Are you familiar with the quilts from Gees Bend, Alabama, and the amazing group of quilters there who have been making them since the mid 1800s? This article, which I came across on Facebook tonight, gives a history and shows quilts with the names and dates of many of these quilters. As many as a dozen of them were born in the last 20 years of the 1800s and were still quilting well into the mid-900s.
The styles and often the colors of these quilts make them seem quite modern by today's standards. Most are geometric, many have no borders, lots use staggered designs which remind me of zigzag or offset log cabins. All are intriguing and different.
I'm so glad to have known about the Gees Bend quilts for nearly 20 years and I hope my sharing them here with you will strike your interest, too.
http://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/gees-bend-quiltmakers
Be sure to click on the little link under each thumbnail to the left of the page for many, many more quilt pictures!
Jan in VA