2011 Maiwa Textile Symposium Workshop

Quilters of Gee's Bend
We are running this workshop once as a one-day and twice as a two-day.

$175 (Includes $20 Lab Fee) One full day
October 21 (Fri) 10am - 4pm

$295 (Includes $50 Lab Fee) Two full days
October 22 - 23 (Sat - Sun) 10am - 4pm

$295 (Includes $50 Lab Fee) Two full days
October 24 - 25 (Mon - Tue) 10am - 4pm

Maiwa Loft - Net Loft Granville Is., Vancouver, Canada Class Limit 16

This was one of the most successful workshops ever held by Maiwa. It is much more than an opportunity to learn a way of quilting.


For well over a century, the women of Gee’s Bend have made handmade pieced quilts using available fabrics. From work clothes worn in the fields to wide-wale corduroy remnants from a nearby sewing cooperative, the quilts of Gee’s Bend have been made for comfort and warmth.

In spite of the great success the quilts have achieved in the last decade, many of the women in Gee’s Bend still work in the same traditional way. Come join three of the women from Gee’s Bend as they show how they transform old clothing into beautiful quilts.

The Quilters of Gee’s Bend will give two lectures on October 20 and 21.


Quilters of Gees Bend

For generations the women of Gee’s Bend have been producing quilts of unique and exceptional beauty. The bold patterning and geometric designs are unlike anything found in the quilting world.

Descendents of African slaves who worked cotton plantations on an isolated bend of the Alabama River, the women of Gee’s Bend have survived some of the hardest economic and social times of the twentieth century, from the great depression, when their stores of food and possessions were repossessed by white creditors, to the civil rights upheavals of the 1960s. Each night the women of Gee’s Bend have quilted when the day’s work was completed. In 1937, the federal government commissioned photographic documentation of Gee’s Bend. These photos have become some of the most famous images of Depression-era life in America.

In 2003 the quilts of Gee’s Bend came to world-wide attention with the publication of two large-format books and a travelling exhibition. This success was soon followed by a documentary which aired on American and Canadian television.