memories – Sandy Gilreath

A Birthday Outing

It was my birthday…and a trip down memory lane. Jim did a facebook post with lots of photos from the 40 years he’s had me in his viewfinder, and we visited places that triggered even earlier memories.

We headed out the door with no particular plans in mind except maybe to visit a new-to-us antique mall, Planter’s Walk in Locust Grove. Before we even went inside, I saw a garden sculpture that sparked the day of reminiscing. And as we walked through the vendors’ booths, more and more memories surfaced.

The phrase “seeing your life flash by” is usually reserved for one’s final moments. But walking through this antique mall brought that phrase to mind. I’ll share the specifics with photos.

A little girl pulling up the hem of her dress reminded me of my sister.

In this and many other photos, Jane was showing off her chubby little legs. She was teased a bit about this pose in years to come.

I had skates similar to this when I was a child. We lived on a dirt road, so my skating was done on a concrete floor of the front porch, 10’ x 15’, I’d guess. It was a big surface to me though.

Corning Ware cookware was a big part of my kitchen life in the 1970’s.

My mother had a set of these glasses. I can still taste the orange juice when I see these small ones.

A butter mold exactly like the one my mother used. (I have hers.)

The tag on this one said “folding milking stool”. I don’t know if that’s its true purpose, but I had one as a child…just like it.

Here I am sitting on my stool feeding my baby doll. Yes, those are barkcloth curtains in our living room. 1957 or so, I’d guess.

Clocks…lots of clocks were displayed here and there in this antique mall. The WestBend with dark face is like one that sat on my Daddy’s bedside table and woke them every morning. Well, it was set for that purpose, but Daddy usually woke before the bell rang.

Masks like I wore in fencing class in college. Yep. Fencing. I made an A.

My mother had a jewelry box exactly like this.

I usually see an item or two in an antique store that prompts memories, but I don’t recall ever seeing as many as on this day!

And, then, if that wasn’t enough nostalgia for a day, we went to the grounds where I attended camp as a child and as a teen. Now known as the Georgia FFA/FCCLA Center, I visited for several days several times in the years between 1960 and 2000. First as a camper (4-H in elementary school, FHA in high school) then attending state meetings of GALA (Georgia Association of Library Assistants) in high school, and finally with a group of educators working on curriculum in the 1990’s. Another trip there could be in my future. Quilters sometimes have retreats there….

The new dining hall building has a timeline of the camp over the years. This section is devoted to the first admission of women. My sister Jane would have attended FHA camp there in the early 1950’s.

There are changes that have taken place over the years, but a lot of the buildings and grounds are still familiar to me. Especially the dining hall. Wow. As I walked inside, I could hear the shuffling of feet as hungry kids lined up for delicious food. I could also remember the hush as a leader offered a blessing before the meal. A new larger dining room exists now, but this one has been kept as it was, furniture and all. It’s now sometimes used as a meeting space, but I bet others with memories as long as mine recognized how important it might be to revisit.

The original dining hall complete with original furniture. I’ve eaten many meals here.

Here I am in 1968 with a fellow GALA member. That organization was nerdy before nerd was a word, I guess. But I fit that description and reveled in going to meet with other like-minded teens in this glorious outdoor setting.

The campground has grown and changed over the years, as have I. It can now house up to 1200 people with abundant opportunities for attendees to grow and change, too. To revisit a place that was such an impactful part of my growing up was powerful!

This is the cabin I stayed in during my visit with math and science colleagues in the 1990’s. Different memories, but fond ones nevertheless.

The antique mall we visited was Planters Walk in Locust Grove. More information is here: http://www.planterswalkantiquemall.com/

The website for the Georgia FFA/FCCLA Center is here: http://www.georgiaffacamp.org/

The Camera Museum

My GrandDaddy Youngblood was a big part of my earliest years. I was three years old when he moved away from Georgia, but I do have memories of him, visiting his photography studio, and enjoying his visits to our house. There were letters, phone calls, and visits over the years, but his presence in my life was always associated with photographs.

A photo GrandDaddy made of me on an important day in my life.

In recent years, since I’ve become interested in photography and have read about photographers like Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange who were contemporaries of my GrandDaddy I’ve been curious about what cameras he used. Well, now I’ve seen some of them!

GrandDaddy in the doorway of his studio in Ashburn, GA.

Jim and I visited the camera museum in McDonough, Ga. You’d think that with Jim’s interest in photography, we would have been regulars. Jim did know about the place and had planned to go, but the impetus that got us out the door and on the way was learning that my GrandDaddy Youngblood’s cameras were there!

This building was first a church, then used as a municipal building complete with courtroom, and now houses workspace for the Image Doctor and the Camera Museum.

Yes, there is a display with information about my grandfather and his son and their photography! When we learned that some of GrandDaddy’s cameras had been donated, Jim and I were anxious to see them! When we arrived, and told them who we were, the owners greeted us with delight and led us right to the display.

I think of this as the Youngblood Corner…we were so excited to see everything and Scott was so excited to share details of the cameras with Jim that we didn’t get a photo of the original presentation…the camera fanatics (Scott and Jim) had moved the big camera to a spot where they could examine it more closely.

There are two of GrandDaddy’s cameras on display along with photos and a brief history of his photography. Both cameras are view cameras, where sheet film (preloaded in the darkroom) (for one or maybe two exposures) is inserted into the camera in a holder, then into the back of the camera. After the film is exposed, it is removed and set aside for developing. The large camera, an 8” x 10” view camera, was patented in 1890, the smaller of the two on display is 5” x 7”.

closeup of GrandDaddy’s 8″ x 10″ camera- frontview

GrandDaddy and his son, Homer Youngblood, Jr., had a studio in Georgia in the 1940’s and ’50’s. Prior to that, GrandDaddy worked as a photographer and reporter in Seneca, SC, and later had a studio there, as well.

GrandDaddy’s 5″ x 7″ viercamera frontview

Interviews with family tell me GrandDaddy began work as a photographer sometime after 1918. That’s the year his first wife (my grandmother) died. He had served in the Army during WWI, so I wonder if, like Jim, he learned photography skills as a soldier.

portraits of my GrandDaddy and his son who worked together as photographers

My GrandDaddy as he worked in Seneca, SC as a reporter and photographer. He and I were pen pals once I learned to write and his letters to me were always typed on onionskin paper. He signed them, “Love, Grandpappy Doodlebug”.

The Camera Museum is a passion of Scott Evans. After 40 years as a photographer, Scott now works to restore old photos, convert old movies, slides, and photos to digital format (as the Image Doctor). His lab is in the same building as his museum, which houses his vast collection of cameras of all sorts and anything camera related. There are displays of spy cameras, simple box cameras, folding cameras, twin-lens reflex cameras, 35mm single lens reflex cameras, and more.

a display of Kodak Brownies and similar cameras along with figurines of photographers

Scott has a wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm about all things camera. We will have to visit again and again for me to take it all in.

Displays of paparazzi and some of their famous shots are displayed in the restroom of the building. The area used as holding cells when the building was used as a municipal court space now display famous mug shots (including Johnny Cash, Elvis, and others you will recognize). Scott and his wife welcome you to come visit. Check out their website, make an appointment for a tour, or go for a night of fun on one of their scavenger hunts! You can find them at www.camera-museum.com or www.imagedoctor.com..

My GrandDaddy with all four of his children. The girl on the left is my mother, her sister on the right. The two younger ones, Homer, Jr and Myrtle are children from his marriage to “Miss Catherine” after his first wife’s death.

When I’m making the art quilts where I print an image in black and white on fabric, then add color using ink or watercolor, I think I’m channeling my DNA into art. GrandDaddy made photos in black and white and his son and daughter would sometimes add hand tinting to them.

You may recall an art quilt I made with my GrandDaddy in it: https://sandygilreath.com/four-brothers/

One more exciting tidbit: My hand touched something that touched something that was in the room when this portrait of Abraham Lincoln was taken. Matthew Brady was the photographer. Yes, that’s the profile you see on pennies every day. This is in a collection of direct prints made from the exposed negative in Brady’s camera. This will soon be protected under glass, but we were able to touch something that touched….

Mimi’s Boys Working

I’ve written about this quilt before, but didn’t have good photos of the quilt or the risque fabric involved. Recently, one of the grandsons loaned the quilt to me to use in a couple of talks I was giving to quilt guilds.

The story always brings smiles to other quilters, and I have renewed determination to make a quilt for myself where I include some of this fabric.

I love toile fabrics, and selected this to make quilts for two little boys some twenty years ago. And, yes, I still have some of the fabric left. I don’t think of myself as a hoarder, but a collector of stories. And fabric holds stories. Especially fabric like this that has had a few years of life.

The fabric line from Moda, called Tom and Huck, features scenes of boys painting a fence, fishing, swimming, opening a treasure chest; things you expect boys to do. I made a few blocks, pieced them together, and had two cuddle quilts for grandsons.

I selected different scenes to feature in the largest blocks and named the quilts based on that scene. This quilt is Mimi’s Boys Working, the other is Mimi’s Boys Fishing.

Years later, one of the grandsons made me realize that a new line of fabric had put swimming trunks on the diving boy. Until then, I didn’t think about my boys being embarrassed that I had made them quilts with nekkid swimmers on them.

A little web research turned up an image of the later line of fabric complete with trunks. I guess I have to approve, because the trunks are blue. This later line of fabric was released by Marcus Bros, not Moda. I don’t know the ins and outs of fabric production, competition, and copyright, but I bet there’s a story there.

While this quilt was on loan to me, I took it outside for a photo shoot at a local library.

More details of this quilt are in an earlier post here.

And speaking of stories, I’m reminded of one about my Daddy diving into the water at a Sunday School party and his trunks coming off. It seems the adventure was unplanned and he borrowed swimming trunks from a chunkier friend. Thankfully, he was a skillful swimmer and could stay under water long enough to retrieve them.

Dirt Roads

“But all of us have stories. Who doesn’t drive past an old homestead, an old store, a bridge no longer in use, and say, “I remember…”. That memory can live on only if we share it. Write it down, make a voice recording, or at the very least, tell it to one person who will remember it.”

I found this quote in my notes for future blog posts. I’m always telling people to “write it down,” when I hear stories told. Like photographs that are no longer printed, stories from our past and present experiences may get lost.

My friend Marie has recently published her memoirs, Dirt Roads Lead Home: A Memoir About Connections to a Place. It’s currently available at amazon. Details are here.

I was privileged to be an early reader of Marie’s stories and found them delightful. I love reading memoirs of all types, but Marie and I share common roots in small town, rural Georgia landscapes. Although our growing up experiences were in many ways not alike, her memories of buses and clotheslines and kitchen routines brought similar, yet different, personal flashbacks to mind.

Marie included maps for her family members to relate to places in the past. Drawing maps led to the thought of drawing other things, so the volume is illustrated by Marie’s delightful sketches.

If you are a country girl from the South, or if you aren’t, check out Marie’s book to trigger memories of your childhood. Then write them down! Or sketch the place. Or make a quilt. Or do all the above!

Note: After a month of no blogging and not much sewing; just in a different routine, it’s good to be back at it all. I’ve been stitching by hand on the past few evenings, and it does feel great! Today the sewing machine is humming, too. The festive life is good: cooking, visiting, entertaining are all fun, but I’m glad to be back in a familiar groove.

Shade Tree Mechanics

Life imitates art.

On a recent adventure to a pottery festival, I saw this beautiful 1953 Chevrolet truck. It was a glorious blue, beautifully restored, and photogenic from all angles. But my favorite angle was this one because it mimicked the truck I put on a quilt a few years ago.

In 2015, when pondering a design for a raffle quilt for my husband’s local Vintage Chevrolet Club chapter, I decided to create a scene where men might tinker on their machines. I love including trees on quilts, so the title was easy

The quilt measures 44” x 70“ and is a combination of needleturn appliqué, raw-edge appliqué, hand-guided freemotion quilting, trapunto, and printing on fabric.

I drew the design on acetate transparency and using my vintage overhead projector, enlarged the image to fill the background fabric pinned to my design wall. The same technique was used to draw the freezer paper templates for the tree trunks and the various pieces of the truck. I used commercial fabric to build the images, working from background to foreground as I attached the pieces.

I posted these photos to Facebook as I worked and it triggered many memories my students in math classrooms in days gone by.

The quilt top on the design wall before quilting began.

Wool batting was layered underneath the Chevrolet emblem on the tailgate, stitched down with water soluble thread. Then the excess batting was cut away before layering the entire top on a cotton batting.

Freemotion stitching made the layers become one, a quilt. In addition, that stitching was used to differentiate areas of the dashboard, windshield, and tire tracks on the ground. Freemotion stitching was used to attach the raw-edged leaves as well.

A photo of an antique car tag was scaled to fit the license plate space and printed onto fabric. Blue was chosen for the 1953 model truck because there is such a truck in Jim’s family. And blue…well, it’s blue.

A bowtie-shaped Chevrolet icon served as the basis for the handwritten label. Sadly, I don’t seem to have a photo of that.

Note: One purpose in writing this blog is to record details of quilts I’ve made. I had written most of these details in a draft a couple of years ago, but the photo of a real truck like the one I fabricated spurred the post to publication. As I read the details I had written, I was reminded how important it is to write things down. I had forgotten the details of the wool batting layer, raw edged leaves, and thread choices.

Especially since the quilt is no longer in my possession, the written description of the process is more valuable in case I want to do something similar again.

Another note: Many of these photos were made with an older iPhone and poor lighting conditions. Reducing them to post online makes for even poorer quality, but clicking on the image to enlarge it may reveal some details you miss in the original.

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…

Summertime in South Georgia

Memories of a hot summer day in my childhood include sweet, juicy, sticky watermelon. At our house, there was most always a melon or two cooling in the shade of a pecan tree in the backyard. Mid-morning was the time we would gather round the picnic table with Aunt Nellie’s butcher knife, some forks, and a big appetite! I had a salt shaker in my hand, too.

This quilt is made using a photo of childhood friends with slices of that summertime treat. The photo is printed on vintage linen fabric, the watermelon slices are painted and seeds are hand stitched with black thread. A seed stitch was used, of course. Machine stitching and wool batting adds dimension to the piece. It is layered on red fabric and a remnant of denim jeans, measuring 10” x 12”.

Thanks to Arlene for permission to use the photo. She and her brothers Wayne and Jerry portray the perfect summer scene in south Georgia!

You Can Make Anything

I’ve long had a quilt in my mind called Family Lines in which I would record oft-repeated lines from family members. It would bring warmth as a cover, but also warm memories for others to recall the voices from the past. Some of those lines I’ve already written about, like Daddy singing “Pa, he bought him a great big billy goat…” or Wallace’s oft-quoted line “you shore can’t sop syrup with ‘em.” Advice like Aunt Nellie’s, “Always plant geraniums in clay pots,” and Jim’s query to the girls, “did you unplug the curling iron?” will add practical notes, too. (Details of those stories are here, here, and here.)

One line I would have to include from my mother is, “You can make anything. But you can’t make everything.” I quoted this to a young quilting friend of mine last year as we were discussing some of the tempting patterns for making tote bags. Though they are lovely and give one a unique accessory that displays favorite fabrics and techniques, they are time consuming to make. She repeated my mother’s line and said, “Wow. That’s so true. And a powerful line to remember.”

Yes, she was right – it is a powerful message. I’ve had that line running through my head a lot lately. I look around my sewing space and see fabric waiting to go in the dye pot, fabric that’s been dipped in the dye pot and ready to compose into Rescued Remnant pieces, photos to print on fabric, strips of fabric waiting to be woven backgrounds ala Jude Hill. In my sketchbook is a series of churches I want to put on cloth. On my design wall are components for my Paducah journal quilt in progress. In another basket are luscious wools cut and ready to stitch. Of course, the time for the guild challenge draws closer. And there’s more, including a few UFOs that could command my attention.

Then there’s the avalanche of images and ideas that press into my mind wherever I look. Especially if I look online. Projects that are physically unbegun, but I have to resist the temptation to begin them. My mother also said, “Finish what you’ve started before you start anything else.” ( I know – the mention of a few UFO’s tells that I don’t always follow that advice.)

I try to use the brainpower generated by my morning walk to plan my “work” for the day. (I put that word in quotes because I do think of the “do the work” advice given to artists fits my daily activities, but in no way is what I do in the sewing room anything but FUN.) Lately my focus of that brainpower has been to narrow the field of possibilities and remember, to paraphrase my mother’s advice, “I can do any of these things, but I can’t do all of them today.“

The photos show snippets of today’s temptations. At least one of those will get some focused attention.

Pink Ribbon

My sister was beautiful. This photo was taken when she was about twelve years old – she was still an only child at that time. It would be three more years before I came into her life.

When I was younger than twelve, I would look at this photo and dream of looking like Jane when I reached that magical age. The years rolled by and my mother took me to a photographer to mark that special birthday, but I was disappointed in the result. I did not have Jane’s thick, wavy hair, her tanned complexion, or her beautiful brown eyes.

The original photo of Jane was taken by my grandfather and there is a version hand tinted by my Aunt Corinne.

Recently I scanned the image, printed it in on fabric, and painted the bow. Jane’s favorite color was pink,so a deep shade of that was the obvious choice for her ribbon. In the photo, she was wearing a locket, and I had a mother-of-pearl bauble which seemed to be a good substitute.

A bit of batting, some free motion machine quilting, and I was ready to hand stitch the piece to a bit of vintage edging. I used some metallic thread to stitch her necklace (hand embroidered backstitch) and some silken twist thread to attach the photo to the lacy border. Both threads were gifts from a friend, items from his late mother’s stash. The in-progress photo is one I sent to the friend while I was working, letting him see his mother’s supplies at work.

All these layers were stitched to a red background, commercial cotton fabric. This is custom framed in a 16” x 20” frame, with a double oval mat.

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”.

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