Tinnie Pettway

   

Tinnie Pettway    1936 - 

“ I was seven, eight, years old when my mom started me. It was a thing that the women did, and the girls had to learn to do, because that's what we had to keep warm. Every summer when the crops was laid by, no one was in the field. The women quilted, and with whatever they could find. They didn't have material, nothing was matching. They just sewed together what they had. So my mom just kept at us until we learned. 

We don't go by a pattern. We have it in our mind what we want to do. We lay it out, we look at it, we like it. We say, 'that's good.' There are a few things like the Housetop and the Nine Patch that are the main quilt design of Gee's Bend. But we make them like we want to.

And now, we have the material. We can choose how we want the colors to blend. In my time, we didn't know what blending was. There was no such thing. And there was one machine. My mom used that machine. Even so, most quilts were done by hand. 

Now, we put the quilt together with the machine sometimes. It's quite different and much more enjoyable, especially from when I was a kid, because I had to do it when I was being punished. I was made to leave what I wanted to do, which was play outside, and sit in the house with the old ladies and quilt.

Our quilts rarely have a special name, although sometimes we name our quilts when we get finished. But it's not a name you would expect to hear. I named one quilt 'Tra-la-la' because it looked like piano keys. And I got a letter from a lady yesterday saying she loved the name. 

Now I enjoy quilting. And it's competitive, right? All the rest of the Quilters, we call one another, see how we doing. And because I'm the oldest one, it certainly keeps me on my Ps and Qs, trying to keep up with these young quilters. And I love to do better. I'm not saying I do. But I'm always trying to do a better job, because of my age.”

(Excerpts from an interview with Sabrina Crews, for  March 14, 2024.)

 

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