, now covers a bed in an upper-floor bedroom.

“A member of the Vann family said they could trace this back to the 1840s at least,” said tour guide Tim Howard. “She brought it up here for us to look at, and I said, ‘That would look really pretty in the house.’ We brought it out here to make her picture with it, and she said we could keep it until Christmas. After Christmas, she said she would loan it to us indefinitely. That was back in 2009.”

But what Howard calls the “crown jewel” of the Vann House quilt collection is on a small bed at the top of the stairs and has been dated to 1810.

“This was made by a slave in Carter’s Quarters (a plantation in southeast Murray County),” he said. “This one was documented in the Georgia Quilt Project back in the 1980s written about by historians and has been featured in the Smithsonian.”

Howard said that to keep the quilts from fading from exposure to the light they are brought out only for the fall quilt festival, so if people want to see them they’ll have to do it now or wait until next year.