About This Quilt

One of Pettway’s earliest quilts, this work is made of twenty blocks, each one presenting a different variation of the Bricklayer pattern. Her later quilts often focus on this pattern but usually feature one large Bricklayer block instead of many. Her husband, Walter, worked at the Henry Brick Company in Selma, and Pettway remembers being inspired by two picture boards of bricks that he brought home. Each block in this quilt can be interpreted as representing stacks of bricks, or perhaps four sides of a house reaching a single peak. If the blocks represent houses, perhaps the quilt as a whole depicts a neighborhood. Pettway used a variety of solid colored and patterned fabrics so that different shapes and patterns appear to emerge and recede throughout the quilt.

Let's Look!

• How are the blocks similar? How are they different?
• What shapes and patterns are created in each block?
• Discuss Pettway’s quote on this page. How are the shapes and patterns in this quilt similar to a brick house?