In the early 1990s a former Bend resident living in Bridgeport, Connecticut, sent some garments—double-knit leisure suits—to Gee's Bend. Mary Lee Bendolph remembers: "My sister-in-law's daughter sent those clothes down here and told me to give them away, but didn't nobody want them. That knit stuff, clothes from way back yonder, don't nobody wear no more, and the pants was all bell-bottom. We ain't that out-of-style down here. I was going to take them to the Salvation Army, but didn't have to way to get there, so I just made quilts out of them. (Quilted by her daughter, Essie Bendolph Pettway in 2001.)