“The design choices depend on the material you have, what colors you have, and how you feel,” declares Lue Ida McCloud, a quilter of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, about the creation of her expressive, history-laden quilts. Equally renowned for their extraordinary designs and craft as for their incredible journey of being passed down from generation to generation, these quilts are a treasured staple of American artistry.
And now, thanks to a new partnership between Etsy, nonprofit organization Nest, and arts-supporting Souls Grown Deep, the graphic handmade quilts are available for the first time online, enabling shoppers from across the globe to enjoy the unique patterns and colors. The partnership launches with nine women in Gee’s Bend whose roots in quiltmaking go back to the turn of the 20th century, many of whom are descendants of enslaved people from the rural Pettway Plantation. “My mother and sisters taught me, and I learned by observing them, and then the more I did it, the better I got,” says Lue Ida, who is known for her “crazy quilts” whose designs emerge “depending on how I feel and what I have.”
A handsewn cotton quilt by Lue Ida McCloud, available in her Etsy shop.
Image courtesy of Etsy
A work by Doris Pettway Mosley, available in her shop Kiara’s Quilt Boutique.
Image courtesy of EtsyAlso available with the launch are face masks and pot holders—and even the opportunity to work directly with the Gee’s Bend Quilters to create custom pieces, notes Nest, which promotes the work of women artisans worldwide and helps preserve their important cultural traditions. Despite the fact that quilts from Gee’s Bend are exhibited at eminent institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the remote location of Gee’s Bend has meant that access to a broader market has been a challenge.
But the partnership will radically change this: Each of the nine quilters will have her own Etsy shop showcasing her work. Every quilt, Lue Ida explains, is painstakingly put together over the course of one to two weeks. A quilt in a more contemporary design can be started by “putting the pieces together and seeing how they work,” while a more regularly patterned quilt requires planning, with a quilter laying out a pattern and then assembling the pieces.
Doris Pettway Mosely, standing in front of one of her creations, learned to quilt from her mother, Leola Pettway.
And as the partnership evolves, additional quilters from Gee’s Bend will join the program. Features on Etsy’s marketing channels, education on opening and developing their own shops, and additional resources will help these artisans thrive in the Etsy marketplace, giving them the opportunity to reach a receptive audience and reap the economic benefits their work merits.
Looking for ideas on where to put such an expressive, iconic piece? Lue Ida can see them working as anything from a sofa covering to a wall hanging to a bed cover. But, she says, she specifically makes her quilts large enough “to cover up and stay warm—if two people are in the bed together and one person turns over, there’s still some cover left for the other person!” Indeed, nothing sounds better to us than a cozy evening under one of these handcrafted masterpieces.
Want more information about the history of the quilters and the Gee’s Bend community? Check out Souls Grown Deep. The organization documents, preserves, and promotes the contributions of African American artists from the South; see their site dedicated to documenting the incredible history and stories of the artists here.
