POWERGRAMS

29 Nancy Pettway's eyes are fixed on her fingers guiding a needle and thread through scraps of bright blue material forming a 13-inch square. Millions of times she has followed the same circuitous path in lining up and sealing down pieces of cloth that end up in hundreds of unique patterns that pop from her mind. No completed fabric design of hers is ever the same. "I just cut up pieces and put them together like I like them," she says. "My mother taught me how to come up with different patterns. If you get to a place and it doesn't suit you, just cut it up and put it back together to look like you want it." She talks as she quilts, minding the store at Gee's Bend Quilters Collective and greeting a family that has just arrived from California. In recent days, she's met busloads of tourists from Washington to Indiana, Canada to Germany, all wanting to see in person what they'd read about or watched on television. Women have quilted in Gee's Bend for the better part of two centuries. Only in the past two decades, however, has their craft been praised by curators of museums and critics at The New York Times. Pettway and the other dozen or so remaining quilting women of Gee's Bend are folk artists whose sewing talents awe people the world over. Their admirers ride the ferry to this town of 300 people in a bend of the Alabama River hoping to meet a quilter and perhaps purchase a piece of history. They leave heartfelt comments on the visitors' log: "inspirational," "wonderful," "fabulous," "incredible." Pettway's mother began teaching her to sew in the early 1940s, though they never made bed quilts. Nancy Pettway soon visited Gee's Bend for the first time and watched the quilters. She worked in a Linden sewing factory in the 1960s and '70s, producing clothes for Sears, J.C. Penney and other chains. She was a guest on the bus tour when the Gee's Bend quilters had their first national exhibits in 2002. By 2005, her work was included in a Sea Island, Ga., exhibit. "I saw everything they had done and thought back to what my mother had taught me," she says. "I made my first full quilt and it ended up in the second show we did in Houston." Soon, Pettway's quilts joined her Gee's Bend friends' on the walls of galleries in Louisville, Pittsburgh and other cities. "I've been steady working here in this building," she says. "I've made many, many, many quilts, potholders, coasters, on and on, and I just enjoy it." What was a way to ease stress and praise God during the civil rights era is now a way of earning a living for the Gee's Bend quilters. They still occasionally gather together and sing hymns and spirituals but seldom produce collaborative quilts as in decades past. They most often bring their finished product to the collective building, where they sign it, price it and place it in bins and on tables for sale. "The money, I mean it's a big help," Pettway says. "I don't have any children of my own but I got my sister's children when she passed on and I help all of them. When I was depending on Social Security, it was rough." The late Arlonzia Pettway urged her friends in Gee's Bend to use their quilting skills to boost income in the heart of one of America's poorest regions. "She said if you want to really improve your life, go to quilting, and she was right," Nancy Pettway says. "Our old quilts we had, (art dealer) Bill Arnett came in and bought them all, and then we started making new ones." Nowadays, rather than spending long sessions together singing and sewing in rhythm, the quilters generally work at home at their own pace. Some of the most recognizable quilters from the popular public television documentary have died, and some of the oldest remaining quilters seldom venture outside their houses. Eighty-year-old Pettway isn't slowing down. She enjoys and intends to take full advantage of the Gee's Bend notoriety. "When I get up in the morning, I cook breakfast, do my housework and then go to sewing," she says. "As I've gotten up in age, I don't care too much for making large quilts." Visitors travel from around the world to see quilters across the Alabama River from Camden.

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