Journaling – Page 5 – Sandy Gilreath

More Red

In the week leading to Valentine’s Day, there is red everywhere.

A mockingbird is enjoying some holly berries in our yard.

And the nandinas are displaying lots of berries. Yes, I know they are invasive, and they are bad for the birds, and we clear out some. But my mother and Jim’s mother both loved their nandinas, so we don’t remove them all. And the berries this year are big and red.

In my thoughts leading to a GBI Red project, I found these blocks that have a lot of red. I like a focus block as a start, and sometimes an orphan block sparks an idea. The two blocks on the right are Maggie Bonanomi designs.

I have a couple of these Beligian linen tablecloths with red stripes. I love red/white/tan as a color combination, so that leads me to see possibilities.

And, there is this. Red and white is a tried and true combo. And, in one of our forays through an antique mall, I found this linen tablecloth with embroidered red signatures. I’d love to know the story behind it. Was it used at an event like a wedding party, or a going-away party where guests signed the cloth?

I presume Percival and Marian are husband and wife, but I don’t think they embroidered their names at the occasion. Did they write their names on the cloth and then someone else did the stitching in red? Some threads are heavier than others; some stitching is tight, some is loose. So maybe more than one person did the embroidery – or one person might have varied her stitches to more accurately match the signature.

Interestingly, Jim has an ancestor named Margaret Hudson. We didn’t buy this in the area where his great-grandmother lived, but perhaps the antique dealer did…. Certainly that’s not a unique name, but to find this is quite interesting.

What will I do with this? I’m not sure…but there’s a story there!

Even the Christmas amaryllis has decided to grace us with red once again…

Red Hearts

Everyone knows I love my blue fabrics, but this time of year, red always shows up in something. As Valentine’s Day approaches, red is on my mind.

I began making red hearts before Christmas this past year. This small bowl held the first grouping. As is the case with many explorations, I couldn’t stop until I played with more and more fabric combinations…so the little bowl grew, too.

No self-respecting lover of vintage linens can ignore the beauties that are red. The collection above includes tickings, vintage woven pieces, and a lovely cross-stitched tablecloth.

My shelves that hold commercial fabrics has plenty of red, too. I especially love the reds from French General. ( I used this collection almost exclusively in Miss Lily’s Baskets.)

Hearts are a favorite motif of mine, so there are hearts made of things other than fabric around the house, too. Above are a compressed wool one, an enameled bit of jewelry, a metal one, and a pottery heart.

In the photos above, you see the two sides of the collection of hearts. The usual “fronts” on the left, the “backsides” on the right.

Remember GBI Blues? This stack of delightful reds makes me think I need to work on a companion, GBI Reds. Uh-oh, we all see where this is going, don’t we?

I’ve written about hearts many times before. WordPress has changed some ways to label things, so I’ve added a category for “hearts”. If you click on that word in the category list on the right, you’ll see a listing of all posts about that topic. (I haven’t updated everything yet, but “hearts” and “red” are current.)

New Hebron

After my latest post on quilts posed at New Hebron Baptist Church in Pike County, I thought you might like to see more photos of this beauty from the past. On an earlier visit, Jim captured images of the vicar and the interior of this church while I enjoyed memories of my childhood that this place triggered.

We visited this idyllic spot for the first time as part of the Slow Exposures Photography Exhibition in 2019. The organizers included a display of some of the photographs from the volume Historic Churches of Georgia.

A church that should be in the second edition of the book “Historic Rural Churches of Georgia,” New Hebron Baptist Church near Concord, Georgia is an idyllic and picturesque place and is what you might expect when you first open your eyes in the afterlife. Thanks to Vicar Dwain Penn for the tour of New Hebron and his hospitality.

A church that should be in the second edition of the book Historic Rural Churches of Georgia, New Hebron Baptist Church near Concord, Georgia is an idyllic and picturesque place and is what you might expect when you first open your eyes in the afterlife. Thanks to Vicar Dwain Penn for the tour of New Hebron and his hospitality.
Jim’s words from his facebook post about New Hebron

In my journal writing of that day I noted that Vicar Penn doesn’t call himself a pastor since he “has no sheep.” He explained that the church has had no members for several years, and is therefore no longer affiliated with any denomination.

At the time of our visit, services were conducted once a month, on Sunday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. That allows people to attend their regular church and enjoy this spiritual place, too.

They sometimes host special events here, too. Sacred Harp Singing Schools have been held in this church. Oh, how I would love to hear those songs echoing off these unpainted timbers!

The church, built in 1908, was seen in the movies Cold Sassy Tree and Mama Flora’s Family, but most of the time, it’s maintaining its position in a bucolic scene on a quiet country road.

For more information, check out the entry on the Historic Rural Churches site https://www.hrcga.org/church/new-hebron-baptist/ .

And this article includes more of Vicar Penn’s story: http://www.thegospeler.org/ChurchBrochure.htm

Dots and Vines went along on this trip, too. Here she poses on the back door of the church. The story of this quilt is here: https://sandygilreath.com/dots-and-vines/

Indiana Homestead

We traveled to the past down an old country road and took along an old-fashioned new quilt.

I’m one of many quilters who has used all this time at home in the past year to finish some UFO’s. An oldie but goodie that finally saw completion at my house is a quilt I call Indiana Homestead. After spending a few years folded on a closet shelf, a few days of work in late fall 2020 brought this piece to completion.

Yesterday was not a glorious sunny day, but we were ready for a ride-about. We threw the cameras and a few quilts in the car, and drove away from home for a while.

We found ourselves on the grounds of an old church building with fabulous trees. The quilt posed in one tree, under another, and then hanging on the back door.

We had visited this church before when the vicar was there and got permission to come back with quilts. It’s been a while; there’s been a plague, you know, but we did return.

Indiana Homestead is based on a traditional pattern. What you see is my interpretation of a pattern Fig Tree Quilts designed based on a time-honored peony block. A little research when I was making these blocks (12 or more years ago) led me to the title Indiana Homestead because Indiana’s state flower is the peony.

Non-quilters, and some really structured quilt makers, may question why an almost finished project might languish on the shelf for years. In this case, I made the blocks and loved them, began the machine quilting process and still liked the quilt; but life interrupted.

While this quilt was under construction, we moved houses. Our new home did not have a room with these colors, so finishing this was not a high priority. Once I pulled the quilt off the shelf to work on it, I realized I wasn’t happy with the batting I had selected (some organic cotton that sheds everywhere – I had since found other battings I liked better), and I didn’t like my original plan for the border. After considering several alternatives for the border quilting (over the years I would pull it out, think about options, put it back up), in late 2020 I solved the problem. I cut the border off! I liked that much better. And to get rid of the shedding batting, I bound the quilt edges before I completed the quilting of the blocks. Done!

The quilt now measures a lovely 60” square, a perfect size for a napping quilt. In the above photo, Jim worked his magic with color…perfect for this old setting!

Chortling

Thousands of Sandhill Cranes winter in a county near us. It’s a thrill when they fly in groups over our house on the way to this temporary home – the sound of their call is unmistakable. Varying terms are used to describe the sound: bugling, trumpeting, rattling, croaking, but I like the word chortling. These birds seem to be so happy that a muffled laugh fits.

We went to see some of these wonders yesterday. The flock we saw numbered in the hundreds, but they were accompanied by thousands, yes, thousands, of blackbirds. The vision of the groups in flight was enchanting!

The cranes look gawky in some cases. When they fly about in small groups over short distances, they are funny with their wings and long legs all akimbo. In serious flight, up high for long distance traveling, they are elegant. They tuck their legs neatly behind them for streamlined flight and they fly in a v-formation.

And the blackbirds were so abundant that their flights about the field created a murmuration. Well, I thought of it as a murmuration. That term is by definition applied to starlings, not blackbirds. But the image of the huge numbers of blackbirds twisting and swirling in some sort of shape shifting cloud was mesmerizing to me.

Jim’s Canon camera with 1.6 crop factor and 1.4 extender paired with a 500mm lens gave him the best view of the birds.

The skies were blue, the fields of brown and green stretched on for acres and acres. It was a glorious day to be out in nature.

This photo is a good representation of what we could see with the naked eye. Binoculars and cameras with long lenses gave us better views of the birds.

The Sandhill Cranes were more than 200 yards from our vantage point, but Jim’s camera setup could “reach” them.

I did get some passable shots with my little Sony. In all cases, if you enlarge the image, you can appreciate more detail.

At another stop on this outing, I had fun photographing cows. More on that later.

I didn’t think to take a quilt along for a photo shoot – our days at home have ruined my sense of preparation for a drive about. But the day certainly provided inspiration for future quilts.

By the way, these Sandhill Cranes are huge birds. Here is a photo of some walking by me a few years ago near Melbourne, Florida. They are comfortable with humans here and you can get an idea of their size relative to me.

A Christmas Garden

We have a new Christmas quilt in our house this year.

This large quilt was finished earlier this year, but I wanted to share it at Christmastime. It hasn’t been on a photo shoot outdoors yet, but here are some shots and its stitching story.

The design is from a Barb Adams and Alma Allen book, Where the Cold Wind Blows. The pattern Mistletoe and Holly looks quite different in their version, but the appliqué basket is their creation.

I had this fabulous toile-like fabric that looked a bit Christmasey to me, with lots of green and brown and red. Wanting to leave big swatches of that intact in the background, I chose to do minimal piecing.

I did like the pieced stars that Barb and Alma had included, so I pieced a few stars.

One it was assembled, it needed a bit more color, so I inked my initials and their title Mistletoe and Holly in red.

It needed a bit more red, so birds flew in and landed in some spaces.

I was teaching paper foundation piecing, so used that technique to add a spiky border.

I quilted it on my Juki with a combination of freemotion echoing and several filler designs.

I chose to give my version the title A Christmas Garden. It measures 60” x 78”.

Before and After Blue

I recently promised more images of things from the indigo dye pot. I love them all, but perhaps my favorite is the old embroidered tea towel you see above. I bought this tattered piece at an antique store, and though the stitching is lovely, it was a bit pale, as you see in the next image.

The beauty of buying a towel with stitching at both ends is that I can play with one and save the other, so I at least have one intact bit of stitch with history to use. So I ripped it apart, and dipped one in the dye pot. Oh, my. Isn’t it lovely? Yes, now I know the other end just might go for a swim, too.

Here are more results from those recent days of dyeing.

A beekeeper’s garden toile from a bargain bin is now happier in my stash – it’s blue!

some handwoven linen from Belgium overdyed…great for tea towels, placemats, who knows?

A bit of old barkcloth curtains is now brown and blue…my favorite combination!

And the blue roses I shared last week…they still thrill me. Here they are on a different background.

Queen Anne in Quarantine

Today is our 226^th day of social distancing. It’s October 18, the 292^nd day of 2020. (I’m keeping track of those things for part of my journal quilt for 2020.) We still have Queen Anne’s Lace blooming in our yard!

As I’ve shared before, I’m sending a photo to “the girls” each morning, letting the next generation of our family know that the old folks are up and at ‘em each morning; all is well. I have an album on my laptop containing these nature photos. There are daylilies, geraniums, clematis, roses, lots of wildflowers; there are rabbits and deer and mushrooms, too.

One plant stands out as being ever-present. Queen Anne’s Lace. I truly love this plant…we’ve had patches of it in the yard every year since we moved here nine years ago… but this year there are more patches and they have been blooming constantly since mid-May.

I love photographing these specimens from all angles, and I especially love the cage that forms as the flowers go to seed. I’ve collected these seeds and scattered some already, hoping that in the future, wild carrots will be EVERYWHERE!

And, in the winter, I’ll still have some…these made with needle and thread.

Dots and Vines

Yes, I’ve been sewing in this safe-at-home time. I’ve been busy finishing old abandoned projects as well as exploring new ones.

One of the new things I’ve done is this piece I called Dots and Vines. Inspired by my grandmother’s quilt on this table in our den, I assembled many many circles appliqued on squares.

Ollie Jane’s quilt lives on this table most of the year and I continually look at it and think, what a powerful design. I ought to recreate it. Finally, I did.

Though it doesn’t look much like her work (nor much like mine, for that matter – it’s rather modern, don’t you think?), it’s another example of stitching that reflects the love of cloth through generations; a tale that never grows old.

I chose to use Cherrywood handdyed fabrics. The circles are 1” in diameter, the squares finish at 3”. I spent many morning hours on the porch stitching these, and many more hours doing the same at night in front of the tv. Many hours of delicious time thinking and soothing the soul while pulling a threaded needle through cloth.

There were days when the finished blocks danced all around my design wall, trying to find the right arrangement of color. Here you see them with several fabrics I considered using as borders.

But the final arrangement has no border. A nice stripe from Kaffe Fassett’s collection as binding seemed to bring enough closure.

I knew the entire time that I wanted to quilt a meandering vine from variegated thread, so that’s the rest of the title, Dots and Vines, a bit of homage to a book I came to love in college math classes, The Dot and the Line. I considered August 12, 2020 as its title – that’s the day I finished the quilt and it just happened to be the 225^th day of this calendar year. But that title requires too much explanation in casual conversation, so Dots and Vines it is.

I made many more circle blocks that are waiting another use. But the 225 that I chose means I have a 45” square finished piece. I like that size. It’s good to drape over a chair, take along on a photo ride-about, or use as a table topper.

I continue to stay busy with a variety of things, including nature photography. But most things are connected to fiber in some way. Don’t you think it would be interesting to make a textile version of these mushrooms? I see red thread here.

More about my grandmother’s quilts can be found here and here. Enter “Ollie Jane” in the search box for even more.

Lockdown Learning

Friends I encounter many days on my morning walks.

During the five months that we’ve been staying at home, I’ve had time to explore new things.

I’ve used my camera a lot, learning more about it, and even adding to the equipment inventory. When we first learned that we were elderly and in the high risk group for Covid-19, I started sendng a morning photo greeting to our girls via text message. Just a pretty way to say to them, “the old folks are fine,” so they could get on with their day without worrying about us. I used my phone at first, learning new photo and editing capabilities.

Then there were things the phone didn’t capture as well as I wanted, so I pulled out the digital mirrorless camera and learned more about it.

We have several rabbits in our yard this year. So far, we’ve only SEEN them eating grass, but a few other plants have been mysteriously pruned.

When I needed a faster lens, or more “reach” for some of my subjects, I needed a better zoom lens.

A woodland sunflower captured on a visit to Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge.

Looking through the lens of a camera changes things. I’m not much of a gardener, but I needed to know the names of the plants I was photographing – because at least one of three recipients of these messages would ask. And, distractions in the background weren’t good, so I pulled more weeds than I ever have before. Who knew that such a simple act was so transformative?

A drawstring bag incorporating a bit of vintage embroidery and hand-dyed indigo linen.

Simple things are transformative in the sewing room, too. I’ve used this time at home to explore more stitching opportunities, too. I’ve finished several traditonal UFOs (and now I realize I need to photograph those), explored ways to include vintage linens in different projects, and reread many of the quilting books on my shelves.

Exploring more uses of ink on fabric inspired by Pam Holland’s draplique tutorial.

Though I could have done all this at any time, there’s something about not having plans to go anywhere, not having deadlines to meet, that is liberating. I do miss seeing my quilting friends at guild and I miss teaching classes, but without those obligations, I’m enjoying researching new aspects of my own creativity.

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