Registration Opens June 22 at 10am.

2015 Maiwa Textile Symposium

Workshop Gee’s Bend Quilting - offered twice

Gee’s Bend Quilters

$295 includes 25 lab fee

October 19, 20, or 21, 22  - Class Limit 16

Maiwa Loft: Above the Net Loft, Granville Is. Vancouver BC

Working beside the quilters of Gee’s Bend is an experience not soon forgotten. 

For well over a century, quilters living in the isolated community of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, have created handmade pieced quilts using available fabrics. The distinctive designs gained national and then international recognition for their bold geometry and creative spirit. Despite world attention, most of the women continue to make their quilts by hand in the same way they always have.

This is an opportunity to thread a needle beside some of the most remarkable artisans working in quilts today. Join in as the quilters of Gee’s Bend share stories of their community and their approach to quilting and life.

About the Quilters of Gees Bend

The Gee’s Bend Quilters are a group of artisans living in the isolated area of Gee’s Bend, Alabama. The quilting tradition in Gee’s Bend goes back to the 19th century, when the community was the site of a cotton plantation owned by Joseph Gee. The quilts came to wider attention when they were spotted by Matt Arnett as he was documenting African-American art with his father William Arnett. The Arnetts have produced several volumes and a documentary film featuring the quilts and their makers.

The quilts have been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. The Whitney venue, in particular, brought a great deal of art-world attention to the work, starting with Michael Kimmelman’s review in the New York Times which called the quilts “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced” and went on to describe them as a version of Matisse and Klee arising in the rural South.