Forty-six-year-old Octa Self hovers above the two older women as they look at a patchwork quilt in process. Women heads-of-household like Self were able to earn a meager living during the Great Depression by working in WPA Sewing Rooms. Born Adna Octavia Dryden in 1890, by 1930 Self was a single mother of five children living with her parents. As such, Self met the WPA’s employment requirements, and likely because she had worked several jobs outside the home—including as a telephone operator and bookkeeper in a doctor’s office—she was deemed a suitable “forelady of the quilting project.”

[Full title: "Mrs. Lizzie Chambers and Mrs. Mary Collier piecing quilts while Mrs. Octa Self, forelady of the quilting project directs the pattern they are to follow"]