It’s not every day that you find New York City’s movers and shakers packing a room to learn how to quilt.
Just a few days shy of Black History Month, we took to the adidas headquarters to see the women of Gee’s Bend in the flesh. For those unaware of the history, the women artisans of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, a small settlement of Black men and women who are descendants of the slaves who worked the cotton plantation owned by Joseph Gee, have honored the tradition of quiltmaking for more than 80 years. In the mid-60s, community members created the Freedom Quilting Bee to profit from their work, securing deals with retailers like Bloomingdale’s and Sears. But from the start, quiltmaking was a cultural tradition that was as central to their lives as farming, allowing them to meet their needs.
“It wasn’t about art, guys. In those houses, there was absolutely no central heat. It was just one fireplace,” said Claudia Pettway-Charley, using “very poor” to describe conditions dating back to the first few decades of the 1900s during the event. She was joined by Sharon Williams, Emma Pettway, Pleasant Pettway-Scott and her daughter, Francesca Pettway-Charley. “They used those quilts to pretty much keep their families warm. Growing up, they would pile so many quilts on top of me in the bed that I could barely move from under it.”
In addition to that, quilts were also used as saddlebags on horses, which was important for farmers in the community. Babies were wrapped tight in them. Materials were even utilized as sanitation pads.
“The whole community of women would quilt all the time. They’ve been quilting nearly 80 to 100 years. We’ve been around for a very long time,” she said. “Freedom Quilting Bee was one of those places where, for the very first time, the women of Gee’s Bend were actually paid for making quilts. When those women were able to have that contract with Sears Roebuck through the Freedom Quilting Bee, it allowed them to have some type of independence and feel good about themselves. The only thing is that because they couldn’t duplicate the product, those contracts didn’t last long.”
Pettway-Charley would later explain that the women, who quilt in groups, don’t necessarily follow formulas. Sometimes, they’re inspired by what’s going on in their day and how they’re feeling, as well as the materials available to them.
“We never make more than one thing twice. We can’t duplicate ourselves. We do not work by patterns. All of our quilting is done by hand,” she said. “Every stitch that you see in the quilts in Gee’s Bend is made by someone.”
And that someone will likely have “Pettway” in their name, though many of the women aren’t actually related. “The slave master’s name was Pettway. So everybody that was under him took his last name,” Pettway-Charles says. “He sold them to his relatives, including his cousin Mark Pettway, so we all became Pettways. It’s been like a tattoo or a brand.”
The ladies are making major waves. While Bloomingdale’s and Sears were early contract opportunities, these days, they stay busy, partnering with brands including Crate & Barrel, Target, Macy’s, and more. As part of their new collaboration with adidas, the women made quilts that pay homage to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and their work inspired the prints used in some of those schools’ basketball uniforms, all the way down to the team shoes. The brand will have releases with Gee’s Bend throughout the year.
“We stay busy now more than ever,” Pettway-Charley says. “We have a lot of people calling us.” This opportunity with adidas is one of a kind, though. The sportswear brand visited Gee’s Bend to supply the quilters with footwear. Sounds like a simple, obvious move, but per Pettway-Charles, it was a truly significant action.
“In my mother’s time, they didn’t have shoes. They would literally have to wear each other’s shoes. It didn’t matter if you were a man or a woman. If the shoe fit, you wore it,” she said. “So now we actually have a shoe company that came to the community of Gee’s Bend and gave all the women of Gee’s Bend shoes. We never thought in a million years that that would happen. Our ancestors would not believe something so simple.”
They probably also probably couldn’t imagine how far their community has come. The Gee’s Bend quilters, third, fourth, and even fifth-generation quilters, now have a social media presence and sell their work online, allowing them to be more accessible than ever before for opportunities. These days, with their work in major retailers, written about in books, and presented in everything from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C., as well as galleries in the United Kingdom and Australia, they’ve further secured their place in the culture, in Black history, and in American history, one needle thread at a time.
Sitting down amongst other journalists and content creators and trying to learn how to quilt with help from the women, we all quickly realized how much talent is required, putting things together piece by piece. “We are blessed,” Pettway-Charley says regarding their skills and the doors that have been opened for their community. “We continue to work and quilt all the time. We travel. We do exhibits worldwide. We’re known internationally for our quilting. You guys call us artists — to us, we’re just women quilters.”