Gee's Bend

Gee's Bend Quiltmakers

The Gee’s Bend quiltmakers are a group of women and their ancestors from the Gee’s Bend area of Alabama’s rural Black Belt, whose quilts are celebrated as some of the most significant artistic contributions to American art history. Earning international recognition and acclaim, exhibitions showcasing their work have been held in museums and galleries across the U.S. and beyond. Through Souls Grown Deep’s Collection Transfer Program, Gee’s Bend quilts are now part of the permanent collections of more than 40 museums across three continents.

The area’s rich quiltmaking tradition dates back to the nineteenth century, born out of a need to keep warm in unheated homes during the winter months. Due to the scarcity of resources, the majority of quilts well into the twentieth century were made out of old work-clothes and other used materials such as fertilizer and flour sacks. Despite a wider variety of cheap fabric becoming available in the second half of the twentieth century, the recycling of old materials continues to be a central tenet of quilting in Gee's Bend.

The practice of reusing old materials has resulted in a proclivity for improvisational approaches to quilt design. Many Gee's Bend quilts can be called improvisational, or "my way" quilts as they are known locally, in which quiltmakers start with basic forms and then follow their own individual artistic paths ("their way") to stitch unexpected patterns, shapes, and colors. The transference of aesthetic knowledge and skills from generation to generation has been fundamental to the continuation of the Gee's Bend quilting tradition to this day.