memories – Page 3 – Sandy Gilreath

My Daddy Wore Overalls

There’s something iconic about a man in overalls. To me, it means he is unpretentious, hardworking, honest. Someone with whom I would want to spend time in conversation and in hugging.

There aren’t many photos of my Daddy in overalls. Though he wore them every day to work, when he came home, his first order of business was to take a shower and change into his “knock-about clothes”, khakis and a sport shirt. That would be his uniform until bedtime. And on Sundays, a suit, or at least a sports jacket and tie.

He wore overalls when he farmed. I heard stories of his walking behind the mules and plow in his overalls and barefoot. When he left the farm to begin building houses, he added work boots to his wardrobe, but kept the overalls.

The many pockets had designated uses. The partitions in the bib held his wallet and a fat flat pencil, you know the kind wood workers used. Another held a pocket knife, used for sharpening that pencil, among other things. One of those spaces sometimes held his wristwatch if it needed protection from the task at hand.

A long pocket on the leg of the overalls held his folding carpenter’s rule and a hammer hung in the loop. He could flip that wooden rule open to just the right length for a measurement and refold it in the blink of an eye. If you don’t remember those devices, or that they are called rules, not rulers, you are a young whippersnapper. See, just thinking of overalls has me using his words.

I can smell the denim. And the sawdust embedded in the fibers. Maybe a little tobacco scent, too. And I remember how heavy they were when wet. I was a tiny little thing, but one of my jobs was hanging clothes on the line.

Maybe all that is why I was so intrigued by the man in this quilted piece. I snapped this street photo the minute I saw him. Since then, I have come to know who he is and have secured permission to use his image in my art. He, like my Daddy, is worthy of long conversations and hugs.

The quilt measures 10” x 18”. The photo is printed on vintage linen fabric, hand painted, then quilted. I used cotton thread, using hand-guided free motion quilting on my domestic machine. It is layered with raw silk, a remnant of denim, and a worn reclaimed quilt fragment. The label is a vintage cocktail napkin. (I found this one with the rooster in an antique store ramble just as I had finished this piece. Perfect!)

The photo of my Daddy holding me is one of the few I have of him wearing his overalls. I guess it’s obvious why men wearing overalls pleases me so. And, I still have that chair.

Golden Bells

Recently driving down the road, to a destination two hours south and a few decades in the past, I was playing Angel Band full blast. People in other cars could see me singing and think I’m crazy. Well, maybe, but my singing along with Emmylou is not sufficient to have me committed.

This is how I deal with sorrow. I was headed to the funeral for my cousin Wallace. So When They Ring Those Golden Bells, We Shall Rise, and Drifting Too Far are soothing sounds to my soul. Wallace loved these songs, too.

It’s been a long time since I played this collection; so long that I actually had forgotten some of the words. Jim and I both find comfort in music, and this CD and others by Alison Kraus, Ralph Stanley, and selections from O Brother Where Art Thou and Cold Mountain soundtracks have blasted away in the car on too many trips down that same road. For part of this trip we were in separate vehicles, and my solitary time is when I had the music the loudest.

As Precious Memories plays, I can hear my mother’s voice as I sat beside her in church. That song was one of her favorites and she and I thought she sounded like Emmylou does. Another album with soothing voices I sometimes play is Trio. When that plays, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and I join Emmylou to form a quartet.

The songs on those two albums brought me comfort in the drive to and from visits with my mother in the last seven years of her life. Visits when I didn’t know if she would recognize me; later visits when I was certain she would not. But the sounds she loved brought me comfort as they always had her, especially the song Who Will Sing for Me?

Once in the church for Wallace’s service, more music was part of the goodbye. A first-time experience for me was a lonesome harmonica playing. That, and the later solo were nice, but I missed the Bethel Boys, a foursome of local men who have harmonized at several farewells in my hometown. In answer to Emmylou’s question above, the Bethel Boys (and the entire congregation) sang for my mother.

We buried a lot of knowledge today. Wallace knew where everyone was buried, who owned which plots in the cemetery, which family owned what farm and who had owned it before them. In recent years, a visit to Wallace might include a ride around the county. Wallace would narrate a rolling history lesson with detours to check every neighbor’s crops. He knew who lived in this house or that, who built the house and when, whose dog bit someone in the yard, who had been arrested.

I had learned to take a list of questions and a recorder on some visits. But I’m already wondering what questions will come up this week that Wallace could have answered.

One of the preachers said that “Wallace lived 87 years and I don’t know that he ever made anyone mad except Miz Dot.” I’m sure that’s correct. And, I don’t think he ever said no when someone asked for help with anything.

The next generation has asked for some “Wallace stories.” Here are a couple:

When he was a lad, Wallace stayed with my parents for a few days, maybe his mother was sick, I’m not sure why. At breakfast one morning, he remarked, “Aunt Cleo, your biscuits taste alright, but you shore can’t sop syrup with ‘em.” My Daddy quoted that line over many years, always with a twinkle in his eye.

When I was a child, my bicycle broke. I don’t know how that happened – I don’t remember a crash. Daddy’s suggestion was that I ride a unicycle. But since the pedals were on one portion and the seat on the other, that wasn’t going to work. Wallace had added welding to his list of skills needed on the farm. He reattached the two halves of my bike and I was a happy little girl. Wheels, whee, freedom!

A fine honest man, a community leader, a foster father to many children, one shining example of humility, integrity, compassion, is no longer with us. In the far off great forever, beyond the shining river, they are ringing golden bells for Wallace.

Photo: Wallace as a boy, maybe about the age of the “sopping syrup” remark. Circa 1937.

Preserve the Story

SG at Southern Crescent “This has been so good for me today. I’ve been so down in the dumps lately. I lost my best friend and have been unable to do anything. Now I have new ideas and I’m going to make….”

These words came from a new friend at a quilt guild where I gave a talk yesterday. She came up to me at the end, when people had questions or wanted to see a quilt up close again. She was beautiful, seemingly calm, serene; her outward appearance did not reveal her troubled soul. But she and I know that stitching will soothe her. She can make something while thinking of her friend. She will recapture memories in the threads and forever after, when she looks at that finished project, she will remember the good times as well as the sorrow that she felt with the loss.

My talk was Capturing a Story in a Quilt. I shared stories that had prompted a quilt project of mine, like Granny Zee’s Scrap Baskets, or Government Bird Going for a Ride, as well as stories that evolved with the quilt (one example being Ollie Jane’s Flower Garden).

The centerpiece of the talk was Fifty-Two Tuesdays, a Journal Quilt, where I intentionally set out to chronicle a year of my life in fabric. But all of us who stitch know that every quilt we make holds memories; of friends who sat with us as we stitched, of travels where some fabric was purchased, or situations in life that accompanied the project’s progress.

In order for others to know those stories that live within the quilts, we need to write them down. A story quilt is a good visual cue to share family stories with future generations, but a written record will help preserve the details.

A quilting friend has recently prepared a manuscript ready to print a few copies as gifts for family members. A daughter-in-law interested in genealogy asked Ethel to write down some family stories, so she did. Keeping it simple, she wrote as if she were talking to this daughter-in-law. No editors, or publishers, or agents are needed these days, even if you want it bound and want multiple copies.

I treasure some memories my aunt wrote on scraps of stationery; she shared stories my mother had told me, but the details were fuzzy. I love that I have a written record of those childhood stories, compliments of my cousin Susie and her copying machine.

I left yesterday’s meeting with new friends and new intentions. Some of them shared their plans to write down memories associated with their quilts. I saw projects that inspire me to go to the sewing machine!

SG3 at Southern Crescent

Memories for Sale

In the Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron advises artists to “take your inner artist on a date once a week.” Go to a museum, or a movie, or the beach, to feed your soul. Go alone.

I don’t do that. Not exactly that. No schedule, no plan. But I do enjoy the moment when it happens. Seize the day. Or the hour. Or the 15 minutes in a hot, old mill where antiques are sold.

That’s where you see me in this photo. Shuffling though family memories. Not my family, but a family for sale. Well, their memories are for sale.

Sad, you say. Yes. It is sad that a bunch – I estimate 500 or more in the bin I picked though (I looked at every one, bought dozens) family photos were sold in bulk to a stranger. The names and places may be gone, but the stories are still there.

I don’t know the name of the family, the location of the photos, or even the time frame for certain. But because they look so much like old photos in my family, I can guess 1950s and 1960s. I know they lived in a house with a backyard, that they built a water feature there at some point, they had a spot where they always took photos on birthdays. As the children aged, the bushes at the corner of the house grew and matured. The birthday boy or girl was almost always situated in the same spot with that corner of the house in the background. Usually it was the child alone with the cake, sometimes sitting on the ground, many times with the cake on a stool from inside the house. Later there was a picnic table added, and the cake sat there.

And, then the birthdays moved inside. My photographer husband notes that they got a camera with a flash. I didn’t think of that, but I’m sure he’s right.

I know this family dressed up for Easter, for Scout meetings, and what I hope was “tacky day” at school. They hunted Easter eggs in an area with pine trees and broomsedge. They visited older relatives, went to the beach a few times, to the mountains, and had family members in the armed forces. They fed ducks and went to a petting zoo. There were graduations, engagements, and a big anniversary celebration in later years. They bought new cars now and then, kids got wheels, too – wagons, tricycles, and then bicycles.

The core family consisted of a Mom, Dad, son, daughter. There were extended family members; brothers and sisters of the parents, their spouses, grandparents, close friends.

Mom baked cakes and kept an immaculate house. Dad worked hard and enjoyed playing with the children after work. They paid their bills on time, added a few improvements to the half-acre they called home as extra money allowed, and were good neighbors. You may think my imagination has run away with me here, and you could be right. But I think I know these people.

At least I know a family I imagine like this and that makes my day better. If I can create art from these photos that conveys part of that good feeling, that’s good for even more people.

So, is it still sad for the photos to be sold?

Is this what Julia Cameron wants to come out of my date with my inner artist each week?

I’ve already been working on more photos on fabric since Flag Bearer was done. Several are in various stages of completion; you’ll be seeing some soon.

And I’m pretty sure you expect a fabric story based on these children and their birthday cakes. Yep, I’m doing that!

Bee Still my Heart

I see that today has been designated as National Honey Bee Day, begun to increase community awareness of beekeeping in the U.S. Such a holiday is a perfect excuse to share a few pieces of fiber art with a beekeeping theme.

After I sold my childhood home to Billy, a former colleague of my Daddy, I received a treasured package. Billy was doing some remodeling and found two of my Daddy’s high school science lab books behind the walls of a closet. His graduation from Sycamore High School was in 1932, so the Biology and Physical Science lab manuals predate that.

I never knew my Daddy could draw, but in these books I found his drawings of crawfish, birds, fish, chemistry lab equipment, and BEES. I was excited to find his handwriting, which looked exactly like it did later in life, but the drawings were a wonderful surprise. I scanned some of the images and printed them on parchment paper and framed them as Christmas gifts for family members, but the lab on the bees got special treatment.

I printed those two pages on commercially prepared fabric for printing, then used those as the background for appliquéd bee skeps, vines, leaves, berries, and bees. Cotton was used for the vines and leaves, beehives are a woven cotton, berries are made with silk ribbon, and the bees are appliquéd from felted wool. The quilting is hand guided free motion on a domestic sewing machine. Each piece of this pair finishes at 12” x 15”. In keeping with the school theme, I entitled this pair Beekeeping 101.

This reconnection with my Daddy’s history with bees spurred me to stitch several more quilts with bees and beehives. I modified a pattern from Maggie Bonanomi to create Beauty and the Bees in wool. The background is commercially handdyed and felted black wool. All the appliqué pieces are felted wool from recycled clothing, mine and Goodwill’s. The pink berries and tendrils are machine couched with my free motion couching foot, one of the most fun-to-use tools in my toolbox!

Still busy as a bee, I wanted a colony on blue. So I created a simple design using a single bee skep, and used needleturn appliqué on the Blackbird Design fabric that looks like a cross stitch sampler. I return to that fabric frequently, in different colorways, because it adds another layer of interest to any quilt while paying tribute to another one of my needlework loves – cross stitch. A section of this piece appears in the banner at the top of the page.

The Beehive on Blue was made to fit an oval frame (8″ x 10″) I found somewhere. That’s a shape I love and find those frames hard to leave in the store. So one came home with me, got a coat of chalk paint, and holds my quilt. It is honored with the presence of an original drawing of a bee by my art instructor and friend, Mark Ballard.

Fifty-Two Tuesdays has a block with a beeskep on linen. There’s one in Fifty-Two Wednesdays, and I’ve used this motif in a series of beginning appliqué classes. I’m certain it will reappear many times. I sometimes find interesting bee buttons or charms that need a home in a textile hive.

My Daddy, the beekeeper, would have been surprised that those lab manuals were still around, I think. He built this house in 1946, after having owned at least two farms, then living in another house in town. so why did he keep science lab manuals for fourteen years? I know if he could see my fabric beehives, he would pretend to think they were silly, printing his workbook pages and sewing on them. But secretly he would be pleased. As I think he would be pleased that I treasure such wonderful memories of those glorious mornings checking the beehives with him.

Note: more details about Beauty and the Bees and working with wool are here.

Porch Swings

porch swing When 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.

Dimestore

Sandy1969

Lee Smith is one of my favorite Southern writers. I just bought her memoir and can’t wait to start reading it. I love her writing, I love memoirs, I love the South. So I know it will be a treasured experience to read her story. More than that, the title suggests that I might identify with some of her experiences.

My first job as a teenager was in a dimestore. Oh, I had earned money at home for various special chores. Like Truman Capote, I picked up pecans in the fall of the year. (Some grammarians would rather read that I gathered pecans, but that’s not what we said in Sycamore. Furthermore, as you read it, think pea-cans, to get the sound of the word right in your mind.) If you’ve ever read his “A Christmas Memory,” you can get an idea of the experience of fruitcake baking that took place at our house. I even had a spinster aunt to guide me as Capote did.

And, there was a day picking cotton (probably a couple of hours) at Uncle Hal’s field, and a day in the tobacco barn (also Uncle Hal’s). My Daddy had given up farming for building by the time I was born, but he realized the experience of field labor would be soon forgotten and that I should have those memories. He was right on both counts. Of course.

Oh, my job at the dimestore.

The year I turned fifteen, I was eligible to get a work permit and get a job. My mother took me to the school superintendent’s office to complete the appropriate paperwork. I recall Mr. Royal counseling me that, “this should not interfere with your schoolwork, of course.” Well, of course; it wouldn’t. I was the class nerd before nerd was a word. Nothing came before my schoolwork.

But now I was legal. On Saturdays, I reported to Elrod’s Five and Dime on Main Street in Ashburn. I guess I worked from 9:00 until 5:00, I don’t recall the exact hours. I do recall the pay. It was $5.00 and change. Literally. Cash. In a small manila envelope.

There were three of us teenagers working; the manager, and another adult full-time employee. Carl lifted all the heavy boxes, swept the oiled wood floors with sweeping compound, and helped with serving customers. Carolyn and I offered assistance to customers, kept shelves filled with reserves from beneath the old wooden counters, and watched for shoplifters.

Saturday was a busy day; there wasn’t much time for small talk, But, in the quiet times, I learned to bond with co-workers. We did not know each other so had nothing in common other than this experience. We learned from our customers, too. A wide range of society came through those doors, and the dimestore sold everything from toys to tools. There were clothing items for children and underwear for adults. The first time a customer asked for “step-ins,” I replied that we didn’t carry those. Carolyn had to translate for me. Oh. I taught her the difference in a wrench and screwdriver.

We sold bulk candy, learning to scoop from the bins and weigh on a scale now sold in antique stores. We mixed the sticky syrup that went into making “slushies” when they were new. Dare I say that we did not wash our hands frequently, and there were no plastic gloves? It was a simpler time.

We wrapped Christmas packages with the stern manager watching over our shoulder to ensure that the paper didn’t overlap too much and that we didn’t use too much scotch tape. The paper was quite thin, and tearing it was wasteful, too, so we learned to be fast and careful and frugal. There were no boxes or gift bags, so some oddly shaped packages required some creative thinking. The paper curling ribbon was final flourish. Today, even though I have wired ribbon on hand to decorate my packages, I keep some paper curling ribbon on hand.

I worked at Elrod’s on Saturdays, some weekdays in the summer, and during Christmas holidays for the last three years of high school. In the last year, the business relocated to a more modern building. I guess it was more comfortable; being air-conditioned and having slick tile floors. But it never seemed the same. The old building, the theatre next door, and the railroad track across the street were all part of the ambiance. That theatre sold the world’s greatest french fries. To this day, if I am served extraordinarily good, greasy, salty fries made from freshly sliced potatoes, I remember the ones Carl would go get for all of us at mealtime.

Now I guess it’s time to travel down Lee Smith’s memory lane with her Dimestore.

Photo: If Carl, Carolyn, and I were working teens these days, we would have numerous group selfies, I’m sure. But the best I can do here is a blurry scanned image of myself during those years. Yes, I made the dress.

Flag Bearer

Happy Fourth of July from Bunk Bates. I don’t know who Bunk is, or even if he is a he or a she. But this photo has been a part of my life for as long as I can recall. It was in my Great Aunt Nellie’s photo album. The name “Bunk Bates” was scrawled across the bottom.

I’m sure I asked and was told who that was, but I don’t recall the reply. But in scrolling through some old photos I had scanned into my computer, I saw it and decided it should become a part of my quilting story, too.

I printed the image on a vintage linen tablecloth and added color to the flag using watercolors. I embroidered 48 French knots to represent stars, added some free motion quilting, and layered it atop a piece of an old quilt. I guess it represents my freedom from all the rules of quilting, because I followed few of them.

The Calm that comes with Needle and Thread

blocks in blue work on porch There is something soothing about the pulling of thread through cloth. I find myself out of sorts if days (okay, even one day) go by without some time spent stitching.

Some say it’s a prayerful experience to sew. Some liken it to Zen meditation. Maybe it’s the rhythmic motion of the needle penetrating layers of fabric. Whatever it is, it soothes my soul. The ritual of pulling needle and thread through fabric has been a part of my life since childhood. Even when very busy with demands of family and motherhood, I had some sort of needlework project in the works. Then days might go by without much time spent with a needle in my hand, but just knowing it was waiting promised serenity.

During years that my mother and later my mother-in-law were in failing health, I learned to keep a sewing basket in the car at all times. Since each of them had also been seamstresses, I saw it brought peace to each of them to see me with a project in tow.

In the basket was always a project with a threaded needle in the midst of a stitch. That is still my strategy – without having to find the spot where I stopped, match the thread, locate the needle threader, I’m ready to take the next stitch. In preparing for a trip, I sometimes spend more time ensuring that I have enough to keep me busy than I do planning my wardrobe. I might not ever open the basket while away from home, but most times I do find some stitching moments.

I look at Ollie Jane’s Flower Garden and remember visiting with my mother while sewing those hexagons together. I look at Granny Zee’s Scrap Baskets and remember sitting with my mother-in-law as I stitched the fabrics she had kept from her mother’s stash. Both of these mothers of mine were suffering from confusion and dementia, but if words weren’t to be had, we communicated through our love of sewing. I stitched my soul to each of them during their last years of life.

The top photo is one of me working on Blocks in Blue while staying at the Inn at Iris Meadows in Waynesville, NC. That quilt was hand pieced and machine quilted in 2005. It finished at 27” square, and was one of my early attempts at free motion machine quilting. I used invisible nylon thread in the top, a matching cotton thread in the bobbin.

Mother’s Day Memories

Cleo 1951 On this Hallmark day when so many people feel guilty if they don’t visit their mothers, or buy them flowers, or take them out to eat with 40,000 of their closest friends waiting in line to eat at a restaurant, I’m thinking of calmer Mother’s Days.

When I was growing up, we observed the holiday with a gift for the Mothers in our lives. Sometimes, I bought my mother something. My Daddy would take me shopping to select something for her. I cringe when I remember some of the choices I made – but she displayed the horrible treasure anyway. And, I still have a ragged sheet of paper on which I wrote her a poem. I think I was about ten years old at the time. I recall hiding in the closet to secretly write it when I was supposed to be vacuuming the house. She scolded me for dawdling at my task, but all was forgiven when she read the poem on Sunday morning. I found it in her belongings after her death 46 years later and it’s tattered state leads me to believe she read it and reread it a few times.

We always wore corsages to church on Mother’s Day. The only time I recall Mama spending money at the florist was for a funeral, or for Mother’s Day. Mama wore a white corsage (because her mother was dead, she explained; none of this “passed away” language at our house) and I wore a red carnation. We always bought an orchid for Aunt Nellie (the spinster great-aunt who lived next door and who had “raised” Mama after she was orphaned at the age of four. “Orphaned” was Mama’s word, too.) I was a bit perplexed because the orchid wasn’t exactly white, but in Mama’s world, it worked. Since Aunt Nellie attended a different church from ours, we made a visit to her house on that Sunday morning to pin on her corsage before her departure.

When Granny (my paternal grandmother, Ollie Jane) lived with us, she wore a white corsage to church, too. Now that I think of this, I realize how important that corsage was to my mother – and I wonder, did I take care of that EVERY year after I left home? I know I did if I was there to visit and go to church with them on that day, and I do recall phoning the florist in our hometown and having a corsage delivered some years. I hope I didn’t forget any time, but I know if I did, I was forgiven.

There were occasions when I couldn’t get home for Mother’s Day. I remember Mama saying, “It doesn’t matter to me. Any day you come visit can be Mother’s Day. It doesn’t have to be when everyone else thinks it is.” I still felt guilty about it, though.

Now that I’m a mother, I do understand. Sometimes other things come up. The last thing I want my children to feel on Mother’s Day (or any day) is guilt if they have lives to live. I know they love me. And, any day they visit is Mother’s Day to me!

The photo is of my mother in 1951, the year I was born. The photo was taken by her father, a professional portrait photographer, and was hand tinted by her sister.

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