Housetop--Loretta Pettway

Loretta Pettway’s “Medallion” quilt appears on the cover of “Gee’s Bend:: the Women and their Quilts,” the definitive catalog of the Gee’s Bend quilts The photo of Ms. Pettway looking pensively out of a window appears on the back of the book jacket. When Barbara Barran signed her first licensing agreement with the quilters, the “Medallion” design (shown in the photo) was the first one that she had made.

Ms. Pettway is shown quilting Mary Lee Bendolph’s “Blocks and String-Pieced Columns,” and her daughter, Claudine, is shown accepting an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Classic Rug Collection has used many of Ms. Pettway’s designs. You can see “Crazy Quilt” in the installation at the Harvard Divinity School, and another of Ms. Pettway’s designs is shown in the home of designers Everick and Lisa Walker Brown.

Barbara Barran has been working with the Gee’s Bend Quilters since 2003. She has shown and sold their work at over 25 US museums, paying the quilters a royalty for the use of their designs. She has visited Gee’s Bend, AL, several times and stayed at the home of Ruth Kennedy and Lucy Mingo. Working with the quilters has been the highlight of her design career. 

100 knot hand-knotted in India. New Zealand wool and bamboo silk.