User:Amar'e Coakley/Loretta Pettway Bennett

Awards

 * 2023 Southerner of the Year
 * National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts

Gee's Bend
The Gee's Bend Quiltmakers are an all-female African-American group who have been taught quilting since the twentieth century in an Alabama town now called Boykin and was formerly named Gee's Bend hence the name of the quilting group. Bennett was introduced to the Gee's Bend quilting tradition, when she was five or six years old, although "At that age we were only allowed to thread the needles for the quilters in my grandmother’s and my mother’s quilting group." Every summer, her mother and aunts would train more sewing into her skill set, little by little. Her first completed quilt was a baby blanket, which was a Home Economics' project for her Home Economic's teacher's arriving grandchild. One of her known contributions to the Gee's Bend group is a jean-themed quilt made out of her husband and son's trousers. This technique is describes the groups main ideology, which is 'to make something shine from something that has been thrown away".