"I am from Gee's Bend, Alabama. And I am a quilter," China Pettway says.

Until Dec. 14, the Philadelphia Museum of Art presents Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt with photographs of Gee's Bend, AL by Linda Day Clark. Weaved together, the quilts and the photographs tell the story of the women from this small rural town.

Though Pettway isn't displaying any quilts during this exhibit, she is a member of the Gee's Bend Quilters Collective, and her friends and family have quilts on display.

"We are together," Pettway says. "We are family."

With their bright, bold colors and their geometric shapes, the 75 quilts from Gee's Bend resemble modern art paintings. In fact, Loretta Bennett, a quilter in her 40s, originally wanted to paint. However, these quilts started out as something entirely different.

"I learned to make quilts," Nettie Young says when asked what inspired her to create her quilts.

At 91-years-old, Young is one of the oldest quilters. Her mother taught her when she was just 11-years-old.

"Back in those days, you didn't have a good house," Young explains. "The wind, it come up through the cracks. You put a quilt down, and it keep the wind out. You use it for the home. You never thought it would go this high to museums around the world. You don't make quilts for that," she continues.

"I didn't think my quilts would be hanging here," Bennett says, as she stands in front of her quilts.

Bennett learned from her mother, and her mother helped with every quilt Bennett has on display.

"These women are fierce," Linda Day Clark says of the Gee's Bend residents. "Nothing is going to stop them."

Clark's photographs depict a small, close-knit rural community. Located on the bank of the Alabama River, Gee's Bend was founded in the early 1800s, and most of the residents are descendants of former slaves.

"Instead of migrating north, these people stayed," Clark says. "They went from slave to sharecropper to proud landowners," she continues.

The quilts are made from old clothes: pants, shirts, skirts, dresses.

"During those days, we didn't have money to go to the fabric store and buy new material to make quilts," Pettway says. "We just took the old clothes when we wore them out, but we'd get the best parts and make quilt."

The Tinwood Alliance, a non-profit art organization based in Atlanta, discovered the quilts and pushed to get them displayed.

"They came and wanted to buy the old quilts from us," Young says. "That's when I learned quilts were more than quilts."

In 2002, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Tinwood Alliance presented the first exhibition of the quilts from Gee's Bend. Since then, the quilts have been displayed around the world in museums, books, and documentaries, giving the quilters a sense of pride they've never felt before.

"Sometimes, it takes a stranger to make you see," Louisiana Bendolph says.

She continues about her childhood where people never expressed their pride. Bendolph worked most her life and didn't go to school.

"Strangers gave us a dream. The Tinwood Alliance told people our work deserved to hang in museums. They changed our lives," Bendolph continues.

"You don't have to have an education to be somebody," Young says. "And I know I'm somebody."

Each quilt is stitched with care. All of the quilters learned from their mothers, aunts and grandmothers.

"I would come home from school in the afternoon and my mother would be sitting in front of quilt with five or six ladies," Pettway says. "They used to quilt together in a group, every week, Monday through Friday."

Once Pettway told her mother she wanted to learn, her mother handed Pettway the quilt. Pettway made her first quilt at age 11.

Though these women have children, their children have not picked up the family tradition, but that does not matter. Their children have found other ways to make their mothers proud.

"They have schools," Young says of her eleven children. "It's different times. I didn't get schooling, and I wanted my children to have that. All eleven finished high school. And I'm proud of them,"

"The quilts speak for themselves," Bendolph says. "To see the pride on my children's face when they see my quilts, you have no idea what that's done," she continues.

"I can look, see where these quilts have brought me from nowhere to somewhere, just walking in a museum and seeing displays on the wall," Pettway says. "I never thought a quilt like that could do so much for me."

For more information on Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt, visit www.philamuseum.org. The display runs until Dec. 14, 2008.