Essie showed her talent early; a two-sided quilt made in her mid-teens established her artistic maturity. On one side, long strips of alternating white and blue segments are staggered or offset to create wavelike movement. The other side of the quilt favors blocks of various sizes, emulating the arrangements of rectangles found in traditional work-clothes quilts. This quilt seems a primer on separate but related improvisations—the strip and the block—as if the teenaged Essie were mastering the two attitudes in preparation for her later, more ambitious work. (Her genius was based upon a good pedigree: on her mother's side were, among others, Louella Pettway, Loretta Pettway, Linda Pettway, and Deborah Young; on her father's side, Annie Bendolph, Indiana B. Pettway, Nettie Jane Kennedy, Martha Jane Pettway, and Plummer T. Pettway; her mother's older sister was Lillie Mae Pettway.)
