sandygilreathjournal – Page 7

Is It Fall, Y’all?

It’s still hot. The calendar says tomorrow will be fall, but temperatures still reach 90 everyday.

Nonetheless, I have some pumpkins out in my house. I love the fall colors. Maybe it’s the vivid blue skies when the humidity drops, maybe it’s the complimentary colors of the turning leaves and that glorious atmosphere. I wince whenever Tess, our guild’s Challenge Queen, requires a bit of orange in a quilt, but I don’t know why. I could just always put a pumpkin in.

In recent years, I have collected pumpkins from other artists including needle-felted beauties by a north Ga artist, wooden pumpkins a friend made, and several pottery ones from Shelby West and Charlie Bob West. But many of my autumn decorations are of the fabric variety.

Fall Baskets was made in 2008, using autumn colors of batiks and quilting cottons. This may be the first quilt I designed using Electric Quilt software. Now using EQ7, I sometimes turn to this software to audition such quilt features as block size and width of borders and sashing. This one finished at 45″ square.

This Sunbonnet Sue piece is one of the first times I made one block ( 9″ x 12″) and said “done.” Quilting, a binding, and it’s a remarkably fun way to welcome the season. The block is from a book by Betty Alderman. I guess it’s unnecessary to point out that the apron is a little brown check.

I have a few quilts with pumpkins on them. Some wool appliqued pumpkins, some needleturn appliqued ones, and even this fused one (sorry, I don’t recall the name of this pattern or the designer).

My favorite fall quilt is Stella: Harvest Princess, finished in 2004. It uses raw edge techniques in the manner of Rosemary Eichorn. Fall motifs were cut from a commercial autumn print or two, pinned to a base fabric, and free motion quilted with a flannel layer as batting. The technique was fun, the motifs whimsical, and the learning process was transformative. I use this raw edge appliqué method still. Looking at this piece for the first time in almost a year, I wonder why I don’t play with those decorative stitches on my machine any more, or use metallic thread very often. It was FUN to do this experimentation. It measures 25” x 16”.

There is more to Stella’s story – there was quite a learning curve for this one. I saw the technique on Simply Quilts, bought a book by Rosemary and studied her methods, cut and pinned the raw edge motifs in the fall of 2003. Then it sat in a basket for almost a year, waiting for my free motion quilting skills to improve to the point of completion. Finally I dared to load the machine with some invisible thread and give it a go. When asked at my guild how long it took to make it, my answer then was, “a day and a half, or a year and a half, depending on how you look at it; actual construction time, or time from beginning the process to sewing on the label.” That’s often the most direct answer I can give. I work in spurts on some things.

A couple of years ago, Jim and I spent a lovely fall day in Porterdale, GA, where we saw hundreds of pumpkins for sale in and around an old jailhouse. I took many photos, planning to make a quilt someday called Pumpkins in the Jailhouse. Maybe this year will be the year that gets done.

Portrait of Red Coneflower

A recently purchased linen doily reminded me of a mat for a framed portrait. I didn’t have a photo on fabric that fit, and wanted to stitch something on this marvelous piece of linen with the wide handmade tatting.

A simple coneflower is always fun to appliqué, and I had seen somewhere the idea of using a spool of thread as the vase. So, a few snippets of fabric, a good tv show in the background, a bright light at my side, and the stitching began.

Once the appliqué and embroidery were done (see the French knots at the base of the seed head?), it was time to find a base to set off the oval. The French General print in red was perfect. So, I layered wool batting beneath the oval, threaded up the machine with silk thread, and echoed the appliqué with free motion quilting.

Once I cut away the remaining batting from behind the red fabric, it was time to seed stitch the piece to an old quilt as the back of the assembly. A yellow and white pieced basket quilt from an antique store fit the bill, but the white was a bit stark. A scrap of red ticking came to the rescue, adding another layer of matting to the frame job.

As I neared the finish, I hadn’t come up with a title. But my original plan to let the doily serve as an inner mat for a portrait was still on my mind, so Portrait of Red Coneflower was simple enough. One more vintage doily (with a history and stains to prove it) served as the label.

The finished piece measures 16” x 20” and the hanging sleeve utilized a leftover strip of the red ticking.

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.

Ruth’s Drapery Dress

I met a new quilting sister today. We have a lot in common. We grew up learning how to sew, making our own clothes, and each of us added quilting to our lives about 15 years ago.

Ruth does almost all her quilting by hand, in an immaculate room in an immaculate house (I said we have a lot in common, not everything). Her work is deliberate and beautiful; she enjoys making quilts and other things from cloth, too, like purses and tote bags.

As we shared stories of our first quilts, I mentioned that mine in the 1970s was a pathetic patchwork made from scraps of drapery fabric from my mother’s sample books. Oh, we shared that, too – mothers who made draperies. Ruth’s mother was an interior designer at Sears and would sometimes bring home remnants of drapery fabric, or imperfect panels. Ruth would disassemble them and reuse the fabric.

One of her proudest moments came from a piece of fabric that was a lovely blue floral. Ruth worked hard to stitch that into a beautiful dress. She was so proud of it and eager to wear it on her first date. In those days, the shoes, purse, all the accessories had to be just right. As she described the preparation, I could imagine her twirling about her living room, light on her feet as the gathered skirt billowed about her tiny waist.

The first stop on their evening out was at his house to meet his parents. She was confident about her appearance until she entered their living room and was invited to take a seat on their sofa. A sofa on which she would have become invisible. She and the furniture were wearing the same fabric.

What a shame. All that work to make such a lovely dress that would only be worn one time.

Photos: Ruth doesn’t have any of her fabric left. But I do have some of my first quilt left; the squares of drapery fabric which haven’t disintegrated. No, you can’t see the whole thing. But it measures 87” x 94” and is hand quilted. Hand quilted by community women who must still talk about me for asking them to needle this jumble of fabrics, varying in thickness and fiber content. The backing is flannel. The whole assembly is ugly, yet warm. That’s the crumpled bundle you see in the top photo.

Here, in a detail photo, I focused on a fabric that I think might fit the description Ruth gave. It looks a lot like the fabric covering the first couch I bought.

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

G’s Treehouse

A couple of years ago a friend of mine told me she was having a baby, a little girl. This beautiful mother-to-be loved a particular line of fabric which included birds and flowers.

I gathered together some of the fabric from the collection, made a tree, planted some flowers at the base, and constructed a birdhouse. I had a ball!

A note about the some fabric: just as I never follow a pattern exactly, I don’t think I’ve ever made anything solely from one designer’s collection. Though the collections are a great way to get coordinating colors and a variety of scales and patterns, I find they are often a bit static. I like to add a zinger or a focus, or just something different from another source. In this case, the collection didn’t have a fabric that said “tree trunk” to me, so I used a little brown check. Likewise, there was not the right blue for the birdhouse. And I’m confident that the leaves were cut from green fabrics from the collection and perhaps from others as well.

I cut the background to the finished size of the quilt (38″ x 65″), adding a bit in all directions to allow for shrinkage that comes with appliqué and quilting. The tree, branches, and leaves were all freely cut using the eyeball method on top of the background. Needle turn appliqué was used throughout. I like raw edges on leaves (as in After the Chlorophyll, Shade Tree Mechanic, and a few other projects) but this was to be a baby quilt to be used, and I didn’t want fraying to be an issue when washed. Nor did I want the little one getting stray threads in her hand or mouth.

Broderie perse (a fancy word for fussy cutting) was used with the flower centers at the base of the tree. The birds were larger than those printed on the fabric, but I mimicked the birds the designers had used when I made patterns for mine.

The tree bark was quilted with a dark brown thread, the rest with a matching thread that simply gave texture. The exception to this was some of the embellishing stitches around the flower heads. In some cases, there were details printed on the fabric that couldn’t easily be cut out and appliquéd, so I recaptured those with the quilting stitch using a heavier thread. All threads used were cotton, and the batting was cotton. That is often my preferred fiber for all components of a quilt, but certainly is the case when it’s for a baby. Seed stitch was used to embroider the seeds the bird on the ground is eating.

All quilting was done on the sewing machine, hand-guided, free motion stitching. A variety of motifs were used, including echoing, vines with leaves, curved crosshatching, vaguely parallel lines.

Now G is having a little brother. Hmmm….

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.

Disconnected and Reconnecting

mountain vista We spent a few days in the mountains. The temperatures were nice, the scenery beautiful, a delightful getaway. One of the things we got away from was internet access. At the top of the mountain, you were in touch with the world. But our cabin was at the foot of the falls, so we were off the internet pipeline.

That was a good thing.

We did have a television in the cabin, but saw no need to see if it worked. A bubbling stream was entertainment enough.

One purpose for this annual getaway is to reconnect with my husband’s family. Their reunion has been held at a state park for many years; we go to see the cousins and catch up.

I have come to know most of these people by name over the years, but I don’t share a history with them. I can’t engage in the “we would go visit…” and “I remember when he…” conversations.

But I do have some history with Charlie. He is my cousin-in-law, I guess. When we first saw each other at this gathering some years ago, we shared one of those, “don’t I know you somewhere?” moments. A few minutes of conversation led one of us to say, “I was a math teacher.” “Oh, Rock Eagle.”

We had seen each other at professional conferences over the years, but had never had the occasion to realize we shared the same last name and make sense of that. Now we did.

As the years went by and conversations grew longer, we learned that not only did we share the same profession and know many common colleagues, but that a cousin of mine had been Charlie’s mentor teacher early in his career. And that another cousin of mine had been his teacher in high school.

Our most recent conversation revealed more commonalities. We are both married to spouses who always see life through the lens of a camera, both couples enjoy traveling the backroads and exploring the unexpected side trip, and we take pleasure in enjoying every experience that presents itself.

One of the nice things about getting older is that you have had more opportunities to meet people who share the things you do, it’s easy to validate the joys in life, and those connections to the past are treasures. Whether sharing war stories from teaching, a love of the outdoors, or simply the appreciation of traveling a back road, it’s always fun to reconnect with friends like Charlie.

My sewing basket does not need wifi, so it got its normal workout on this tri rescued linens p. There were some antique stores, and I did rescue some linens. Some of the green napkins you see in the center have already been cut up and sewn to something else.

Strollin’

Strollin' My latest art quilt features a guinea. I love these funny looking birds; the pattern on their feathers reminds me of little old women wearing black calico dresses, and I love their spirit of self-confidence. I guess it should be noted that I admire them from a distance. I don’t think our neighbors would like for us to have them on our property.

My guineas must be relegated to quilts and buttons and such.

Strollin' closeup I found a black and white batik fabric a couple of years ago that said “guinea” to me. I made an album quilt of Sunbonnet Sue-style guineas and called it Guineas on Parade.

The art quilt here uses the same fabric and pattern I drew for that larger quilt. This one is needleturn appliquéd onto a brown and white checked background (more on the philosophy of that here). The sunflower in the border is raw edge appliqué on a brown hand-dyed fabric. All quilting is hand-guided, freemotion quilting using cotton thread.

Strollin' back closeup This piece finishes at 16” x 20”. For the back, I used a delightful batik I bought in Paducah. Even though it’s on the back, it harkens to my philosophy of “using the good stuff“.

In addition to Guineas on Parade, I’ve included guinea buttons on a block in 52 Tuesdays, and an appliquéd guinea in 52 Wednesdays.

I found a delightful poem about guineas online. In part, it reads

They seldom walk –‘tis a run or a trot,

Snatching bugs left and right, one for each polka-dot.

The poem in its entirety can be found here.

When I see a guinea, or hear one, it takes me back to a sunny day of softball practice where the “buck-wheat” cry of these birds interrupted our practice. Those friends, the serenity of a spring day, the joy of playing in the rural outdoors, all come to mind and I feel a smile spreading across my face.

The Seed Stitch

I’ve been delighting in a new stitch in the past few months, the seed stitch. It is a simple little stitch which is carefree and easy, but adds an amazing punch to textile work in many situations.

If you are a stitcher and haven’t used this versatile stitch lately, give it some thought. Directions and video tutorials are abundant online. Just search “seed stitch for embroidery”, or you’ll learn knitting.

seed stitch on floozie In recent years, I used the seed stitch in this block of Floozies, a quilt I made using a Sue Spargo kit she called Bird Dance in 2013. In this case, the stitch was done as an embellishment. The seed stitch can be seen in the area under the bird’s feet.

detail of Mourning Flight

In Susan Lenz’s class I took in May and wrote about it in detail here, I realized that this stitch could be used as a quilting stitch, to secure several layers. In this case, I used a heavy black thread making the stitch itself quite obvious. This photo is one from Mourning Flight, detailed here, where all the hand quilting is accomplished using this simple stitch.

seed stitch in car But recently, I’ve used the seed stitch on another piece, this white baby dress on blue, still untitled. Here I’m using a fine thread (30-weight cotton) which matches the background. The stitch is rather small, so all that is visible is the dimple created when the stitch secures the top, batting and backing. The photo here is one I took while riding in the car. (The seed stitch is in the area of the white in the lop left quadrant of the photo.) On a road trip yesterday to see and photograph a rare bird, I got a lot of stitching done. I was not the driver.

The seed stitch is rather random in nature, neither the length nor direction of the stitch having to be consistent, making it a great travel project. Much of the seed stitch on Mourning Flight was also done in the car, this time on a birding trip to Florida.

seed stitch intended pink basket And remember the pile of vintage linens I brought home here? Well, salvageable parts of one of those old tablecloths has become this piece. After quilting the inner pink border and the setting triangles densely, the striped center is a bit puffy. So, I’ll be adding some seed stitch in this area.

One caveat: the seed stitch does not produce an even result on the back of the piece, so an additional back will be needed. But if you plan an additional layer on the back, or you intend to frame the work, the seed stitch is an interesting one to consider for securing layers. I’ve planned for that on the white baby dress, using an extraordinarily thin fabric (harem cloth) as the backing now. And on the pink/green piece, the label will be placed over the seed-stitched area of the back of the finished product.

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