“My family is the reason why I am who I am today. I wouldn’t have any of this without my mother and my grandmother getting me into it. It is something so beautiful for me. I’m going to always include it in my life. My grandmother is the one who started me quilting. It started when I was 10. She had me put together a nine-by-nine block. Even though I don’t live down here, I spent every single summer down here. She is more traditional when it comes to her style, while I am obsessed with patterns. Our styles are different, but they still complement each other very well. I love to see what my grandmother makes. As a child, I didn’t do good with being patient. I definitely grew a sense of patience when it comes to sewing and making these because it takes so much patience with whatever it is that you’re working on, and yourself especially. Patience is such a huge virtue when it comes to all of this work. It definitely helps me with my schoolwork and helps me with people, as well, to not get as angry as fast. It’s an overall huge life enhancer for me. Carrying on the tradition is probably one of the biggest things here and I’m really glad to do that because there’s not a lot of young quilters. I’m really excited to do this and hopefully I continue with my son or daughter if I so choose to have one.” – Francesca Charley, anthropology student at the University of Alabama

Francesca Charley plans to pursue a career as a forensic osteologist. (Tamika Moore / People of Alabama)

Charley is a fifth generation Gee’s Bend quilter. Her family has been quilting for more than a century, starting with her great-grandmother Malissia Pettway. Charley wants to become a forensic osteologist.

“I will be in the lab and working in the field whenever a body shows up in a place where it should not because of foul play. I will be trying to figure out who this person was and their life and try to bring them the justice that they deserve. Sometimes when cases go cold and you never figure out what happened to them, their family is left hurt because they don’t know what happened to their baby. So, it would just be bringing their families a peace of mind that they deserve.”

These are the faces and stories of people from all walks of life who call Alabama home. People of Alabama is a Red Clay Media and Alabama News Center partnership.