1920-1929

Housetop Variation Quilt

Henrietta Pettway

American, 1894 - 1971

The women of Gee’s Bend, a small rural Black community in Alabama of about seven hundred residents, have been creating bold, visually distinctive quilts since at least the 1920s.

The Housetop pattern traditionally is made of a single central square surrounded by concentric squares built from strips. The design—and its many improvisations—is particularly favored in Gee’s Bend and is one of the first patterns learned by its young quilters. Here Henrietta Pettway deconstructed the traditional composition into an abstraction, using a wide range of worn-out work clothes, from flannel work shirts to the patch pockets from overalls and jeans.