I have never been to a mall on the day after Thanksgiving. I’ve just never understood the need to battle for a sale item. I detest crowds. So the concept of Shop Small suits my kind of thinking. In our household, we try to support local business owners every day of the year.
On this Black Friday we wanted to drive backroads with the camera and maybe find an antique shop or two. One goal of photography was some country Christmas scenes. The treasure of the day was a church decorated with Christmas wreaths on every window. And, this church has a chimney. I’ve never seen a church with a chimney. An old cemetery surrounded by a white picket fence is well maintained by a local boy scout troop.
Following a spontaneous zigzag route from one small town to another, we drove though rolling hills we’d never seen. Beautiful farmland, horses enjoying the glorious fall day, a friendly gentleman in an otherwise sleepy town, made it seem like a bit of time travel.
We made one stop in a feed & seed / quilt shop near Covington. Though the business lost a bit of its charm when it moved out of the downtown location, their old time merchandise is still appealing. As I paid for a fat quarter and spool of thread, the clerk recognized the bank name on my credit card and shared pleasant experiences she had there. Somehow I don’t think I would have had that sort of exchange in a mall shopping experience on Friday.
We had lunch at our favorite locally owned restaurant in Monroe, GA, across the street from this pocket park. The focus of this park is an old bank vault (left when the downburst of ’93 destroyed the building). Two treasures here: the safe itself and the fact that the town preserved it and made a park there.
Visits to a few antique stores generated minimal purchases. The highlight for me was packages of old bias tape and rickrack, all cotton, all unopened, bearing original $.19 price tags. I could imagine the vendor thinking, “nobody will want this old stuff.” And, I’m thinking, “WOW. What fun is this!” The wicker item had a tag saying “lampshade,” but I thought “bee skep”.
Yes, we did some shopping on Black Friday. But we didn’t elbow anyone out of the way, never stood in line, didn’t get frustrated, and had no traffic snarls to navigate. Back roads and small businesses, that’s the way to do it.
All photography (except bias tape) by Jim Gilreath.
John loved riding his tractor and wearing his overalls. A country boy at heart for all of his 64 years, he represents what men in overalls convey to me: honesty, integrity, and a strong work ethic. Add a dog and the country boy takes on a loving and playful nature.
The photo is printed on cotton fabric, free motion machine quilted with cotton thread and wool batting. The brown layer is linen and all is hand stitched to a vintage quilt remnant as its base. The label is written on a scrap of vintage linen that was made blue when Marie and I played in the indigo dye vat one hot summer day. The finished piece measures 12” x 16”.
One earlier photo shows young John and Kemp on the farm. Another shows Marie flanked by her loving brothers and includes their dog Skippy.
Ethel teasingly dubbed herself the complainer, said she called Queen Tess 65 times. She doesn’t like square quilts, doesn’t like the fan block, and doesn’t like yellow. But Ethel is not a quitter, she’s a quilter, and her resulting piece is one of my favorites (the blue in the center is to dye for).
Linda combined this guild’s challenge with a project she was entering in a Windows and Doors exhibit at the Ashe Arts Center in West Jefferson, NC. Working from a photo she had taken in Nimes, France, Linda pieced the doorway panel. She added asymmetrical borders to bring the project to the 36” requirement for our guild, including pieced fans as butterfly wings and some yellow flowers blooming on the vine.
Sharon made, not one, but two quilts. One was made with fabric she bought in Japan while visiting her son and his family. The other, Ocho, RibBonz, and Shadow–3 FANtastic Cats, was inspired by several quilts on Pinterest. She has two cats name Ocho and RibBonz.. Since she needed three fans, she had to make three cats, and Shadow is the name she gave to her imaginary cat. She was asked to explain about one cat’s tail. He’s scared, she said.
Marie machine pieced and hand quilted a beauty including linen and cotton fabrics. Her title was Did you mean these fans? An M&M’s button on the label depicted her reference to the popular tv commercial. Dewey confessed that this commercial was his inspiration, too. His quilt exists only in his mind as he’s been busy building a new quilting studio.
Susi’s first place winner, Fantastic Frolicking Felines, brought smiles to all of us. Look how much fun these dancing cats are having. I think Dewey had fun, too, quilting this beauty. He added the thread-painted musical notes as he quilted the entry for Susi on his longarm machine. Susi adapted a pattern from Amy Bradley for this crowd pleaser.
In 2010, my photographer husband Jim captured a magical moment at sunrise with cows in the mist. I was captivated by the photo from the moment I saw it and immediately framed and hung an 8” x 10” print in our house.
I pieced four fan blocks (paper foundation piecing because they are tiny – 2” blocks) to create the windmill. To create the base, I photographed a toy windmill I have as part of my decor (complete with cows on my hutch in the breakfast room) and printed it in various sizes to test the scale. Using that photo as a pattern, I painted the windmill base using India ink, appliquéd the fan unit (the windmill) and had my quilt.
Then I remembered “yellow” requirement. Yellow, like the sun. Got it. The photo was taken at sunrise. So, a rising sun was appliquéd, then the quilting came into play. Green grass, blue wind, and continuous curves in the outer border all were quilted with 100 weight silk thread. Now I’m a fan of fans.
The guild’s quilt challenge for 2013 required us to use small bits of fabric from Tess’s stash. The Challenge Queen does this occasionally; requiring the use of what some might think of as uglies. That certainly was the case for my envelope. Yuck. A red and black color combination was given to me, a calico and something else, 2” squares of each. I tried several things that didn’t make my heart sing, but at some point I remembered a pattern from Country Threads featuring pieced goats.
A well-dressed goat appears in
This photo shows the background pinned to the design wall with my paper pattern drawn. That pattern was transferred to white Kona fabric, then the handwriting began. Sandpaper underneath the fabric helps to keep the fabric from slipping. I used Sharpies and Pigma Micron pens.
Once the words were pressed to make them permanent, I used needleturn appliqué to fix the tree to the background. In the areas of white where the blue background fabric showed through, I added a lining layer of white fabric.
Cotton batting was used and all quilting was hand-guided, freemotion stitching. Only the griffins on either side of the trunk were marked, all other quilting was spontaneous. Most used a matching blue cotton thread (50 weight, 2 ply), but some variegated thread was added in a few places for interest.