Quilting / Pattern Research

Gee's Bend Quilts



This is a fascinating and thorough documentation website about Gee's Bend Quiltmakers with history and gorgeous images of the quilts and the women who made them: https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/gees-bend-quiltmakers


"The women of Gee’s Bend—a small, remote, black community in Alabama—have created hundreds of quilt masterpieces dating from the early twentieth century to the present. Resembling an inland island, Gee’s Bend is surrounded on three sides by the Alabama River. The seven hundred or so inhabitants of this small, rural community are mostly descendants of slaves, and for generations they worked the fields belonging to the local Pettway plantation. Quiltmakers there have produced countless patchwork masterpieces beginning as far back as the mid-nineteenth century, with the oldest existing examples dating from the 1920s. Enlivened by a visual imagination that extends the expressive boundaries of the quilt genre, these astounding creations constitute a crucial chapter in the history of African American art."

"Few other places can boast the extent of Gee’s Bend’s artistic achievement, the result of both geographical isolation and an unusual degree of cultural continuity. In few places elsewhere have works been found by three and sometimes four generations of women in the same family, or works that bear witness to visual conversations among community quilting groups and lineages. Gee’s Bend’s art also stands out for its flair—quilts composed boldly and improvisationally, in geometries that transform recycled work clothes and dresses, feed sacks, and fabric remnants."

"The tradition of the patchwork quilt was born of scarcity and resourcefulness, arising in times and places where the shortages of cloth called for the inventive salvaging of fabric scraps and remnants. In Gee's Bend, this recycling practice became the founding ethos for generations of quiltmakers who have transformed otherwise useless material into marvels of textile art. Until the middle of the twentieth century, the majority of quilts from the area were made from worn-out work clothes, a palette of old shirts, overalls, aprons and dress bottoms whose stains, tears, and faded denim patches provide a tangible record of lives marked by seasons of hard labor in the fields of the rural South."

Most of the Gee's Band Quilts were created through improvisation - not adhering to the norms of
traditional quilting , veering off into their own patterns and voice to create these incredible pieces. They're pretty breathtaking - especially seeing the sheer volume and variety of the collection on the website.

 Pioneering work by inspirational women


Mary Lee Bendolph

Arie Pettway
"One of the most active and influential quiltmakers in Gee's Bend"
Arie Pettway


Mary L Bennett


Nettie Young

Laura Carlin Ceramics

Interested in how similar quilting patterns and the recurring shapes within those patterns are evident in contemporary illustration and design today,

I love these ceramic pieces from Laura Carlin:







Jay Cover Cross Stitch

slow craft
feed the beast
tangible tactile ideas
improvisation
play