Early in her career, Marquetta Johnson learned dyeing techniques from a South African artist working at the now defunct Neighborhood Arts Center in Summerhill, Atlanta. As she refined those methods, making them more sustainable, Johnson became renowned for her hand-dyed fabrics throughout the US quilting community, including the artist Faith Ringgold, who began sourcing fabric from her. Johnson published a book documenting her process, for which she created hundreds of sample swatches, later using them as patches in one very symmetrical quilt and reinventing them once more as the dynamic string quilt seen here.