Tag: feedsacks

Fairhope Feedsacks

It was a gray day when we recently visited Fairhope, Alabama, but I had a bit of color in my purse.  Early in my quilting adventures (2003, I think), we visited Fairhope and I saw a log cabin quilt made from reproduction feedsack fabrics.  I came home and started sewing.

When we headed to Fairhope last week, I rolled the little quilt and tucked it into my purse just in case there were any photo ops.

The skies were heavy, so I stopped at the first picket fence with a color-coordinated house behind it, and snapped this view.

In a couple of shops, I saw welcoming vignettes and store owners graciously let me drape the fabric about their merchandise.  It’s amazing what a crazy old woman can get away with if she bothers to ask.

In a tee-shirt shop, I was amazed that they had laid out a display of shirts in just these feedsack colors!

And then, Sailor sauntered by and plopped down for a nap.  He was kind enough to model the quilt, creating a unique spot for Fairhope Feedsacks to rest.

At the pier, pilings and tree roots served as quilt racks.

And, at a candy store, more fences, porch railings, an old dresser, and even a baby carriage, a blue baby carriage, gave the little bit of a quilt a place to perch.

Now I’m looking for places to take some other small quilts.  I love making the little ones.  And since I”m doing it for fun, who cares what size it is?  I know a lot of people think a quilt has to cover a bed.  I’m so glad they are wrong!  

Fairhope Feedsacks measures 19” x 24” .  The logs finish at  3/4” wide.  I probably used Dream cotton request batting and cotton thread.  

Lessons learned from this quilt:  

Washing a quilt gives it a softened aged look instantly.  

I personally don’t like the same fabrics used in the same position in a log cabin (that’s what I did here, giving the double dose of turquoise every time the blocks meet).  I like the colors to be more random, scrappier.

The result, this little piece, was one of my first attempts at free motion quilting.  I used a variegated thread and a simple meandering stitched path.  It’s not complicated, It’s not a competitive piece, but the little quilt is pleasing to hang about the house…or on fence posts, or at the beach, or on a cooperative doggie.

Here is a photo of Fairhope Feedsacks at home, atop the clock in the breakfast room where it hung out all summer with a compatibly colored rooster.  

Ollie Jane’s Flower Garden

Ollie Jane's Flower Garden
Ollie Jane’s Flower Garden

I recently described this work as “my first major quilt.”  It was completed in 2007, so it doesn’t belong in the catalog of my latest work, but the elements I included in it still appear in many more recent designs.

The quilt was made over a period of six years.  I completed other quilts during that time, but this was an ongoing project.  One of the first piecing techniques that intrigued me was English paper piecing.  I basted the 1” hexagons on freezer paper and had a portable project.  Since I was still working full time, I stitched while riding in the car and on visits with my mother in her assisted living facility, on the porch with her at her nursing home, and in hospital waiting rooms when my sister was ill.

As I was learning more about the world of quilting, I began to think of ways to combine these hexagons with other quilting techniques.  Once I learned needleturn appliqué, I wanted to add some curves to my pieced elements.  I assembled ten of the Grandmother’s Flower Garden units, appliquéd them to a background, and planned to add a vine with leaves in the border.

detail from Ollie Jane's Flower Garden
detail from Ollie Jane’s Flower Garden

I actually made another small quilt to explore the technique of the two-colored border with the vine separating them.  That worked, so I interpreted it large scale.

I wanted a bit more interest in the center of the quilt (well, not really the center…I was already embracing the idea of asymmetrical balance), so I made a bouquet of flowers using some elements of flowers from Barb Adams and Alma Allen’s Quilting in the Garden (a quilt I completed sometime in this process).

detail from Ollie Jane's Flower Garden
detail from Ollie Jane’s Flower Garden

I made my first bow with trapunto here.  I loved the bow.  I still like bows.  Especially plaid bows.  They reveal the folds created when a ribbon is rumpled to tie a knot.

Certainly not the least challenging was the quilting.  Then a beginner, I quilted the hexagons with a continuous curve motif, echoed around the appliqué, used my version of one of Diane Gaudynski’s filler designs in the inner border, and stitched a double grid in the outer border.  The only element of the quilting that was marked was half of the straight lines (they are 1” apart) and then quilted 1/4” away from that using the edge of the free motion foot.  Then, as now, the straight line quilting is the most challenging motif in free motion quilting, but I do still love the effect.

When it was time to give this quilt a title, I enlisted my husband’s input.  He came up with Ollie Jane’s Flower Garden to honor the traditional blocks of hexagons and give tribute to my quilting grandmother, Ollie Jane Hasty.

This quilt has had quite a career appearing in quilt shows and going to lectures with me.  She has earned some ribbons and accolades, but I haven’t retired her.  She hangs in the stairwell of our home, as close to the center of our lives as she can be.

The quilt used all cotton fabrics, some reproduction feed sacks.  Batting is Dream Cotton request.  Quilting thread is DMC machine embroidery cotton 50 weight / 2ply.  Finished dimensions are 58” x 68”.

The Peddler’s Quilt

Mr. GlazeThis gentleman is Mr. Luther Glaze, a peddler who sold fabric to my husband’s grandmother, Zelema, in the 1920’s and 30’s. Once a week, Mr. Glaze arrived  in his truck, his wares protected with a canvas cover.  “Granny Zee” never paid him with money, but with butter and eggs from her farm.

"Sadie Belle's Scrap Baskets", 2007. Made from scraps from my mother-in-law's mother's fabrics. Zelma Carter bought these from a peddler, Luther Glaze. She never paid cash, but paid him with butter and eggs. All fabrics except the white bacground came from her 1930's stash.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The quilt here, “Granny Zee’s Scrap Baskets,” is one I made in 2007 using fabrics left from some of Zee’s sewing.  Her daughter, Sadie Belle, was my mother-in-law.  In her twilight years, Ms. Sadie found a large bag of scraps and offered them to me to “use in a quilt.”  I washed, ironed, and sorted some 69 different prints.  Many of them were from feedsacks, some were fabrics Ms. Sadie recognized as being a school dress for her or an apron for her mother.  The remnants I had were often the negative space that resulted from cutting pieces for clothing; a shirt front, a sleeve, a collar from a child’s dress.

I delighted in the fabrics and thought egg baskets to be an appropriate block.  Using a solid white fabric as the background, I pieced the entire quilt using Zee’s scraps.  I made a wall hanging and worked quickly to complete the quilt, knowing Ms. Sadie’s memory was fading every day.  She treasured it and shared memories from the fabrics every time we looked at it together.

Sitting on Mama G's back porch with her and stitching on her quilt.

Ms. Sadie had some moments of anxiety and anger with her dementia, but my sewing basket seemed to calm her.  As it always calms me.

One might question, as I did, why the family had a framed photo of the peddler.  Asked, but not answered.