quilts on location – Sandy Gilreath

Annie Mae’s Lace in the Garden

I love Queen Anne’s Lace. Every year I get excited to see it emerging in our yard. I’m always intrigued to see where it decides to show up.

I scatter some seeds and sometimes they actually germinate and I have blooms where I intended. But there are many more along the edges of the flower beds, in the cracks in the driveway and between brick pavers.

This year, there are more clumps than ever, and several of those are growing along the picket fence in the back.

I decided to pose the quilt Annie Mae’s Lace with this year’s blooms. It was a dreary day yesterday, but I snapped a few photos anyway.

I wrote about Annie Mae’s Lace back in 2016. I was only posting one photo per blogpost back then, but the details of the making of the quilt are fully explained. Click here to read that post.

I’ve written about Queen Anne’s Lace before – a story about it during quarantine is here.

Another quilt with a sunprinted image of Queen Anne’s Lace is GBI Blues. That quilt and its story is here.

More sunprinted images (including some Queen Anne’s Lace) are assembled on my design wall right now. And, there are more in a box waiting to become something…

Flowers in a Jar

I don’t visit quilt shops much anymore. I have plenty of fabric on hand and I really love using the vintage fabric more than commercially produced quilt fabric. But the new lines of fabric are sometimes irresistible and I have a new quilt to prove that.

On a visit to a local quilt shop in search of border fabric for a project, a glorious panel of fabric caught my eye. Flowers in a jar….my favorite kind of arrangement. Simple. Pure. Country Life. I bought it along with a couple of yards of coordinating fabric for the back. My thoughts were, “I’ll just baste this with batting, sit down and quilt it and have a quick lovely quilt.” Right.

I came home and looked up the fabric online (Adel in Autumn by Sandy Gervais) just to see what others had done with it. I stumbled on a blogpost by piccolo studio.com and saw her quilt. Oh, my! I had to do my version of that.

I love raw edges in my art pieces, but not so much in traditional quilts. And, I am not a fan of fusible appliqué. But that seemed the only way to go with this.

After days of laborious cutting, I was ready to attach it to my background (pieced with an inner border of the coordinating fabric), and quilt.

I did free motion machine appliqué on the flowers and vase first, to secure all layers. I planned to echo the design all the way to the edges, but filling all that negative space was going to result in nearly straight lines near the edge. So I added more stems and leaves and berries in the center to echo around, giving more bumps and curves for detail in the quilting.

I used some 30 wt threads both on the appliqué and in the added stems. Echo quilting is done with 100 wt silk thread. In this photo, you see that even with the added stems for echo quilting, I resorted to my irregular freemotion grid to complete the quilting to the edges.

When it came time to add a label, it was obvious. I had this sweet multicolored dotted fabric that looked like the contents of a canning jar. I used watercolor crayons to paint the lid and add some shading on the sides of the jar (more about painting on fabric here).

This quilt went with us on a recent outing to nearby state parks. It was quite showy in the fresh air…just like the flowers depicted on it.

The quilt is a large wall hanging, or lap quilt. It measures 48″ x 53″.

Cypress Trees, A Covered Bridge, and some Quilts

Glorious fall days are made for exploration and photography.

One day last week we took a ride to George L. Smith State Park, loading the car with cameras, quilts, and picnic paraphernalia. The cypress trees here are gorgeous any time of year, but now their leaves are golden and red. And the tannin in the water enhances their reflections, so the beauty is doubled.

Above is an image of a cypress “knee”, a structure thought to be a buttress to the tapering trunk in soft muddy soil. Cypress trees growing outside of a swampy area do not form these knees.

I loved photographing the natural beauty and the covered bridge is a great background for a few quilts.

We photographed quilts inside and outside the bridge and perched them on other spots in the park, too.

Dots and Vines is a graphic quilt you’ve seen in other posts. It may be my most photogenic quilt – I grab it most every time I head out the door. I love its bold colors in contrast with the weathered wood.

Likewise, Heaven in a Wildflower has posed in other settings, too. Like Dots and Vines, the blocks of solid color are especially vivid in natural surroundings. Note to self: make more quilts from solids.

The quilt above is not one I made, but one I was given. My dear friend Mary Ellen is a most prolific quilter and sent this star beauty on blue to me. She’s the inspiration for all these quilts-on-location shots. She and her photographer husband Bruce live in Minnestota and they set the bar for photographing quilts in rustic locations. I’ve written about her photo journey before here.

We weren’t the only ones enjoying this serene spot on this glorious day; I caught this flash of color out the window of the bridge.

And it was picture day for a some four-year-olds from a nearby preschool. Here they wait in line to head to the playground.

This has been a busy week. I took more quilts on this trip so there will be more posts to follow sharing those. And, my guild had our Little Girls Challenge this week – so that’s coming, too.

More details on the Dots and Vines quilt can be found here.

More details about Heaven in A Wildflower are here.

And, we’ve visited other covered bridges with quilts here and here.

Dirt Roads

On our most recent ride about, we found ourselves in Pitts, Ga with cameras in hand to photograph sunflowers and old buildings. We did that…and bought goodies from Oliver Farm, too. Sunflower oil, okra flour, brown rice grits were among our purchases.

The sunflowers didn’t disappoint…and the old buildings served as great backdrops for the quilts that went for the ride.

But it was the dirt that thrilled me. I got right out in the field with the sunflowers. The blooms were as high as my head and about the size of my head, too. But the dirt …oh, the dirt! We were in a county neighboring the one where I grew up. And the dirt in the coastal plain region is very different from that of the piedmont where we now live. This is the dirt that I used to make mud pies and gopher houses and embed in my skinned knees.

I didn’t have to take off my shoes to know exactly how that dirt would feel between my toes. Those little rocks of limonite mixed with the sand speak home to me. Hopscotch, skidding bicycle tires, carving a trail with a stick…all those memories are tied to this dirt.

We succeeded in photographing sunflowers and old buildings, but found other treasures, too.

In a cypress habitat, we found some other interesting vegetation to shoot, but it was the road that entranced me. That dirt again…oh, and the beehives!

Jim has always said he can feel his blood pressure drop when we visit Turner County. Well, there’s that; life is slower. But these dirt roads just feel like Sunday afternoon drives and going to visit relatives.

My Daddy farmed before I came along…so he walked behind a mule in dirt like this. Barefooted. Yes. He plowed without shoes. I can understand why. I wanted to take my shoes off and walk out in a field. I didn’t. But maybe next time….

Oliver Farm has self guided tours where you can read about the old buildings in Pitts, Ga, and find your way to fields of sunflowers in all stages, a cypress habitat, and lots of fresh air.

Trees at Smithgall Woods

Earlier this week, we found ourselves roaming around some of the mountains in north Georgia. We ended up having a picnic lunch beside a creek at Smithgall Woods State Park. The parking area was bounded by these fabulous trees – some species of pine, I think – so I was glad I happened to have some quits in the car.

This tree quilt is one of several I made many years ago, adapting a pattern by Caryl Bryer Fallert. The tree is appliquéd to a batik background fabric which still pleases me. The quilting is minimal stippling with an invisible thread (the early part of my quilting life, remember?) and I never gave it a name or attached a label. I actually made a couple of these as gifts; this one is still hanging around. I think seeing it perched on a fence under those trees is worth the years of storage. It measures 40” square.

I had another quilt in the car; one I’ve written about before. But it is a showy quilt and wanted to nestle in the branches of one of these trees. So we tossed Remember Me up on a limb and snapped some photos. Details of the story behind and construction of this quilt are in an earlier post here.

My loyal companion helping with placement and photography. Life is oh-so-wonderful with him!

We weren’t the only ones enjoying a bite of lunch in this bucolic setting.

Indian Springs

On a sunny day in February, we loaded up cameras and quilts and headed out on a ride-about.

We drove to Indian Springs State Park, where Jim and I can both travel down memory lane way back to our childhoods. Our personal histories are not quite as old as the park – established in 1927, it is the oldest state park in Georgia.

Jim and his Dad enjoyed the swings at Indian Springs around 1950.

My sister went to college near this park and my parents and I would visit and take her there for a picnic. Jim and his family went there for visits, too. It’s possible that our mothers carried quilts to Indian Springs, too. Their purpose would not be to photograph the quilts, but to sit on them on the ground.

On this day, we hung quilts in trees, draped them on benches and railings, hung them on gates. I think the stone walls, lovely trees, and big rocks are a nice backdrop for textiles of all sizes.

The largest quilt we carried was Seventy and Still Wearing Jeans, a quilt I made for Jim’s birthday a couple of years ago. We posed it on fences, stone walls, and on a really big old stump. Details about this quilt are here.