Tinnie Pettway began to learn how to stitch for survival at 8-years-old from her mother because growing up in Gee’s Bend in Wilcox County, quilts were the only way to keep warm during the winter.

Now, Pettway’s stitching for art and selling her quilts to people all over the country, a turnaround that the quilter herself finds hard to believe, even after she began touring with an organization of Gee’s Bend quilters called ‘The Collective.’