Airing Traditions: Gee’s Bend 2025
Each October in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, quilts are shaken out and lifted with pride into the open air. Hung across fences, porches, and clotheslines in a community-wide celebration of artistry and tradition, their bold patterns and striking colours catch the autumn light, transforming the Bend into a patchwork gallery that reflects generations of creativity. On Saturday, October 4, the Airing of the Quilts Festival returns, inviting visitors to experience this living tradition firsthand.
Quilts in the breeze at the 2024 Gee's Bend Airing of the Quilts.
Organised by Souls Grown Deep, The Freedom Quilting Bee Legacy, and Sew Gee’s Bend Heritage Builders, the festival offers both celebration and exchange. Quilts will be displayed and available for purchase, providing a rare opportunity to meet the makers and directly support their work.
Gee’s Bend Quilters. Courtesy of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation.
In addition to the quilt exhibitions, this year’s program introduces expanded opportunities for attendees to participate in hands-on quilting workshops led by local artists. These interactive sessions invite visitors to learn the craft and techniques of Gee’s Bend quilting traditions, guided by the women who have carried them forward. Beyond the festival grounds, guided tours and special programs will open up new ways to explore the community, tracing the legacy of quilt-making in Gee’s Bend through stories, sites, and encounters with its artists.
Missouri Pettway, Four Columns of Stacked Blocks. Courtesy of Dinah's Legacy.
At the heart of the weekend is a new exhibition opening at the River Gallery inside the Gee’s Bend Welcome Center. Dinah Miller: Gee’s Bend Between History and Memory tells the story of Dinah Miller (née Jenkins), the earliest known quiltmaker in the community. Miller was illegally trafficked from West Africa to Alabama — likely aboard the Clotilda, the last known slave ship to reach the United States. As the matriarch of at least five generations of quilters, her legacy is revealed through cloth, photographs, and oral histories passed down by her descendants.
Gin House (2015) Denim Quilt by Mary Virginia Pettway. Courtesy of The River Gallery
Highlights include Gin House (2015) by Mary Virginia Pettway, a denim quilt that concludes her Trouble Waters trilogy. Its scarlet patch stands as a reminder, in Pettway’s words, of “the blood and bodies left in the Atlantic Ocean”—a work that connects Gee’s Bend quilting to a much broader story of endurance and remembrance.
The Freedom Quilting Bee Legacy will also host special programming throughout the weekend, continuing its vital work to preserve and promote the creative traditions of Gee’s Bend women.
The Airing of the Quilts is a communal act of storytelling, with quilts swaying in the autumn air alongside music, food, and fellowship. For those who make the journey, Gee’s Bend offers a colourful encounter filled with the living history of a quilting legacy.
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Further Information:
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Image Credits:
Lead Image: "Star" Variation by Linda Diane Bennett. 1973. Cotton, polyester, cotton blends. 90 x 90 inches. Collection of Souls Grown Deep Foundation.
All other images as credited in photo captions.