Tag: home

Safe Haven

I don’t say this often, but this art quilt was all hand stitched.  I almost always attach something by machine, or get a trapunto effect by using dense machine stitching to add dimension.

In this case, the underlying quilt itself was all hand stitched.  But it is not all my hand stitching – some unknown woman made the quilt remnant which is the base of this piece.  She pieced baskets from a rather unattractive orange fabric with a white background.  As I stitch things onto it, I know at least part of it was made from sheets – the thread count is high, making my stitches less than pleasurable.

I overdyed the remnants of this antique store find in the indigo dye pot and now I have green baskets on blue.  Much better color.

This piece got its start when I found escutcheons at Seventh Street Salvage and brought some home.  The composition was started with a thrill, but stalled when I struggled to find a way to attach the heavy piece to the cloth.  After months of staring at it and rejecting first this potential solution, then the next, I just sewed it on.  Who knew it could be so obvious?  Or so simple.

The weight did dictate that some support was needed, so I mounted the piece onto a canvas mat – that involved hand stitching too.  You can examine this photo taken from the back and see that stitching.

The machine was needed to attach the label to the canvas.  That could have been done by hand, but it’s faster and easier by machine – gives my hands a break.  I first remove the needle and presser foot, put the canvas under the needle bar, reattach the needle and presser foot, then stitch free motion to attach the label.  

I combined elements I liked because of the color or the mood they conveyed. The title is obviously linked to the key and the escutcheon, but I like to think of our home as a safe place for the birds and the bees and the flowers, as well as for the humans here.

Come On In

An old favorite haunt of ours has reopened this summer.  A warehouse in town where a construction firm once sold architectural relics is now new and improved.  A new generation of owners has made these treasures available again.  It’s even better than before.

What we once visited as Second Chance is now 7th Street Salvage.  Oh, never fear, there are still ample choices awaiting a second chance!


Catherine has an eye for detail and has glorious displays everywhere.  In addition to the warehouse holding years of accumulated doors and windows and stair railings, there are delightful vignettes of small treasures. Catherine has searched out more vintage delights and combined books and chairs and jars and hinges in the most unique ways. Her husband Brent is her partner in the endeavor.

The organization of bits and pieces is amazing.  Even the most OCD of us would love the cataloging of salvage pieces here.


I appreciate the old and dusty, and sometimes rusty, elements that are abundant in these places.  In some places we visit, a mad jumble encourages me to walk away.  That’s not a problem here.  Everything is grouped and categorized with clear price lists displayed.  The simple quantity of things like doorknobs and hinges and backplates and keys is astounding, but the organization is amazing.  Eat your heart out, Container Store.

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Look – tiles organized by quilt block usage: Half-square triangles and trapezoids ready to go!

And, who knew how educational such shopping could be?  Did you know chickens needed laxatives?  

This display of doorplates had me spellbound.  I bought a couple and included one in a fabric collage about home.  And I learned a new word: escutcheon.

This amazing place is 7th Street Salvage in Macon.  Their schedule of open weekends is on facebook (https://www.facebook.com/7th-Street-Salvage-1903699043183111/).  The architecture of Macon is glorious.  To keep the elements of its historical beauty available to include in newer homes is a public service.

Here is the piece I am making using one of the doorplates I bought.  I used vintage linens and a house key from our ancestral past atop an overdyed quilt remnant to showcase the escutcheon.  It’s all ready to mount on a 16’ x 20” canvas here.

 

 

 

 

 

It looked bare.  So I’m auditioning edges.  What do you think?

Update: Here is a later post about the wall hanging once it was finished: I changed the name to Safe Haven.

Diggin’ in the Dirt

With a fence full of flowers like these, is it any wonder that gardening and tools are in every room of my house?

I love diggin’ in the dirt this time of year.  My morning walk has me counting the hostas that have raised their heads above the soil line, inspecting the buds on young trees, and even pulling a few weeds here and there.  Dirt therapy has always been a good thing, but at our house we seem to be more immersed in the pleasure than some years.  Perhaps because we were traveling last spring and didn’t get to enjoy newly emerging growth in our yard we are appreciating it more now.  And the dogwoods and azaleas have never been prettier.

While in the sewing room today, I noticed that not only were digging implements under the needle of my sewing machine, but the design wall holding projects in progress has gardening as a theme, too.

The ongoing free motion quilting is on my version of Lisa Bonjean’s Primitive Garden.  It’s wool appliqué on cotton, including some flannel and some homespuns, too.

Primitive Garden is not the first time rakes have appeared on one of my quilts.  This little wall piece pictured above (Off to the Garden, 22″ x 21″) is one I quickly assembled when I bought my Bernina.  I was anxious to drop the feed dogs and quilt, so the appliqué is fused.  You won’t read that often here, as I prefer needle turn appliqué.  But on this occasion, fuse I did.  I added a cotton ball for the tail and danced with my sewing machine.  This wall hanging helps us welcome spring every year.

As usual, click on any image to enlarge and see details.

 

Soup and Cornbread

Today was a snow day, a sew day, followed by a cold, cold night.  Our supper was one we have frequently in this weather – vegetable soup and bread.  Sometimes the bread is a crusty loaf we can dip in olive oil, sometimes it’s soft yeast rolls with butter.  This night it was a southern favorite, cornbread.

 

Cornbread baked in my mother’s  cast iron skillet.  That skillet holds more memories than grease molecules.  My mother baked cornbread in it every single weekday of my memory.  No matter what the menu, no matter how hot the kitchen would be in the summertime, the oven and pan were preheated to 400?.  Meanwhile, a simple mixture of self-rising cornmeal, egg, and whole milk was stirred together.  When the pan was hot, bacon drippings were poured in, then the batter, then it cooked until done.

The round pone was always inverted on a plate, cut into eight wedges, and set on the corner of the table next to Daddy’s plate.  I don’t recall Mama ever eating any, but Daddy ate it at lunchtime, and again sometimes at supper.  Sometimes his supper was simply a wedge of cornbread (room temperature, never reheated) and a glass of milk.

Aunt Nellie, my mother’s maternal aunt, preferred hoecakes; thin cornmeal cakes cooked on top of the stove. From her comments, I inferred that Mama’s recipe was one from Daddy’s family and that she adopted it for our meals.

We ate plenty of leftovers at our house, but never leftover cornbread.  Even if only one wedge was eaten at lunchtime, the remainder was discarded and a new pone cooked the next day.  I don’t know why.

In my adult life, I’ve tried many cornbread recipes, many pans, and many other options.  The alternatives are all good; we enjoy jalapeño cheddar cornbread occasionally, hoecakes are served at our favorite local restaurant, and once I discovered Tasha Tudor’s cornbread recipe, that complex sweet concoction sometimes finds its way to our table.  Tasha advised that hot cornbread is better with a bit of butter and honey or blackberry jam on it.  I agree!

I’ve baked cornbread in square pans, long pans, muffin pans; some glass, some stainless steel, some cast iron.  But nothing gives the crust like Mama’s old cast iron skillet.  But the cornbread will stick to that pan if I use any lubricant other than bacon grease.  So I’ve learned to cook bacon for breakfast if I’m planning to cook cornbread later in the day.

A nice rubdown afterwards with a paper towel is the only cleaning my skillet gets.  No water, no soap.  A childhood memory more than 50 years ago is of Mama and Aunt Nellie building a fire outside and “burning off” their cast iron cookware.  Then they seasoned them with grease of some kind and put them in the oven.  This skillet was one of those.

Mama’s Cornbread Recipe was: 1 cup self-rising cornmeal, 1 egg, 2/3 cup whole milk.  Mix ingredients.  Preheat oven to 400? with iron skillet inside.  Pour 1 tablespoon bacon drippings into pan, swirl around bottom and sides of pan, then pour in batter.  Bake 20 minutes. (All quantities are my approximations, she didn’t measure anything.)

As for the vegetable soup recipe, it varies depending on what’s on hand.  Tonight’s version started with a leftover rump roast, potatoes, carrots, onions, portobello mushrooms, corn, some frozen butterbeans, diced tomatoes.  Cooked slowly, tasted, seasoned, simmered some more…

October Welcome

The calendar says it’s time for more orange in our lives.  Another fiber art piece has orange in it now, based on a drawing of a jack-o-lantern by our front door.

The jack-o-lantern is a cherished piece made by one of our favorite Georgia potters, Shelby West.  Shelby’s work is normally southern folk pottery with an ash glaze, but for Halloween, he creates some unglazed pieces with personality.  A watering can on an old stool created a fun vignette which says “Welcome to Our Home,” country style.  The photo was printed on cotton fabric, free-motion machine stitched; then embellished with paint, hand embroidery, and beads.

The image is bordered with hand-dyed Cherrywood fabric, layered on linen canvas, then on a remnant of an old quilt.  The orange in the old quilt (a basket pattern) made it the perfect backdrop.  The piece measures 15” x 17”.  A portion of a vintage napkin with delicate appliqué in the corner serves as the label on the back.  I tilted this one October Welcome.

Grits for Supper

 

Grits are a staple in any southern girl’s diet.  We have them for breakfast sometimes, but all my life I’ve had grits at sunset more often than at sunrise.

My mother occasionally served a breakfast menu at suppertime.  Usually country salt-cured ham and redeye gravy were part of that, along with grits, eggs, and exploding biscuits.  (Thus the comment young Wallace made.)   And we always had grits when we had fried fish for supper.  Nowadays, breakfast menu items appear at supper in the form of omelets all year long.  But when the weather is cool, we sometimes have the full meal with sausage or ham, eggs, biscuits, and grits.

Every time I make grits, I think of my friend Ferrelle.  Ferrelle owned a wonderful cooking, kitchen, and gift shop, and served up fabulous ideas for enjoying life.  We once had a conversation about grits which “upped my game”.  Ferrelle’s advice included using stone ground grits (we favor the yellow ones from Nora’s Mill in Helen, GA), cooking them with chicken broth rather than water, and adding a bit of cream right before removing them from the heat.  Oh, my.  They are so rich and creamy.  I vary the flavor by adding different cheeses at times, and cooked, crumbled bacon on top adds flavor and garnish.

Since Ferrelle retired, I rarely see her.  But we keep in touch through mutual friends and Facebook.  And I think of her often when I use a kitchen gadget that I bought from her, when I need a gift for someone and mourn the fact that her store is no longer around, but most especially when I cook grits.

In recent years, I’ve added a “grits and greens” casserole to my cooking repetoire, giving grits an excuse to appear at lunchtime or to go to a potluck dinner.  A google search by for that title will yield many recipes, but Ferrelle’s advice will make any of those better, too.

There is a drawback to possessing this knowledge.  Sometimes we see grits on a menu in a restaurant and order them.  We are always, always, disappointed.

Photo notes:  Since I seem to think everything should be a story in cloth, I’ve begun stitching on a Nora’s Mill bag.  You see images of the front and backside.  More work to be done, but I know you’re hungry, so go cook some grits.

Addendum:  How could I forget fried grits?  After I posted this, a friend reminded me, saying that her grandmother “would also refrigerate left over grits in a shallow pan, then dip chilled finger-sized slices in beaten egg and fry them like French toast. These, drenched in syrup and served with a patty of sausage, made a wonderful Sunday evening meal.”

I haven’t tried the French toast/syrup idea, but I have fried them similarly and served them as a side dish with grilled salmon or pork chops.  At least once I prepared them similarly and served them as croutons on a salad of Spring Mix greens with goat cheese and prosciutto.  A balsamic vinaigrette topped it off.  It was wonderful.  How could I have forgotten that?

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.

Porch Swings

porch swingWhen I was a little girl, I loved to take a book and an old quilt and head for the swing in our backyard.  While there, I traveled to faraway lands and met some interesting characters.  Though there were plenty of interesting characters in Sycamore, the people I met in the pages of library books took me on journeys through forests, big cities, and westward. (I’m remembering, Girl of the Limberlost, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and Jubilee Trail, all books I read several times over).

When I heard Meryl Streep deliver the line, “I’ve been a mental traveler,” in her role as Isak Dinesen in Out of Africa, I identified completely.  I devoured so many library books, especially in the summer reading program, that I worried about what I would do when I had read all the books.  My husband and children were amused by this revelation until they saw the tiny building that had housed my childhood world of literature.

Now I no longer fear reading all the books.  I fear not having time to read all the wonderful stories I want to read.  I fear not remembering which titles I have read.  I fear wasting time reading bad writing.

I do appreciate instant access to, if not all the books, many more books than I can read, in the palm of my hand.  Yes, I love my shelves of books, I love visiting the public library (I spent some time there yesterday) but I also love reading on my iPad.  I can browse new titles, read reviews, perhaps check out the author’s website, and download sample pages or an entire book without ever leaving home.

Sunday afternoon was cool enough to spend quite a while in the swing.  With the overhead fan adding to the natural breeze, and the sound of the sprinkler and the occasional bird calling in the background, I was transported to dreamland.  I was reading, then dozing.  But in the half-here/half-there consciousness for which Sunday afternoons are famous, I realized that I was living a dream.  In a swing.  On my front porch.  On a summer afternoon.  With a breeze, a book, and a lawn sprinkler.

Simple pleasures are the best.

Whistle of Home

train jg photoSome part of my soul goes home every time I hear a train whistle.

I grew up near a railroad track parallel to US highway 41 in south Georgia.  I now live near a railroad track near US highway 41 in middle Georgia.  A lot has changed about me, the highway, and the sound of the trains.  But the constant is that the rumble of a train on the tracks, the predictable ‘two longs, short, long’ blast of the horn brings a smile to my face.  Every time.

My parents brought me home from the hospital and put me in a crib less than fifty yards from the railroad track.  Yes, I’m still a sound sleeper.  I grew up waving to engineers as the train came by, counting cars, learning something about motion and direction and the hauling of goods and people.

There were passenger cars, flatbeds hauling pulpwood and granite headed south, tanker cars, box cars with freight and hobos, and stacks of automobiles headed north.  Occasionally the train stopped in front of our house.  Occasionally a hobo would come to the door looking for work, or food, or both.  Once the engineer came to the door and borrowed some of my mother’s clothesline to make a repair.  A coupling had come uncoupled, so that train pulled away with two cars attached with a makeshift linkage.  My mother often wondered how far her clothesline traveled.  And, forever after, we made do with two rows of clothes drying instead of three.

And, cabooses.  There were really red cabooses at the end of every train.  With a conductor who wore a striped cap and sometimes stood on the porch and waved.  Recently, we have begun stopping at every retired caboose we see and Jim snaps a photo of me onboard (or trying to get onboard if there are “crazy women should not climb on the train” signs).

My nephew Woody explored the inside of a caboose when he was about six years old.  He was visiting with us and announced over the suppertable that “there’s a lot of room in those little cars.”  My mother was horrified, my Daddy tried to hide his smirk, as we learned that the train had stopped and Woody had climbed aboard for a look-see.

As I recounted yesterday’s trip to the JugFest in Knoxville, GA, I realized there was a train theme.  We collect southern folk pottery, and seeing all the new work was certainly a thrill, especially that of Shelby West.  But the non-clay purchases I made seem to all be related.  There is the crow, Heckle, made from a gear, a pair of pliers, and a railroad spike.  There are earrings which are hammered, fold-formed, and enameled pewter.  The artist’s anvil is made from a piece of rail from a train track.  And, we shot the requisite photo on the retired caboose in downtown Roberta.

During the forty-something years I lived out of earshot of a train, I never lost my love of their sounds.  Thankfully, I’m married to a man who loves them too.  Though I do recall on the first night he spent at my parents’ house (in the same bedroom I first slept), he woke me at 3:00 a.m., sitting straight up in bed and exclaiming, “what is THAT?”  My reply, “what is what?” revealed that I heard nothing out of the ordinary.  Once awake, I realized the shaking of the house, and in fact, the very earth beneath, was nothing but the train.

Over the years, we have both delighted in finding a B & B near the railroad tracks.  When weather conditions were right, we could hear a distant train when living in our first home together. The sound of the whistle at night came to mean peace to Jim, as it always had to me.

The proximity of the railroad was a plus for us when deciding to buy this house.  Shortly after moving here, we were returning home from a trip with friends and we stopped to get lunch in a small town. Jim and I heard a faraway whistle and shared a smile across the group, knowing only we appreciated the sound – and realizing how we had missed hearing that during the week away from home.

Photos:  Jim Gilreath’s photo of the Nancy Hanks steam locomotive in Gordon, Ga. Fall, 2015.

train play paducahSandra Dee playing on the caboose in Paducah, Ky. Spring, 2016.

Home Again

Version 2“Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jog,” is one of this family’s oft-repeated phrases when we pull into the driveway.  I know, it’s a misquote from the nursery rhyme, but we like it.  It has history in our household.

But today, my version might be, “home again, home again, figgity-fog.”  Today was our first full day at home in several weeks without another trip on the horizon.  And, even when we were home between trips, there were meetings, and deadlines, and classes, and you get the idea.

So on this day without pending preparation for another trip, I’m unraveling the impressions of the past few weeks.  Impressions which have become almost a blur.

I have been inspired by images from all our travels.  The scenery on backroads, quilts from contestants and vendors in Paducah, art in galleries, techniques from fabulous textile teachers, and Nature herself are all jostling for position in my brain.

Those forms are mingling with fabrics, threads, buttons, and beads found on these travels, too.  Now I am processing all those tidbits as I stow the treasures and sketches and thoughts, anxious to begin combining some of them in new work.

In my resting phase, I turned to Jude Hill’s Spirit Cloth blog.  Her textile work is amazing,  her words poetic.  I have read her blog for years.  Since she opened all her former online classes to all of us through her Feel Free site, I’ve browsed many old posts, too.  Her words soothe, much like handling cloth does.

On all our travels, I carried my sewing basket.  I accomplished some soothing stitching on an ongoing project, and even worked on a new one on the road.

But being at home with all my implements is a different kind of creating.  So now I’m ready to combine thoughts and materials anew.

The photo is Headed Home, a small piece I made for our local guild’s “two-color” quilt challenge in 2014.  The house is hand appliqued, the background machine quilted with vaguely parallel lines stitched closely together.  The twigs are from our yard, whitewashed and couched down by hand.  The quilt finished at 8” x 20”.