Quilting –– much like pottery, papier-mâché and printmaking –– is both a humble craft and a fine art. While Kathleen Probst‘s bold colours and minimal patterns grace gallery walls, Brigitte Singh‘s intricate paisleys live in baby cots. Both are skillfully made, and designed with huge imagination, and neither is more than a humble quilt, nor less than a work of art. There are no quilts more beautiful, and more original than the ones created by the residents of Gee’s Bend in Alabama’s Black Belt. Last year, Gee’s Bend artist, Sally Mae Pettway Mixon‘s multi-hued quilt landed on the wall of London’s Royal Academy’s annual Summer Exhibition. “No needlework, flowers, cut paper, shell-work or any such baubles shall be admitted,” read the original requirements of the show back in the 1770s. How far we’ve come, and how long it took.