Qunnie Pettway

Qunnie Pettway (1943–2010), Housetop, c. 1975.

Corduroy, 82 x 74 inches; Private Collection.

Two factors lift Qunnie Pettway's concentric-squares corduroy quilt from the ordinary to the exalted. First, she has made this quilt from a particular shade of pale peach—almost like white that has aged to cream—found among the corduroy lots available to her. She juxtaposes this with a true red, making an elementally simple design. Second, she creates a frail outer edge in the quilt's binding that introduces hints of other hues—pale green, cerise, and yellow. The momentum of this deceptively geometric and ingenuous pattern is, by its eccentric and wholly contrived details, transformed into an immensely moving image.

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.