Florine Smith

Florine Smith (1948–2022), Four-block strips, c. 1975 (detail).

Corduroy, 81 x 68 inches; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase American Art Trust Fund and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation.

In 1972, the Freedom Quilting Bee sewing collective received a large order for corduroy pillow covers from Sears, Roebuck & Co. The leftover scraps of colors, with names given by the merchant such as “avocado leaf,” “tangerine,” and “cherry red,” were eventually incorporated into quilts throughout the community, including this one. In Smith’s composition, the orientation of the green and blue corduroy stripes in each of the four quadrants creates a sense of perpetual rotating movement regardless of the quilt’s orientation.

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.