Loretta Pettway Bennett is a direct descendent of Dinah Miller, the earliest quilter from Gee's Bend, Alabama, whose name is known today. Bennett continues to create handstitched quilts in the tradition taught to her by her mother, Qunnie Pettway, and passed down through her family for many generations. Since 2006, her quilts have featured in dozens of major museum exhibitions nationwide and in nineteen US Embassies worldwide. In 2007, she collaborated with Paulson Fontaine Press in Berkley, California, to create a suite of limited-edition prints based on her quilt designs. In addition to her residency with Paulson Fontaine Press, she was an artist in residence at the Pilchuk Glass School in Stanwood, Washington, in 2013 and received Visual Arts Fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts in 2001 and 2009. Today, her quilts and prints are in numerous museum and corporate collections, as well as the US State Department, and have been published in books including Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt, which accompanied a group exhibition of the same name that toured six museums across the United States. The most recent catalog to publish her work was Souls Grown Deep Like the Rivers: Black Artists from the American South, from a 2023 group show at the Royal Academy of Art in London, England. In 2025, she was awarded the Alabama Fellowship for the Southern Prize by South Arts. In addition to gallery and museum exhibitions, Bennett shares the tradition of making quilts by hand by teaching regular workshops in Gee's Bend and at special events nationwide.