Gee's Bend Quilts

On Thursday, 7 of us met at the London Convention Centre to see a display of Gee's Bend Quilts. In this picture, we are standing in front of a quilt that was made from several types of materials including denim from old jeans, twill, corduroy, and cotton. Some of the denim pieces included the pockets!
(Yes! This pocket was upside-down on the quilt!)









This quilt is made of twill and denim strips. I learned in the lecture about the quilts and the quilters that they do not use rotary cutters--they just tear the fabric into strips and sew them together, usually by machine, and then quilt them by hand. Notice that the corners do not match.

This pattern is called "Housetop" and there were several quilts that showed variations on this pattern.This quilt is a variation of "Bricklayer".
This quilt was made from strips of corduroy and was hand quilted across the stripes. The Gee's Bend quilters use polyester batting to make their quilts puffy.

The binding was done without mitered corners and was often just fabric from the back of the quilt brought around to the front and sewn down at the front.
The quilters of Gee's bend could never be accused of being afraid of colour!

We stayed for lunch and then attended the lecture in the afternoon. As we were looking at the quilts, we decided to do a Gee's Bend challenge--each of us is going to make a wall-hanging in the tradition of Gee's Bend. In October, we will get together to do show and tell with our challenges and watch the DVD that one of us bought about the Gee's Bend quilters. I will have to let this percolate a while before I dive into this project.

I made two more liberated wedding ring blocks today. I will post a picture of my blocks later this week. Also, Christine and I are getting together this week to work on our Carolina Christmas quilts. Sounds like a fun and quilty week ahead!