Claudia Pettway Charley

Claudia Pettway Charley is a fourth-generation Gee’s Bend quilter, though she didn’t come to quilting until her 30s. She is the daughter of Tinnie Dell Pettway, and together they founded Sew Gee’s Bend Heritage Builders to protect the legacy and the quilters of Gee’s Bend, and to open opportunities within the community. Claudia’s daughter Francesca is carrying on the family tradition as a fifth-generation Gee’s Bend quilter.

I was a late bloomer, I did not really do my first piece until I was in my 30s. I was born in 1965, and I grew up in a house in Gee’s Bend where everybody lived together. I had my grandmother, my mother, my mother’s sister, and then there was me and my boy cousins. My grandmother had the quilting frame in the living room. I would play underneath it like it was my dollhouse. I would watch the needles coming through, trying to figure out where it’s going to come next, which I guess is very dangerous. And they would be there talking and singing, and I thought it was really cool.

Everybody would bring their quilt tops, and they would work on one at a time. Growing up, I didn’t realize that we were considered poor. People would hear our stories and meet people throughout this Gee’s Bend phenomenon, and they told us that our story was so inspiring. But a lot of times, when you’re living it, you don’t see it the same way. It was interesting to find out later in life that it was really a struggle. Everything we had to eat came out of the garden. My grandfather would hunt, and they did a lot of fishing back then. We had fields of corn, okra, watermelon, cantaloupe. You couldn’t even see the other end. I remember as a child that getting up at five o’clock in the morning, dew was still on the ground. It was intense labor. The only day that we rested was on Sundays.

The community was close. We didn’t really have anybody else to depend on because everybody else forgot about us down here. They left us to fend for ourselves. And too, they wanted us to be cut off. They stopped the ferry so the people in Gee’s Bend couldn’t get across the river to vote in Camden, the county seat for Wilcox County. There was only one way in and out of Gee’s Bend, and if you didn’t have any transportation, which a lot of people didn’t have back then, then you were stuck. I guess it’s the same today, just wrapped in a different package. The package now is just a little bit prettier, but it’s the same thing.

I don’t think my grandmother and my mom and other people thought about art when making a quilt, but when you think of art and music, those are things that come from the soul. No one else can control your soul. Your interpretation is entirely yours because it’s truly from your heart. Being able to use what you have and create something; people can’t take that away. And no matter what type of struggle you’re having, that’s something you can always do that will be totally your own. And that’s what the strength of art and music could be, because you’re writing your own story the way that you see it to be. And it doesn’t matter really what anybody else thinks, either way, it’s still your story.

I think staple Gee’s Bend patterns came from things that we saw and the way that my grandmother and my mother’s grandmother lived life. For instance, the Housetop, when they looked at the top of their house, that’s what they envisioned. And so that right there was an original simply because of what they saw back then. And then they have this pattern called Courthouse Steps. No one has told me this, but when I see the Courthouse Step pattern, my mind tells me that, “Okay, well, you all would not allow us in the courthouse to vote, but you surely cannot stop us from making our own pathway.” And we made it through that quilt pattern. That’s my interpretation of the struggle of trying to get into a building to vote to have the same rights that anybody else would have.

We’ve always had a business in Gee’s Bend called That’s Sew Gee’s Bend. People were coming to the community and taking advantage of us. We needed them to understand that there were people within the community who knew what was going on and we weren’t going to stand for it. So, we promoted and marketed and built websites. As a matter of fact, we were some of the first companies in Gee’s Bend to do a website of our own. We helped people sell their quilts and dealt directly with museums and galleries. During this time, my mother and I were talking about a nonprofit because when we started doing these exhibits, there were a lot of people who wanted to support Gee’s Bend, but they only wanted to support Gee’s Bend.

So my mother, Tinnie Pettway, and I, co-founded Sew Gee’s Bend Heritage Builders. Some of our main missions are to empower entrepreneurship, and we do a lot of collaborations with fashion designers and retailers. It’s so that nobody else can just come in and think that they can just take over. Now organizations and companies have a direct contact to Gee’s Bend through our nonprofit organization. We are transparent in what we’re planning to do with those funds so that they can see that their financial donations are coming directly to Gee’s Bend. And that’s different because a lot of times when you give to an organization, you have no idea where the money goes.

We empower entrepreneurship, we are enhancing our infrastructure in the community, and we celebrate our artistic traditions of who we are and who we always have been. Those are our three mission statements. We now have companies like Adidas that we work with, and that’s really big right now. We are one of the main sponsors for the Airing of the Quilts Festival, which is four years old this year. Adidas gave us a donation, and they’re going to be one of the main organizing sponsors for the event this year.

We are very, very excited about building those types of relationships. We’re more interested in a longer-term relationship where you get to know the community, where you yourself can see why you want to give and how you can really support our vision. We have some other things planned that Adidas is helping with. We’re trying to get a building and infrastructure for the quilters. We can have a place where we can go every day. Sisters are doing it for themselves. That’s the whole idea. We are really, really excited about being able to bring this to our community.

I always tell people that when you get a Gee’s Bend quilt, you have four outlooks on life. All you have to do is turn your quilt around four different ways. And each way you turn it is going to give you something different. Four different outlooks. Even when you look at yourself in the mirror, you only have one reflection. But with Gee’s Bend, it’s totally different.

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