LESSON ACTIVITY – GEE’S BEND QUILTS – A COLLABORATIVE

PROJECT
GRADES 4-5
Overview - The women of Gee’s Bend — a small, remote, African American
community in Selma, Alabama — have created hundreds of quilt masterpieces
dating from the early twentieth century to the present. Students will create their
own quilt square out of construction paper. Squares will be presented together to
make a class quilt.
Learning Objectives—
• Students will learn art vocabulary: geometric, vertical, horizontal, and
monochromatic.
• Students will learn about the art of quilt making and the historical significance of quilting to the
community of Gee’s Bend.
• Students will learn about famous Alabama artists.

Alabama Visual Arts Standards

Grade 4—
14. Create works of art that reflect community and/or cultural traditions.
Grade 5—
11. Identify and analyze cultural associations suggested by visual imagery.

Alabama Social Studies Standards

Grade 4—
12. Explain the impact the 1920s and Great Depression had on different socioeconomic groups in Alabama.

Resources
McKissack, Patricia. Stitchin' and Pullin': A Gee's Bend Quilt. New York: Dragonfly, 2016.
Rubin, Susan Goldman. The Quilts of Gee’s Bend. New York: Abrams, 2017.

Materials—Card stock paper or construction paper, paper cutter, scissors, glue stick

Introduction—
Resembling an inland island, Gee’s Bend is surrounded on three sides by the Alabama River. The seven
hundred or so inhabitants of this small, rural community are mostly descendants of slaves, and for generations
they worked the fields belonging to the local Pettway plantation. Quiltmakers there have produced countless
patchwork masterpieces beginning as far back as the mid-nineteenth century, with the oldest existing examples
dating from the 1920s. Enlivened by a visual imagination that extends the expressive boundaries of the quilt
genre, these astounding creations constitute a crucial chapter in the history of African American art.

Gee’s Bend quilts carry forward an old and proud tradition of textiles made for home and family. They
represent only a part of the rich body of African American quilts. But they are in a league by themselves. Few
other places can boast the extent of Gee’s Bend’s artistic achievement, the result of both geographical isolation
and an unusual degree of cultural continuity. In few places elsewhere have works been found by three and
sometimes four generations of women in the same family, or works that bear witness to visual conversations
among community quilting groups and lineages. Gee’s Bend’s art also stands out for its flair—quilts composed
boldly and improvisationally, in geometries that transform recycled work clothes and dresses, feed sacks, and fabric
remnants.
Procedure—
1. Students choose their background color and then four colors for cutting up.
2. Four background colors are placed on the table and four remaining cards are cut up into strips and squares, etc.
3. Tell students to design a geometric pattern using their chosen colors. Be sure to be aware of the horizontal,
vertical, and diagonal lines in your design.
4. Students will cut their desire shapes out of the colored paper and glue them on their background. Important:
Students must use ALL of their cut up paper. Layers are fine, it just needs to be all used up, just like the Gee’s
Bend women did with their clothes.
5. Once each square is complete, display all quilt squares together.