The women of Gee’s Bend, a small rural Black community in Alabama of about seven hundred residents, have been creating bold, visually distinctive quilts since at least the 1920s.

Irene Williams was from Rehoboth, a scattered settlement north of Gee’s Bend and, from 1966, the home of the cooperative Freedom Quilting Bee formed by sixty Gee’s Bend quilters. For seventy years, she made quilts that defy categorization. She preferred a simple block-and-strip technique with a limited number of colors, as seen in her recent series of quilts, each with its own color combination and lively syncopation.

While the quilters of Gee’s Bend improvised patterns associated with traditional patchwork, influenced one another’s work, and came together to quilt, the women of Rehoboth engaged in quilt-making as a solitary activity, piecing and quilting alone. Their personal visions are evident in idiosyncratic patterns recalling the area’s geography that can be read as bird’s-eye views of dirt roads, fields, garden plots, and houses.

The women of Gee’s Bend, a small rural Black community in Alabama of about seven hundred residents, have been creating bold, visually distinctive quilts since at least the 1920s.

Annie E. Pettway created this vibrant quilt in the middle of the Great Depression of the 1930s. She improvised on the traditional Flying Geese design of triangles to create a joyful composition of solid, plaid, and confetti-patterned fabrics. This quilt inspired her great granddaughter, visual artist Louisiana Bendolph, to take up quilt-making again, and later print-making, after seeing it displayed in the 2002 exhibition Quilts of Gee’s Bend at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

The women of Gee’s Bend, a small rural Black community in Alabama of about seven hundred residents, have been creating bold, visually distinctive quilts since at least the 1920s.

The Housetop pattern traditionally is made of a single central square surrounded by concentric squares built from strips. The design—and its many improvisations—is particularly favored in Gee’s Bend and is one of the first patterns learned by its young quilters. Here Henrietta Pettway deconstructed the traditional composition into an abstraction, using a wide range of worn-out work clothes, from flannel work shirts to the patch pockets from overalls and jeans.

The women of Gee’s Bend, a small rural Black community in Alabama of about seven hundred residents, have been creating bold, visually distinctive quilts since at least the 1920s.

Loretta Pettway created this quilt using textiles upcycled from everyday clothing worn by her family and friends. Her choice of pattern, Roman Stripes (also referred to locally as a "crazy quilt"), was inspired by a quilt that her stepmother, Plummer T. Pettway, made a few years earlier.

The women of Gee’s Bend, a small rural Black community in Alabama of about seven hundred residents, have been creating bold, visually distinctive quilts since at least the 1920s.

Magdalene Wilson gave extra punch to the One-Patch, one of the simplest quilt patterns of repeating single squares, by varying the size of the squares and connecting strips and mapping out large sections with color and texture.

The women of Gee’s Bend, a small rural Black community in Alabama of about seven hundred residents, have been creating bold, visually distinctive quilts since at least the 1920s.

The denim work-clothes quilts of Gee’s Bend were ideal for chilly weather. The fabrics frequently retain evidence of their original use, including pockets and areas of wear and stains. Mary Lee Bendolph is one of the quilters who continue the local tradition of upcycling cast-offs into new forms.

The women of Gee’s Bend, a small rural Black community in Alabama of about seven hundred residents, have been creating bold, visually distinctive quilts since at least the 1920s.

Nettie Young was co-manager of the Freedom Quilting Bee, a cooperative established in 1966 that provided local women with steady jobs and income. It contracted with New York decorators and Bloomingdale’s to create made-to-order quilts including new patterns such as Milky Way by New York designer Sara Stein featuring circles within squares. Members of the Bee would often adapt these patterns for their own use, as seen here. Nettie Young combined Stein’s commercial design with a traditional H pattern to create a dynamic composition.