“Have you ever paid trees any attention?”(Essie Pettway)
“Some of ’em are light green…dark green…
greener green yellowish green.” (Essie Pettway)
“Have y’ever paid how the leaves are blowing’?
They have a glimmer in ’em and I call it silver,
because it be wavy.” (Essie Pettway)
“Farming I picked cotton. I didn’t like it, not at
all, but it was life.” (Essie Pettway)
“We had to do what we had to do to make a
living.” (Essie Pettway)
“Gee’s Bend Alabama there’s a rural community,
a community where everybody knows everybody.” (Essie Pettway)
“When my parents finished their farm then we
go help our neighbor get their farm. We just
worked together.” (Essie Pettway)
“We all know one another.” (Lucy Mingo)
“We are kin people.” (Lucy Mingo)
“My grandmother taught me how to quilt.” (Rita Mae Pettway)
“I remember when my mom and my grandmom and their neighbors used to come by to quilt together.” (Essie Pettway)
“They wound teach us when we was under their quilt and I used to sit there and look up under the quilt and wonder how they was goin’ up and down up and down with that needle.” (Essie Pettway)
“He asked me was it alright for him to sell my quilt.” (Mary Lee Bendolph)
“I was always held back because of where I came from, who my mother was, who my father was, but I realized I could do anything that I put my mind to doin’.” (China Pettway)
“Oh, girl I just loved it! I never thought quilts gon’be in no museum nowhere, my quilt would be in the art world”. (Essie Pettway)
“But I realize I just…love to see my beautiful quilt hanging up there.” (Mary Lee Bendolph)
Text excerpted from interviews of Five Alabama Gee’s Bend Quilters featured in the film While I Yet Live by Maris Curran. Edited by Pamela Z