Tag: family

First Date

Their first date was at a church gathering for an all-day-sing. 

They grew up in the same county, attended the same high school, but it was a long commute between their homes. Twelve miles represented a fortune in time and money – in the early 1930’s, times were tough.

So they wrote to each other.  And one heard about a sing that was going to be at High Hill Church, in a far corner of the county – some ten more miles from each of their homes.  But families took Sundays off and went to such gatherings.  They planned to meet up at the sing, and the courtship became official.

They married a couple of years after that sing and went on to live and prosper in that same county…the “til’ death” part lasted 52 years, all spent in Turner County.  Prosperity didn’t come quickly – there were hard times on the farm – but happiness and contentment flourished.  My sister and I benefited from two loving parents.

This art quilt I call First Date tells a story of their lives in Turner County and includes evidence of many memories.

I found a map of Turner County printed in the 1930’s in an antique store and transferred it to fabric.  The colors in it and in the photos of my parents from that era dictated the whole piece.  (And ya’ll know I lean toward browns….)

I made a legend for the map depicting the church where they had their first date with a heart shaped button.  Other beads and french knots show the location of their homes and church home.

I included do-dads from a milliner’s supplies (my mother was one of the last to give up the habit of wearing a hat to church), bits of tatting, lace, buttons.  

There are remnants of one of Daddy’s suits, a bit of lace from one of Mama’s dresses.

A fabric flower is made from barkcloth much like the living room drapes we had when I was a child.

I made this and mounted it on canvas several months ago.  I haven’t shared it before because I’m not quite happy with it on the canvas…I keep looking at it, wondering if it’s best that way.  I may add a frame or may remove it from the canvas and finish it more like a quilt.  But …here it is, as it is.

Update…since writing this post, I found a couple of relevant photos..

A photo of my parents shortly after their marriage in 1935.
A photo of High Hill Church made in the 1930’s shows how the church would have looked on the occasion of that first date. It also reveals how appropriate the name is.  In the flat terrain of Turner County (average elevation 407 feet), High Hill sits at a dizzying 420 feet above sea level.

Teacakes

I’ve been baking. Among the things I’ve explored lately are teacakes.

The word “teacake” transports me through time.  When I was a college freshman, living a new quasi-independent life, but homesick at times, I went to the campus post office to find a package waiting for me.  

When I think of teacakes, I am transported to a memory.  A college freshman, living a new quasi-independent life, but homesick at times, I went to the campus post office to find a package waiting for me.  

The package was from Aunt Nellie.   A shoebox full of tea cakes.  They were wrapped in waxed paper, layers and layers of tea cakes.  The box was heavy – full of love.

My suite-mates and friends on the hall in the dorm were as excited as I was.  A couple of us went across the street from campus and bought a jar of peanut butter.  Part of this memory is that we had to put on dresses – because girls were not allowed to wear slacks in town.  We could wear “pant suits” (not jeans!!!)  to class, but if we left campus, we were “representing the school” and had to dress appropriately.

Back to the tea cakes.  They were fabulous!  I ate Aunt Nellie’s teacakes all my life and loved them – but these were especially memorable.  Because that box was filled with love from home ( I now realize she must have been missing me terribly in those days) and shared with loving friends who impacted my life forever!

I don’t always put peanut butter on my teacakes, but sometimes I do. And that was a critical element when the box arrived from home…I had to share them with peanut butter!

I don’t have Aunt Nellie’s recipe – when she died, my mother asked if there was anything I especially wanted from her house.  I had a long list including her “receipt book”.  The book was a spiral bound calendar from some insurance company.  But she used it to write down her recipes.  When I got it, I immediately searched out the teacake recipe.  It said; sugar, flour, butter, egg, soda.  Nothing else.

That was all the information that she needed…a reminder of what ingredients to include. That was insufficient information for me.  

The recipe I used is one from the White Lily Baking Company’s website, with a few modifications of mine.  I omit the nutmeg and add 1 teaspoon of almond extract. (Update: Since writing this, I’ve made them using lemon extract instead of almond and they are the best yet! Lemon tea cakes don’t need peanut butter or nutella – they are great on their own.)

The photo at the top has teacakes on one of Aunt Nellie’s plates.

On Valentine’s Day, I made some teacakes that were heart shaped….and we upped our game adding Nutella instead of peanut butter.  Oh, yeah!

And speaking of hearts, I’m still making stuffed ones.  I’ve added a few more red ones to the big bowl. And, I baked heart-shaped buttermilk biscuits on Valentine’s Day.

Note:  My Aunt Nellie was such an important figure in my life that I’ve written about her again and again.  She’s one of the Spinster Sisters, and she’s featured in Miss Nellie’s Country Garden.  I mention her every time I talk about geraniums and often when cooking.  Typing “Nellie” in the search box will keep you busy reading for a few minutes, at least.

Cousins

Jane and Susie were not just cousins.  They were first cousins.  They were not just first cousins, they were double-first cousins.  

Their mothers were sisters, their daddies were brothers.  They were two years apart in age, and shared not only all their relatives, more than the average common DNA, but many experiences.  This early photo (about 1940) conveys the closeness they shared.

This photo was taken at the home of their paternal grandparents.  Many family photos were set on this porch, on these steps, actually.  Imagine a Sunday afternoon after church, adults visiting on the porch; maybe other cousins playing in the yard, neighbors dropping by.  These two almost sisters (later, they would have other siblings, but not yet), forging a lifelong bond.

I printed the photo on vintage linen, and added red French knots as buttons on Jane’s dress.  The bow in her hair is a found earring.  

Layering the photo on wool batting before densely quilting the background adds dimension to the girls. The oval “mat” is a vintage linen embroidered placemat layered on commercial quilting fabric. Beneath all this assembly is a layer of thin cotton batting. Shells (repurposed from an old necklace found in a thrift store) were attached using red seed beads to anchor them.  I hand quilted all the layers together using a seed stitch with tatting thread.  This thread is a new discovery for me (found in a bag of sewing supplies from an estate sale).  I’ve never tatted nor made lace, but the size 80 cotton thread created for these crafts is perfect for a lot of the hand stitching I do. 

Note to quilters:  that seed stitch leaves a messy backside, so when I use it, I don’t have the final backing on the quilt.  I attached another layer, the piece with red cross stitch on it, using the invisible baste stitch I learned from Jude Hill.  That’s really a seed stitch, too, with just a dot of thread showing on the top, the longer stitch on the “back” nestled in the batting, not coming through to the other side. 

That backing with red stitching is a section of an old tablecloth.  I found it on an antiquing plunder and was drawn to the cross stitch, of course.  The tablecloth has some stains and had a hole in it – making it less than desirable as a tablecloth.    But I rescued it and put it to work.  It’s very desirable as a component of art quilts!

The final quilt measures 16″ x 23″.

Papa’s Girls

This photo was taken around 1920, the girls with the man whose name peppered lots of stories.  His daughters called him Papa, one calling that name in the days before her death.  “Papa is waiting for me.”  

In this photo is Papa with two granddaughters; Cleo was born in 1914, Corine in 1916.  Their mother died in 1918, giving birth to their little sister.  Their father was in the Army, then a traveling photographer, so he was not around to parent them.  They lived with this grandfather, spinster aunts, and an invalid grandmother.

The photo is printed on a fragment of vintage linen fabric, layered with wool batting, then collaged with bits of vintage lace, rickrack, beads, ribbons, hand and machine stitching.

The green background is a heavy linen fabric, frayed on the edges.  I try to channel the little girl in me when I’m playing this way.  One of the things I loved to do when I was a child was to pull threads on the edges of linen fabric to make a fringe.  I see I still have that skill.

The heart in the top left is a bit of a silk log cabin quilt that was deteriorated to smitherins.  I’ve used bits of it several times, but this time the edge seemed a bit too raw.  So I couched a twisted black and white cord around the edges.

I layered all of it on a bit of new commercial fabric that looked old to me, then used freemotion quilting in a heart strings design to make the many layers one.

The backing is another commercial fabric that reminds me of a dress my grandmother wore.  The label is becoming my go-to; handwriting on a vintage doily.

I’ve written more about these spinster aunts before:  https://sandygilreath.com/spinster-sisters/

And, did I mention that the older girl is my mother?  Oh, the wonderful Papa stories I’ve heard!  I remember more every time I see his image.

The finished quilt measures 26″ x 16″.

Family Stories

Especially since writing 52 Tuesdays, I’ve encouraged people to preserve their history, to save the family stories for future generations.  Several people have told me that they decided to make a journal quilt similar to mine; others have said they were motivated to start keeping a written record of their days.  Both ideas thrill me – to know that my words inspired someone to record and share their stories.

But I’ve realized that I haven’t done enough to preserve my own stories, especially those of my childhood.  Late in 2019, I began doing just that.  The writing project that ensued might be the reason you saw fewer blog posts. The level of sharing is different when it’s being written for future generations and for strangers on the internet – I found it hard to switch gears.

But write personal stories and memories I did.  My daughter DJ had asked that I record family memories in my own handwriting.  I did some of that, but my arthritic hands and wrists rebelled.  And I’ve become accustomed to writing on a computer where editing is easier and later searchable; making it easier to answer the question, “Have I told this already?”

So the book I created included both handwritten and typed stories.  I used a notebook system where I could rearrange pages as thoughts did not come in a chronological order.  Too, I could add my own papers with photos or drawings, and use pages of different sizes.

The photos you see are a few of the interior pages where you get the idea.  I had quite a large extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins.  I printed a page with photos for each group and a chart that included family names.  That helps whatever subsequent generation is reading it to get relationships more clearly, I think.  Between those full sheets (8 1/2” x 11”) showing the family breakdown, I inserted smaller pages with stories.  

I continue to think of stories to share.  Now it’s a simple matter of writing them and inserting them in the book.  This is the gift that keeps on giving.  I see a need to add more photos, drawings, maps.

There are pages where Jim wrote stories about his childhood, too

It’s a given that any memory of mine is associated with fabric.  So the cover of the book is a collage of textile memories:  a lace dress my mother wore, a couple of dresses she made for me, a bit of silk from a dress she received as a child.  There’s part of a nail apron from my Daddy’s favorite hardware store, a pocket from a pair of his overalls, a bit of my Grandmother’s apron.   Remnants of clothing worn by my sister, me, Jim, and DJ herself are there, too.

I gave this album to DJ at Christmas.  It was well received and I’m relieved!  I’m relieved that this project is no longer a secret.  She has been doing some family research on Ancestry and has a lot of questions – some of which were hard to answer without revealing that I was on a quest, too.  Now the charts from Ancestry and the photos and stories from my parents’ albums can work together to solve some mysteries.

Military Memories

I’ve recently been exploring stitch with paper and cloth again. The photo above is an early effort.

Yes, the label says really early – 15 years ago.

 This scrapbook quilt, Military Memories, seemed the prefect way to store and display some of Jim’s paraphernalia from his days in uniform. 

I chose some patriotic fabric as the background, pieced a border inducing some military motifs from a novelty fabric or two, and added ribbons, pins, buttons, and patches.

The black and white photograph is printed on paper and sewn on, while the map is printed on fabric. I used a wiggly stitch of some sort to secure it to paper

The back is camo fabric, but the paper envelope holding the label is easy to see. The quilt measures 11″ x 16″.

Yes, this is an early effort of mine, and the sparsely spaced quilting reveals that I’ve changed my ways – now I usually quilt things until they are bulletproof. But it’s interesting to me that I continue to find some of my earliest quilts were exploring techniques I still embrace. Fabric and paper stitched together – it never gets old.

Fruitcake

Turman Capote and I have a shared history.  We had loving spinster aunts as partners in fruitcake preparation.  When I taught a high-school course called the American Short Story, students’ reactions to the old-fogey ways Capote related in his A Christmas Memory were not ones of delight.  But I was thrilled to revisit my childhood.

It’s the time of year when I buy things at the grocery store that I would normally never allow past my lips.  Some candied fruit (I don’t even want to know how that is accomplished), a lot of sugar, butter, nuts, disposable baking pans.

This is a result of a lifelong habit of eating fruitcake at Christmastime.  My mother baked the dark fruitcakes for as long as I can remember.  She chopped all the fruit by hand, added nuts that either my grandmother or my Daddy had picked out of the shells, and that I had picked up from underneath the trees at home, and filled the house with a delightful smell including vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Mama made these cakes and gave them to family and friends.  Her gifts were generous, a full recipe baked in a tube cake pan.  They were huge!  Every year the search was on to find a store selling the round tins which would hold these 5-lb treasures.

Once I was grown, I became a recipient of the heavy gift in the tin.  Mama would always have ours ready to take home at Thanksgiving and we would savor the treat throughout the holidays.

Jim found a way to improve on Mama’s recipe.  We would remove her foil or waxed paper wrapping, substituting cheesecloth.  The cheesecloth would soak up the brandy Jim added and make the cake more moist.  Yes, that’s it, moist.  Once when Mama came to visit us at Christmas, I served dessert.  She remarked, “This is GOOD fruitcake.  Who made it?”  “I made it?  Are you sure?”  “Well, I don’t know.  This tastes much better than the one at my house.”  We never confessed the alteration.

Mama gave a cake to anyone who she thought would like them.  Only when I started following in her footsteps did I realize what a gift a fruitcake was.  The time, and expense, to bake these was no small matter.  A few years ago, a cousin said, “You know your Mama always made me a dark fruitcake at Christmas.  I always took it.  But I couldn’t stand those things.”  She lowers her voice when she uttered the words “dark fruitcake,” as it she were speaking of something evil.  Now that I think about it, I bet Mama realized Charlotte was unappreciative, but she was one of those people who would have been hurt had Mama not given her one.

I’ve found some shortcuts to Mama’s process.  I sometime buy nuts already shelled, and bake the concoction in small foil pans.  Once the cakes are cooled, they are ready to wrap for presentation to appreciative friends.  I know fruitcakes are the punch lines for many jokes, and I know we are all more conscious of our diets these days, but most reactions I get to the fruitcakes I share are of the “oh, I love this – it takes me back to Christmas of my childhood” type.  And when I take a plate of sliced fruitcake to social gatherings this time of year, it’s always emptied.

If your mouth is watering for a trip down memory lane, here is Mama’s recipe.

  • Mama’s Stirring Fruitcake
  • 1 lb candied cherries
  • ½ lb candied pineapple (white)
  • ½ lb candied pineapple (green)
  • 3 pts shelled nuts, coarsely chopped
  • ¼ lb raisins (? cup)
  • 1 cup sugar
  • ½ lb butter
  • 4 large eggs
  • 1 cup self-rising flour
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla flavoring
  • 2 teaspoons almond flavoring
  • 2 teaspoons cake spices
  • Cream butter and sugar, add eggs one at the time and beat well.  Add flour and spices and beat well.  Add fruit and nuts.  Pour into a large greased pan and place in 375 degree oven (note that she found 300 degrees in her oven to be better).  After baking 15 minutes, stir.  Do this a total of 3 times.  After 3rd time, pack in tube cake pan and bake 15 minutes longer.  Let stand in pan for 15 minutes before turning out.

My recipe notes:

I reduce the nuts to about 4 cups.

“cake spices” seem to be unavailable these days, so I use: 1 t. allspice, ½ t. nutmeg, and ½ t. cinnamon

I sometimes use 3” x 5” loaf pans to give as gifts.  This recipe fills five of those.  The plate pictured above the recipe shows one of those small loaf pans sliced.  So the whole recipe is five of those!

Note:  An internet search will yield numerous links to Truman Capote’s story, analyses of that work, and even audio files for your seasonal listening.  It’s worth the time.

Goats

Pa, he bought him a great big billy goat

Ma, she washed most every day

Hung her clothes out on the line

And that old goat, he’d come that way.

My Daddy didn’t sing a lot, but this song was one of his favorites.  I can hear his gravelly voice belting it out now, often at my request or a plea from any of his grandchildren.  I don’t recall my mother or my sister requesting it – it wasn’t refined enough for them.  Especially the part when the goat belched up that red flannel shirt and he flagged down that durned old freight.

The musical interlude might be followed by the story of Daddy’s experience with goat farming, or rather the decision to end that venture.  Something about a goat and a pond and repeated disciplinary action leaving the goat wet and calmer while Daddy was exhausted.

So fond memories might explain why I like to see goats in a pasture, have taken lots of photos of goats, and why they end up in quilts.

goat-challengeThe 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.

I found an assortment of farm and goat looking fabric, pieced three blocks, added a title, and used the ugly fabric as a couple of their kerchiefs.  The piece finishes at 24″ x 18″ and was freemotion quilted using cotton batting and cotton threads.

goat-showA well-dressed goat appears in 52 Tuesdays, too.  One of our visits to the Georgia National Fair in 2015 included attending a goat show.  I was intrigued by the goats awaiting their competition.  After being bathed, blown dry, and powdered, they were often wearing jackets so they stayed clean and sawdust free until their competition.  One wearing a leopard skin coat caught my eye and became the image for that week in the journal quilt.

And, once a goat appeared on the label of one of my quilts, Hartwell Commons.

The photo of the live goat, not in cloth (yet) was taken at the Jimmy Carter Boyhood Home national historic site near Plains, Ga.

Spinster Sisters

spinster-sistersNeither of them ever married.  This photo was taken sometime around 1912.  They were 18 and 15 at the time.  Within ten years, their mother would be confined to a wheelchair, their older sister would die in childbirth, leaving two young daughters to their care.

The family was rich in acreage, but World War I and the  boll weevil meant cash was in short supply, and these two women contributed financially to the household.

The older of the two earned teaching credentials, sometimes living with families in distant communities (ten miles from home) and sending money home.  The younger ran the household as the orphaned nieces and younger sister grew up.

They saw women get the right to vote, lived through the Great Depression, and World War II.  There were adventures, too:  travel with an eccentric millionaire, letters from faraway lands, and a barnstorming adventure.  Charles Lindberg did fly in Georgia, was he the pilot?

spinster-sisters-olderDuring WWII, the teacher was offered “script” as her paycheck (a promise for money from the state someday), so she traveled further to work in a naval ordinance plant.  The younger worked as a switchboard operator and in so doing, connected many families to news of their beloved ones.  She was the first in town to get the word that the war was over, running down the stairs of the downtown office to spread the news.

As they laid their parents to rest and saw their young charges grow up and establish lives of their own, they continued to hold their shares of the land together, hiring others to farm the land while they moved to town.  They lived together until the death of the younger from breast cancer at age 49.  A few years later, the older would face the same diagnosis, but her treatment would be successful.  She would live her life productively until the age of 91.

These women were a big part of my childhood.  From them I learned that life is to be lived fully and to be enjoyed on a daily basis.  It may be hard to meet responsibilities in front of you, but complaints don’t help; just get the job done with a smile on your face.

Because of them, I am not surprised to read the ‘revelation’ that spinster does not have to be a derogatory term.  In the later Middle Ages, the term spinster was first used.  Then, it denoted a person who spins yarn and therefore has a marketable skill.   Memories of these sisters convey the modern interpretation of” a woman who can live independently and doesn’t need a man to be happy.”

spinster-sisters-backDetails of quilt:  A vintage photo (circa 1912) of two unmarried sisters was printed on a remnant of a vintage linen tablecloth.  Hand-guided, free-motion machine quilting was used to add detail, lace collars and beading were added with hand stitching.  The linen background for the photo was attached to a vintage linen log cabin quilt made from silk.  A vintage cotton doily was used for the label.

Hand stitching on the piece was completed while demonstrating work at the Georgia National Fair.  The quilt finishes at 16” x 20”.

Backroads

country storeHow long has it been since you saw a young lad execute a backflip from a wooden platform into the river below?

My answer to that question is “a few hours.”

On a day trip to Warm Springs, we took a route we’d not followed before.  All routes there are backroads, but most are some we’ve traveled many times.  A new path holds wonder.  With a favorite remark my driver likes to make, “this time and one more will make twice I’ve been on this road,” we were off on a new adventure.

Taking grandsons on a historic field trip, we saw numerous churches and cemeteries, a small community populated with an old store, schoolhouse, and church, all white buildings wearing red roofs.  We found two small towns filled with antique shops, a delightful restaurant with homemade bread, hamburgers topped with pimento cheese, and met a Corgi named Macon.

At the Little White House museum, I learned more about barkcloth than I ever realized I didn’t know.  Someone gave FDR a gift of beautiful yardage of tapa, and the story led me to new details about one of my favorite fabrics.  Who knew I would learn fabric history on this adventure?

It was on the way home that we saw him.  As we crossed a bridge over the Flint River, we saw the jump.  We were too high to see how cleanly he made his entrance into the water.

It doesn’t matter.  He had all afternoon to perfect his form.

We had had our moment.  A glimpse, memories triggered, stories to share.  Time travel.