"Star" Variation

Artist Leola Pettway American, 1929–2010

Date1978

MediumCotton fabric, cotton and polyester thread

Dimensionsheight and width: 83 × 84 in. (210.8 × 213.4 cm)

ClassificationsTextiles

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the North Carolina State Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest)

Object number2024.3.2

On View

Not on view

Label TextAs part of the Gee’s Bend quilting collective and the nearby Freedom Quilting Bee, Leola Pettway created quilts that embody the rich patchwork tradition of rural Alabama, a practice sustained by her community’s endurance from enslavement through the civil rights era and beyond.

Pettway grew up in a sharecropping family, plowing and breaking up the land and planting cotton. She learned to quilt at eleven years old and has said that she loved to make a “Star” quilt. A dazzling pattern that radiates out from the center, the star is associated with a number of symbols and ideas in African American quilting traditions, ranging from the spiritual, with the star of Bethlehem, to the freedom, hope, and guidance of the North Star.
[L. Applebaum, 2025]
ProvenanceCreated by the artist, 1978; with Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Atlanta, GA, sold to NCMA, 2024.Exhibition HistoryRaleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "The People's Collection Reimagined," March 24, 2025-December 15, 2025. Object Rights Statement

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