Quiltmakers there have produced countless patchwork masterpieces beginning as far back as the mid-nineteenth century. Purchase a quilt and even sew a square or two.

You may have seen their artwork featured on postage stamps that carried mail across the country or caught a glimpse of their creations on a segment of The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Whether you’ve seen them on television or have only read about them, now you can get to know these women firsthand.

The Gee’s Bend Quiltmaker’s Tour will take you to —a small, remote, black community in Alabama where residents have created hundreds of quilt masterpieces dating from the early twentieth century to the present.

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. When slavery ended in the south, this community was the last to know, similar to those that were enslaved in Texas.