Author: Sandy Gilreath

I've stitched my way through life. Early skills in utilitarian and decorative sewing have merged with art in the world of quiltmaking. My love of journaling has now crossed into the cloth world, too. I love old songs, old souls, old words; my collections attest to my fascination with memories.

Paducah 2017

The annual quilt contest of the American Quilters’ Society in Paducah, KY, was held last week and I was there. Two of my quilts were there, too. Jim and I drove up for a couple of days at the show.  As usual for us, the journey was as important as the destination, so back roads and side trips were a big part of the week’s adventure.

As wonderful as the show was, and always is, highlights of the trip included an overnight stop in Desoto Falls State Park, AL and a two-hour visit to Bell Buckle, TN.  In Kentucky, we spent time at Land Between the Lakes, then driving through stunningly beautiful scenery of green hills and blue barns as we headed east toward Berea.  We stopped for a visit to the city voted “the most beautiful small town in the US,”  Bardstown, then retraced steps from a trip 25 years ago, spending a night at the Boone Tavern Inn and visiting craftsmen and women in Berea.  Heading east to Waynesville, NC, we explored Cumberland Gap National Park. Our last night on the road was spent at a favorite B & B.

All these adventures held conversations with interesting people, photo opportunities that beg to become quilts, and stories to be told.  Later posts will detail some of that. But, for now, my impressions of the quilt show.

This year’s show included 404 quilts from 44 US states and from 14 other countries competing in 16 categories.  Prize money totaled $125,000 and more than 30,000 people attended.  More than 300 vendors were on hand to help me find supplies to make my next project.

I’ve attended this show at least six times, sometimes with friends, and staying four or five days.  But when Jim and I go, I can see it all in two days. This time, I saw all the quilts twice, took lots of photos, and visited the vendors I wanted to see on Tuesday evening and Wednesday afternoon.

The winners this year were stunning, as always.  Photos of the top winners are here.  All of the quilts are inspirational, and I walk around taking photos and making voice notes on my phone of details I want to study later.

Many of my notes this year were about Japanese quilts.  That’s not unusual.  I love the Japanese sense of color, their attention to detail, and the embroidery that often accompanies their appliqué.  This year, all three place winners in the hand quilting category were Japanese.  There were other categories where the Japanese aesthetic was notable, too.  I realized that  several of the Japanese quiltmakers (winners and non-winners) used a background fabric that was gradated.  They cut it and assembled it so that the center was dark, graduated out to lighter, then back again to darker.  You would be right to imagine that I headed to the vendor’s booths to see if I could find some of that.  I did!

I was pleased that most of the winning quilts have elements of traditional quiltmaking.  In recent years, some have been so densely embroidered by machine, or so encrusted by crystals, that it was hard to see evidence of human hands at work.

One of the features I’m always examining closely is the quilting, especially the machine quilting, since that’s what I enjoy most.  I expected this year to be full of ruler-guided quilting.  There was some, especially in the modern quilt category, but not as much as I would have predicted.  One phrase I did hear a lot at the awards ceremony was matchstick quilting.  This term refers to closely spaced parallel lines.

There was a lot of English paper piecing, and what seemed like more of the Baltimore Album style quilts than usual.

The quilts in the vendors’ booths are always inspirational, too.  New patterns, new fabrics, new tools have the cash registers singing.  My favorites include Wendy Richardson’s hand-dyed fabrics, seen in the photo above (with her permission).  Wendy dyes yardage of solid fabric with beautiful blends of many colors.  She also overdyes vintage linens and commercial fabrics in unexpected ways.  I always make my way to her booth on Tuesday evening to get first choice!

Other favorite booths for me include Primitive Gatherings, Front Porch Quilts, Fabric  Peddlers, Cherrywood and Liberty Homestead.  I saw a few other booths with intriguing merchandise, but I didn’t give a second glance to batiks or commercial fabrics. I have plenty of both of those categories.  The booths that caught my eye had interesting selections of unusual fabrics.  I did come home with some Japanese woven fabrics, some shot cottons, and some sueded hand-dyed cottons.

All my purchases have now been pre-washed and ironed and I’m ready to cut it up and sew it back together!  I have many ideas for new projects, and one of them includes a journal quilt commemorating this trip.

Photo details: You can click on any photo and it will open in another window with more detail.  You can zoom in even more in that view.  The featured photo (you don’t see this one if you read the email version, it’s on Facebook and on the website) is of the booth for The Sampler, which sells Kaffe Fassett fabrics exclusively.

The first photo (featuring leaves) is a closeup of Autumn’s Master Painter, by Anna Reich, Lewisville, NC.

The one with the ribbon is Karen K. Stone’s Wonderful World. Next is a closeup of A Time of the Madder Red, by Toyoko Nakajima of Kirya, Gunma, Japan; then My Baltimore Journey by Darlene Donohue, Hilton Head, SC.  The one with all the hexagons is Cache of Carats, by Gail Stepanek and Jan Hutchison of New Lenox, IL.   Later you see Cherrywood’s booth with all the solids and a couple of photos show some of my purchases.  Below are photos of my two quilts, Mom and Apple Pie, and Walker’s Pasture.  I’ve blogged about Walker’s Pasture before (here).  I need to tell the Mom and Apple Pie story, I guess.  Soon.

Backroad Therapy

The past couple of weeks have been filled with busyness; so we decided on a day of exploring.  Our country drive took us past peaceful scenes of green, pastures filled with cows, fields of hay just mown – and some just baled, and irrigation systems at work.  We were headed to Molena and Woodbury, to check shops we like in those towns, and Zebulon to visit the bookstore.

We explored several antique stores.  A few items came home with us but we mostly collected ideas.  Ideas for the porches, for decorating, for repurposing some old crates and boxes and cans.

Most shops weren’t very busy (one of the perks of being retired and being able to shop on weekdays) so we had Interesting conversations with shop proprietors.  There was the lady who had a midnight visit from a female cardinal in her workshop, there was the handyman who built a bench from an old spool bed, and we missed the Corgi named Macon in one of our regular shops.  It seems her owner had errands to run before opening the shop today, so Macon got the day off. We met Macon on an earlier visit I shared here.

The other customers who did appear offered opportunities for people watching and people listening.  I overheard a man say, “we could buy this and I could strip it down to the original wood.”  He was referring to a table I’ve admired before.  I admired it in part for its wonderful new chalk-paint finish.

Lunch was high on the agenda, because we remembered the fabulous food at The Blackbird Cafe.


The place is entrancing with tables and light fixtures made from pipes, peeling plaster revealing brick beneath, and condiments corralled in sewing machine drawers.  The food is wonderful, too.  Their homemade kaiser rolls were still warm from the morning’s oven and were just as heavenly as we had remembered.  Yum.

We were there early, so the photos showing the space without people is misleading.  The people did come.  They do come.  Every day.

 

More walking, more exploring, more driving about.  Then we went to Red Oak Covered Bridge. It’s the oldest in Ga, and you still drive across it.  We both marveled at the same feature – no graffiti.  Wow.  There is a sign saying “No Graffiti – $1000 fine”.  Maybe Meriwether County officials enforce that.

Another day spent enjoying the world, seeing the beauty close to home, and treasuring the pleasure of the moment.  Those are important goals since two funerals were included in our busyness recently.  Death is a part of life, but when it comes to someone we know, especially when it’s unexpected, we are reminded to enjoy the everyday.  Yesterday we did just that.

Sunday School Picnic

Another family photo has become a quilt.  This image of my husband’s grandparents was taken sometime around 1915, probably at Stone Mountain, GA.  The occasion was a Sunday School picnic.

I printed the image on a bit of vintage linen napkin, painted his tie, and machine stitched using free-motion quilting.  The rickrack frame is hand stitched around the photo on a layer of hand-dyed cotton fabric.

I used metallic thread to stitch the red layer to a vintage quilt remnant using a seed stitch, adding a bit of sparkle.

The label is a vintage coaster stitched to the old quilt remnant, too.  The final piece measures 12″ x 14″.

Westward Journey

We are home.

After our trip west to see the country, we are home. After 4788 miles, 18 days, 10 states, 15 nights in 11 hotels, and uncountable memories, we are home.


Even though we know travel to be a great educator, Jim and I are home bodies.  We love to get out and explore our world, but we typically make short trips of a few days’ duration.  This time, we were combining a photography class Jim was taking with friends with a chance to see the southwestern US by car.

So off we went, visiting some friends along the way, and seeing the landscape.  Our route to Arizona was along I-10 heading west and I-40 coming back.  Every day, we ventured off those interstates and saw some of the country from back roads.  Priceless sights included rice fields in Louisiana, bluebonnets and poppies in Texas, numerous new species of birds, new species of trees,  jackrabbits, tumbleweeds, shadows on adobe walls, and natural wonders like White Sands and the Grand Canyon.

There were many opportunities to do some people watching, and people listening.  There were lots of photos taken, Jim focusing on birds for his class, and on traditional landscapes.  I did some of the same and added to my album of street photographs – of people unaware.

We drove through the Texas Hill Country during bluebonnet season and visited the McDonald Observatory.  We toured the Desert Museum in Tucson, saw vast skies in daytime and at night, even saw a falling star over the Grand Canyon.  We saw snow-capped mountains, purple mountain majesties, lots of trains and windmills. We drove sections of the old route 66.

As we crossed the White and Cache Rivers in Arkansas, I had my camera ready, but we saw no Ivorybills.

Names of roads and towns fascinated us. Sundust Road,  Wild Horse Pass, Dead Man Wash, Bloody Bases Road, Horsethief Basin; Checotah, Henryetta, and Lotawatah Road, Oklahoma.  Wilderado, Muldrow, Porum, and Parkin.  And, back in Georgia, another new one: Hog Liver Road.

Unplanned stops at local parks, a farmers’ market, and antique stores gave us a glimpse into the lives of the people living in all these places.  That’s what we wanted to
see – people living their everyday lives; not catering to tourists.

For many of the miles, we didn’t play music, just marveling at the scenery and talking about how the pioneers must have felt following the trail westward.  At other times, we chose music of the area: Jimmy Buffett near Mobile, Al,  Jackson Browne and the Eagles in Winslow, AZ, Gillian Welch and Kate Wolf in Arkansas.

Inspiration for colors and design were everywhere.  The landscaping and decoration on the highway system in AZ is full of graphic designs which would easily translate to quilting.  As I studied the abundant cacti, I envisioned stitching them using tailor’s tacks and french knots (or Jude Hill’s thread beads) to mimic their textures.

Though the beauty of the southwest was magnificent,  Springtime in Georgia was a welcome sight!

Paper Dolls

My mother entertained little girls by cutting paper dolls from paper.  She would fold the newspaper or catalog pages accordion style, then cut one-half of a girl in a dress.  All of us squealed as she unfurled the string of girls holding hands.

I finally learned to do the folding and cutting for myself, even to change the cuts to make strings of little boys, or of girls linking hands up, then down, then up again.

I had some fabric on hand that looked like little girls’ dresses, so I made a template and appliquéd some of Mama’s dolls on fabric.

Later it occurred to me that one of the granddaughters might like a parade of little girls like she once played with in paper.  I happened to have fabric from five dresses she had worn as a toddler.  I cut a pattern so that five girls would fit on a vintage doily I found, and a memory was rekindled. I layered the dolls and doily on a bit of indigo dyed linen and used machine quilting to add dimension. Buttons from those five little dresses were used as embellishments and to secure the layers to a bit of a vintage cross-stitched quilt.  The finished piece measures 17” x 16”.  

Free Form Log Cabins

I love hand piecing.  There’s something about pulling a needle and thread through cloth that soothes me.  It’s the rare day that I don’t have to do a little stitching before going to bed.  Most of the time, it’s during the couple of hours after supper when we watch tv.

Even after spending hours in my sewing room as I did yesterday, cutting and sewing at the machine, I still find it necessary to unwind by stitching a bit.

My current project is pictured here.  Log cabin-style blocks that approximate 5” finished.  Mostly in blues and whites.  I was inspired by a blog entry by Jude Hill a few weeks ago when she was piecing some free form log cabins.  I started my own and can’t stop.  It’s so addictive.  Part of the fun is using special fabrics.  Many of these pieces came from clothing remnants, some from scraps of vintage linens.  I selected some special fabrics to be the “heart” of the blocks, too.  Some bits of embroidery, some pieces of a friend’s silk jacket, various old treasures lying about.

In theory, the blocks start with 1” squares and use 1” logs.  But, if the chosen center element is larger, I just adjust as I go.  I have some templates lying nearby and use them sometimes, but other times I just eyeball it and start stitching.

I’m using Jude’s technique of invisible basting the seam allowances open, too.  It makes subsequent stitching so pleasant.

I have no plan.  I’m just stitching for fun.  Enjoying the process, letting the assembly evolve.  I did scatter a few blocks on the design wall a few days ago, on top of a piece of silk I had dipped in the dye pot.  Here’s how that looked.

 

 

Some years ago, I made this little wall hanging.  (I wrote about this before, remembering that I sewed the binding on while visiting a B & B.) Here, I hand pieced tumbling blocks from assorted blue fabrics.  Then I did use a template to have exactly the same sized blocks, and I used commercial fabric.  I collected beloved blue fabrics, including the fossil fern (I love that fabric!) in the border.

A blue and white toile on the back is a favorite of mine, too.  I quilted it using free motion quilting, invisible nylon thread and cotton batting.  It measures 26” square.

Generally, commercial fabrics are not nearly so much fun to stitch as the softer, thinner, more loosely woven fabrics I’m using now.  And the memories ….memories of the homespun jumper my mother made for me and I wore for years, the shirt Jim wore with his overalls, the threadbare linen jacket of mine, and the remnants I dyed indigo last summer make these pieces special to handle.  Those memories don’t come off a bolt in a store.

Jerry’s Bottle Tree Farm

What an adventure we had this morning!  Our friends Jerry and Rose Payne invited us to their home, Tick Hill, so that Jim might photograph some uncommon butterflies, Giant Yucca Skippers.  We did see the target insect and some other species, but the highlight of the trip for me was the bottle farm.  Well, that and fascinating conversation with Jerry.
We have a bottle tree in our yard, and so far, it’s done its job of warding off evil spirits.  Jerry does not have a bottle tree, he has a bottle forest – made of 135 trees and counting.  That’s more than 10,000 bottles.  Amazing!

Jerry can tell you a lot about bottles.  He knows which companies use recycled bottles, which ones make brown bottles, or green bottles, or blue bottles, or frosted, or painted.  He knows spikes, too.  Winds at his place will cause bottles to pull the spikes out of the post if they are less than 6” long.  The spacing of the spikes is determined by the bottles he’s planning to use and the intended final design.

As a child in Virginia, Jerry was fascinated by bottle trees he saw on his walk to school.  His forest is a tribute to that memory and to individuals in his life.  There is a tree with colored bottles entwined much like a barber’s pole: a salute to his uncle who wielded clippers for a living.  Another has only bottles from the monastery where a friend resides.  Yet another holds pickle jars, all from a neighbor whose children eat a LOT of pickles.  There are trees comprised only of brown beer bottles, or frosted wine bottles, or medicine bottles, or tiny bottles, or bottles dug from a particular location.


As we walked, our conversation included weather, butterfly behavior, plant identification, educational systems, life in south Georgia, mutual acquaintances from years past, and the history of Catholicism in Virginia.  We exchanged stories of family experiences and art pursuits.  We learned more about each other’s educational backgrounds and professional experiences.

Jerry’s folk art is delightful and we were fortunate to bring home some treasures today.  Jerry paints bits of tree limbs and roots that he finds lying about as well as shells and bones from animals.  There were some roots and branches whose shapes said to Jerry they were a chicken, a whippoorwill, and a tadpole. Here you see the tadpole.

And this piece is one of a series where he painted insects on tortoise shells.  This one, Water Strider Flotilla, includes images of those known as pond skimmers, water striders, Jesus bugs, water skaters, or pond skitters.

Time spent with Jerry and Rose is a treasure in itself.  Rose was away for part of the morning, so our visit with her was abbreviated this time.

Dr. Payne is an amazing person whose breadth of knowledge seems neverending.  He is best known in some circles for his ground breaking work in forensic science.  In the 1960’s, he detailed the changes that occur as insects are introduced to decomposing pig carcasses.  A documentary film has been made about his life and a more complete biography is here.


And for those who read this blog hoping to see a quilt of some description, here is one of my latest art pieces.  A butterfly photo is relevant, don’t you think?  This is Swallowtail in the Briarpatch.  A photo of Jim’s I printed on silk fabric, quilted using free motion machine stitching with silk thread, then framed it with a batik and some cottons.
The stalk of the flower and some leaves are stitched with a heavier rayon thread.  The finished piece is mounted on foam core and measures 11” x 14”.

Mail Call

Oh, boy, oh, boy!  Excitement arrived in the mailbox today.  I opened a package from a distant relative and was transported back in time to the days when my Grandfather wrote letters to me from California.  I was in elementary school and he was my best pen pal!  He typed his letters on onionskin paper and folded them very precisely to fit just so in the red and white striped air mail envelope.

Our newsy exchanges were pretty humdrum everyday stuff, but it was exciting to me because our letters traveled by plane.  GrandDaddy had moved to California when I was a young child to escape the Georgia humidity with his asthma.  He did return to visit a few times,  and there were occasional long distance phone calls, but our deepest conversations during my formative years were by letter.

After my most recent post including him in a photo, Ilse and I chatted and she said she had more photos of his that she could send.  GrandDaddy (Homer Youngblood) had two families.  My mother was born to his first wife, Cora, who died when my mother was four years old and her sister was two.  Later, GrandDaddy married Miss Katherine and had two more children.  Ilse married Homer, Jr. and is the keeper of many memories and stories he shared.

Today is the anniversary of my first blog post.  Site stats say this is the 105th post I’ve written.  I never made a formal plan to share something on a schedule, and didn’t really have a plan as to what I would include.  If I had an original goal in mind, it was to continue the journaling I’ve done on paper, on cloth in 52 Tuesdays, and now on the web, to encourage others to record their stories in some way.

This blog has grown into a way to document my quilt stories, old works and new projects as well.  The new projects that excite me have included many photos, sometimes family members, so the old stories behind the photos have now been written down, too.  And I’ve been the joyous recipient of others’ stories (and sometimes their photos) once readers knew I was interested in such things.


This package from Ilse holds some family photos, both previously seen and new to my eyes, as well as some of unknown people GrandDaddy was hired to photograph.  All are interesting, but the treasures are the ones of him that I had not seen before.  Oh, my, I think Ilse in Arizona must have heard me squealing as I opened the package!

Now to scan, print, and stitch!

Four Brothers

The man on the far right…what’s that he’s holding in his hand?  That’s my grandfather, here with three of his brothers.  When I find a photo in which he is included, I’m always intrigued by how the photo was taken, since he was usually the one behind the camera.

I recently wrote about the coincidence that both my husband and I had maternal grandfathers who were professional photographers.  Sometimes we can find a cable in the photo leading to a remote shutter release.  Those were available from as early as 1918 in  advertisements like this one found here.

In this case, zooming and examining (you can click on any image to enlarge it) reveals no cable, and in the 1940’s when this photo was probably taken, there was no timer built in to cameras as we have now.  However, my Grandfather did have a son who helped him with his photography business by that time. Homer, Jr. went to work in the darkroom at age 7, in 1935.  It is likely that he, Jr.,  is the one taking this photo.  And, GrandDaddy is probably holding the remnants of a cigar.

I printed this photo on fabric from a vintage linen tablecloth, painted some elements, layered it on wool batting, and stitched around the figures with silk thread.  It is layered on cotton fabric, a layer of old burlap, and then on an old quilt remnant.  The resulting piece measures 14” x 17”.


The process of stitching these photos sometimes yields as interesting an image on the back as on the front.  Here you see what one viewer considered the shadows of these brothers.

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Man With Bicycle, 1905

Homer Carter and Homer Youngblood were both professional photographers in the early part of the twentieth century.  In our house, we have a lot of photos taken by these two men who, to our knowledge, never met.

Homer Carter was the father of Sadie, my mother-in-law.  Homer Youngblood was the father of Cleo, my mother.  Interesting, don’t you think?

This serendipitous happening means that we have some images on hand that were made with the best photographic equipment available at the time, and printed on quality paper.  Perfect for scanning and printing on fabric, I think.

This photo of an unidentified gentleman of the early 1900’s was compelling to me.  He was a client of Jim’s grandfather.  I printed his image on a remnant of a vintage linen tablecloth, painted the bicycle red, and quilted the layers with silk thread.  Free motion quilting gives dimension to the man and the bicycle with wool batting underneath.

The image is layered on a denim remnant, hand stitched with a Kantha stitch using red embroidery floss.  All is then layered and attached to a scrap of an old tattered quilt.

The label is written on a piece of an old man’s handkerchief.