Nettie Jane Kennedy (1916–2002), Basket Weave, 1973.
Corduroy, 80 x 80 inches; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation.
Meticulously placed green corduroy strips are the distinguishing feature of Nettie Jane Kennedy’s quilt from 1973. Conceived as a whole system, Kennedy’s strips lend a unified visual impression embodied in her name for the pattern: “Basket Weave." However, the uniformity is broken up by eccentric green elements: a long row of green strips along one edge and the placement of two odd green strips in the row on the composition’s opposite side. This quilt offers another example of the Gee’s Benders’ control of edges and boundaries, so crucial to the success of geometric and, especially, minimalist forms.
In 1972, the Freedom Quilting Bee, a sewing cooperative based in Alberta, Alabama, near Gee's Bend, secured a contract with Sears, Roebuck, to produce corduroy pillow covers. Made of wide-wale cotton corduroy, the covers came in a variety of colors, including "gold," "avocado leaf," "tangerine," and "cherry red." Production of the Sears pillow covers left little room for personal creativity, as labor at the Freedom Quilting Bee was divided to maximize daily output. Yet despite the standardized and repetitive process involved in producing the pillow covers, the availability of corduroy, a fabric seldom used before by the Gee's Bend quiltmakers, stimulated a profound creative response. Leftover lengths and scraps of corduroy were taken home by workers at the Bee. Given to friends and family or bundled for sale within the community, the scraps were then transformed from standardized remnants into vibrant and individualized works of art.
