The bittersweet history of a place where isolation and poverty still reside is stitched into the trouser legs, cornmeal sacks, dress skirts and Sears corduroy swatches that constitute one of the country's most unbroken and deeply imaginative quilting traditions.

For generations, the women of Gee's Bend have passed down an indigenous style of quilting geometric patterns out of old britches, cornmeal sacks, Sears corduroy swatches and hand-me-down leisure suits: whatever happened to be around.

She began to think that behind that painted cornmeal sack of a face, there was a face she would know, a face she had been waiting for.