Wale of a Quilt

I visited Gee's Bend in 2022 for their inaugural Airing of the Quilts Festival. There, I learned about the history of the area's sewing cooperative which contracted with Sears Roebuck to produce corduroy pillow covers -- and how the women were allowed to take scraps of the corduroy home, which naturally ended up in quilts.

I saw several of the corduroy quilts on display during my visit, and I really liked the hefty look of them.

One particular corduroy quilt, made by Mary Lee Bendolph, really caught my eye. This quilt consisted of nothing more than vertical bars of various 1970s colors. Somehow I neglected to get a photo, but I believe that's it in Kelly Spell's Instagram post from the day (see images 1 and 6 in Kelly's post). Kelly also has a great closeup of a different corduroy quilt.

I saw lots of 9-patch blocks in various quilts on that day too.

Inspired by all this, I decided to create a corduroy quilt combining vertical bars and 9-patches.  This is Wale of a Quilt:

I also decided to play with the directionality of the corduroy fabrics. Rotating pieces by 90° gives a different look, depending on the lighting, due to the wale. The fabric has a nap too, so that rotating it by 180° can give a different look as well. The "ghost" 9-patch units in the center are created using these different rotations.

In another nod to the Gee's Bend quilts, I did not attempt to make accurate cuts; in my mind it's "intentionally imperfect."

I'm not sure how machine quilting would look on a corduroy quilt, and it seemed inappropriate for a Gee's Bend-inspired quilt anyway -- so I took a class on hand quilting with Jen Kingwell at the 2024 QuiltCon, with this quilt specifically in mind. I used several colors of 8wt Wonderfil thread in an oversized Baptist fan design. (8wt was Jen's suggestion; I had initially purchased even more colors of 12wt Aurifil.) For marking, I used a strip of template plastic with holes punched every half inch up to 18 inches to act as a beam compass.

The corduroy fabrics are from Robert Kaufman; some are 8 wale and some are 14 wale. I really like the wider 8 wale, but there are more colors available at 14 wale.

I used a Cherrywood fabric in teal for the binding.

The back is a Mammoth flannel plaid. This is a heavy, warm, and cozy quilt.

Here's a look at the label:

The Airing of the Quilts Festival in Gee's Bend is now an annual event. I highly encourage a visit sometime!