vintage linens – Sandy Gilreath

Linen Luxuries

I went shopping and brought home some linen treasures. They are all glorious to look at. I can’t wait to stitch on them, piece with them, and maybe dip one in the dye pot. The textures, the colors, the glorious weaves inspire me.

Yesterday’s haul included four linen tea towels from India, a vintage French tea towel (the checked fabric in the photo), a white on white woven towel, and a pristine square linen tablecloth.

I can’t know all their stories. But I can imagine…

Some have memories of India in those huge indigo vats where they dip linen to get this rich vibrant color. These textiles are new. Woven and dyed to sell to someone. How many middle men shared in my money before I got them home? I don’t know, but I know I love all the hands that brought them to me. And I can’t wait to stitch on them.

Those indigo tea towels were so gorgeous, I bought all four that the store had to offer. I hung three of them in the kitchen so that I can just enjoy their beauty before cutting and sewing with them…I might even use them as tea towels…

One has memories of France. In whose kitchen did this towel do its work? I can imagine it hanging on a wire hook against a stone wall in a kitchen with a brick floor and copper pots all about. This is the kind of textile that inspires the French General collection of fabrics from Moda. I’ve loved making things with those reproduction fabrics, but there’s nothing like the real thing to stir my soul.

I couldn’t resist pairing the “new to me” French towel with some other things already in my stash…awaiting the right companion.

This bit of wool applique (from a Maggie Bonanomi pattern) is waiting for more companions to make a new quilt…it’s coming together with this new acquisition.

And a woven textile of white on white – I’m not sure of its origin. It has stains to show it’s been a worker, but the beauty of the weave caught my eye. I might have been hesitant at the price until I saw the “S” monogram. Yep, it came home with me. This one might get a bath in a dye pot. The stains would disappear, and the weave would become more pronounced.

I love imagining the places these fibers have been. And I love imagining the possibilities of what they may become in my hands. I’m not certain of those outcomes yet, but I do know that when I see them, or parts of them, I will remember a glorious day of strolling, shopping, browsing, antiquing, lunching, languishing over coffee with my soulmate. There’s nothing more beautiful than that.

Is it a coincidence that the fabrics I bought yesterday are red, white, and blue? I think so…but it’s certainly a good time to share them. Another red/white/blue story is here…and some of the Moda French General fabrics are in the quilt here. The blue and tan quilt in the background of some photos is described in more detail here.

Sewing To Go

I try to keep a travel sewing project ready at all times. I like to have something on hand to do whether I have a few minutes to spend on the porch, or we are heading out for a day trip, or we are off on an adventure for days or weeks.

My latest hand piecing project has been these blue and brown spools. When I don’t have another project for hand stitching, or for stitching on the go, I’ve been making spools. I put them on the design wall yesterday to evaluate my progress. I arrange them to check color placement and balance before sewing more together, and to choose colors for the next batch to be prepared. I had sewn twelve blocks together at first and liked them so well that I prepared more. And, now again, I need more.

These blocks are posing on linen tablecloth – another found treasure in an antique store heap. I do use the tablecloths for their intended purposes sometimes…I don’t cut them all up for sewing.

These are all linen. Linen lends itself to hand piecing very well. It’s easy to slip the needle through the fabric between the threads. And hand fatigue is lessened if you can do that rather than pierce a tightly woven fabric. These finish at 3″ square.

All this linen is vintage. A lot is from worn clothing of mine and Jim’s, some vintage table linens, and some remnants I’ve found in antique stores. Often there are boxes of linens almost being given away. A stain here, a tear there; not a problem for me. I’m going to cut it up or dip it in the dye pot anyway.

This project rides in this darling little vintage train case. I loved that someone else had taken the time to clean it up and decorate it for me. The exterior appealed, but when I opened it up and saw that blue bow on the fabric lining, well, I guess I looked at the price tag…but maybe not. It had to be mine! I wrote about it earlier here: https://sandygilreath.com/on-the-road-again/.

The case holds some spool pieces (trapezoids and squares) that I’ve already cut out and pinned together as a block, some more pieces stamped on more linen, a pair of scissors with serrated edges, and my sewing roll.

These pieces are prepared using a set of stamps for this purpose. Talk about portable projects – the stamps and fabric ink can be carried along for the ride, too!

I used an old cutter quilt that had been dipped in the indigo dye pot as the basis of my sewing roll. It has a pocket for a spool of thread or two, a place for my needle threader, thimble, some pins and needles.

Maybe this need for portability came from the times I got last minute calls to head somewhere to help out with an ill or elderly relative. Those hours in waiting rooms can be very long with empty hands. So I still try to have some ready-to-go sewing at hand.

Maybe we should take a trip!

Old Indigos

On a sunny day during a bleak week in January, we went for a ride about and took along a quilt. Old Indigos posed beautifully at Auchumpkee Creek Covered Bridge.

You know I love indigo…and I love vintage fabrics…and I love playing in the dyepot. This project combined all that.

I cut up some old indigo fabrics and appliqued a few flowers. I used some fabrics I had dipped in the walnut dye bath as backgrounds, and just stitched simple flowers.

Since all these rectangles were different sizes, assembling them could have been complicated. To piece them together, I would place them on the design wall, measure carefully, and cut precisely sized bits of khaki linen (my “sashing” fabric of choice for this project), then sew together. I’ve done that before and it’s not too hard using some gridded paper. But this time, I used a much simpler process. I arranged the floral blocks in a pleasing manner, pinned them to the khaki linen, and appliqued those rectangles down, too.

The final measurements for this project are 27” x 31”, perfect for spilling out of a basket or draping across a piece of furniture.

I finished this quilt almost a year ago…but just haven’t been posting on this site. Technical issues have convinced me that it’s time to find another way to share.

I’ll be moving my stories to other formats. Exactly what form that will take is uncertain: some Facebook, some Instagram, maybe a book.

The site and the 250 or so posts I’ve already done will be here on my website until early February, at least. If there are old stories you want to reread, or to save, now’s the time.

I’m on Facebook as Sandra Hasty Gilreath, on Instagram as Sandy A Beekeepers Daughter.

Little Pillow in Blue and Brown

What better way to spend rainy afternoons than playing with fabric?

We had a lot of rain last week, so I was inside the house more than usual in the summertime.

After weeks and months of working on big projects with other peoples’ styles and color choices in mind, I took a break to play.

You may remember some of these pieces when I wrote about walnut dyeing here and here.

I pulled out some pieces I had overdyed in walnut or indigo and combined them with others lying around.

Bits of vintage fabric in browns and blues, some fun improvisational embroidery, and I had a little pillow. I used simple straight stitches, seed stitches, and a few fly stitches to embellish the pieces in the log cabin block.

The back of the pillow is made with vintage linen from South Carolina.

This is one of my doll chairs sitting on the buffet in the dining room. The chair is about 20″ tall and the pillow measures 7″ square (well, sorta -it’s a bit wonky).

A quick little project is always rewarding and the stitching is soul soothing. I love my little chairs – now they all need pillows. I’ve assembled some smaller blocks for pincushions, too.

Note: Since this post was published, I’ve been asked about the quilt in the background. Here is a photo of the full quilt. And an earlier blog post here described its construction. This earlier post was when I only posted one photo per blog – but more on this is coming soon.

Iron Water

Remember the really pretty tatting I dipped in the walnut dye? I wanted it darker, began doing some research and learned about iron water. We have plenty of rusty nails around here, so soaking them in a jar with vinegar and water was not a complicated process.

I had attempted some rust dyeing in the past with less than spectacular results. But I hadn’t mixed iron water with the walnut dyed fabric.

Below are images from baths in the iron water only, and some things dyed in walnut dye, then iron water.

Before: this is a bit of linen sheet and some old tatting previously dyed in indigo, some old tatting not yet dyed.

After: those same pieces after a bath in iron water only…no walnut on these pieces.

It’s always a delight to see how different threads take the dye differently. The monogram on this linen towel is stitched with cotton thread. The linen towel was only in the walnut dye, the tatting was in walnut dye, then iron water.

Here are the two sides of a bit of a damask tablecloth. These were soaked in the walnut dye a few days, then dipped in the iron water.

This linen towel shows how powerful the iron water is combined with walnut. This whole piece was not in the iron bath, just the walnut…but the residue on my gloves made these splotches. I find the spots interesting, not offensive.

The top doily here was dyed with walnuts, then composted. It was unintentional composting…as I was rinsing these new pieces, I discovered the doily in the leaves – left there from the earlier walnut dyeing day.

I am very pleased with the results of this combo…soaking in the walnut dye, then dipping in the iron water. Lesson learned: make more iron water. I had experimented with a small quantity, so only small pieces resulted from this trial. But more, more, more, to come….

This is the featured photo on the website, but for those who just read the email version, you would miss this….I always think I need to mix browns with blue, you know….but maybe some with green, too.

The recent blog post on walnut dyeing is here…if you missed it or want to refresh your memory on the before and after images from only a walnut bath.

Before and After

In the past week, three friends have given me fabric and linens. I’ve received wool, barkcloth, commercial linens, and handmade lace. Am I excited? Oh, yes! As I dig deeper in the boxes, I discover more and more treasures.

Some of these treasures have been swimming in the walnut bucket. I even strained the old walnuts out to make a cleaner bath for them.

These are the same walnuts I collected in the fall. I put them in a bucket of water, let them ferment a while, then dipped some treasures. I wrote about the first ones here.

That mixture sat through the winter months. Yesterday, Jim helped me pour the mixture through a bit of cheesecloth to see what months of stewing would do to the dye. I photographed the results in pairs…before and after.

I love the texture of barkcloth. Both pieces you see here are nice, but the darker one seems more interesting to me.

Bits of an old petticoat white, then darker. I love tucks….and I’ll remove some of the stitching later. It acts as a resist to the dye.

This tatting is gorgeous in its original state, but the darker color really enriches it. The top row in the image is the color all of it was before dyeing.

I had hoped to dye some of the tatting black. I love this coffee shade I got, but the next step is to dip some in an iron water bath to make it darker. I have nails sitting in water now.

Maybe my favorite fabric to come out of the dye was this bit of damask. I love how the dye increases the contrast in the woven design. Yes, more of this fabric is soaking in walnut dye now!

A couple of oval doilies before and after a walnut swim.

In December, our friend Paul was visiting and told me he had bought some hats to wear to work. But they were white. VERY white. He wondered if there was some way he could get them darker. I said, “I happen to have some walnuts in a bucket of water outside if you want to try that.” He was willing to let me dip his hat. Here are the results. Paul was happy.

I guess you noticed most all these brown beauties were posing on an indigo dyed linen tablecloth….I can’t wait to stitch some of this blue and brown together!

Heart Project Update

Today is the last day of February, time to report on my heart project.

I did not stitch just one heart per day….nearly fifty are on this piece now. One stage of the process is complete now…the appliqué. Well, it’s complete until I decide to add something.

I do plan to add some buttons and to quilt it at some point. But for now, it’s a linen tablecloth with some hearts appliquéd on it.

I did stitch a heart on the backside of the ragged spot and stitched around it on the front. It may be left this way. Or not.

I’ve been asked about the size of the piece. It is now……33″ x 47”. The original tablecloth measured 33” x 84”, a runner for a French farmhouse. I removed one end and reattached it to make it a size that works for me.

I will let this project incubate for a while as I work on other projects. At some point, it will be quilted. I enjoyed the stitching on linen so much that I may decide to hand quilt this one. Time will tell.

Red Hearts on a Quilt

If it’s February, then I need to stitch hearts.

Somehow, every year, the second page of the calendar sends me to needles and thread with hearts in mind.

This is not the time of year for me to be taking great nature photos to use in my Good Morning Girls text messages. Yes, I’m still doing that…today is day 665, by my count. During December, I sent photos of Christmas ornaments, our Santa collection, and amaryllis blooms. This January had warm days with some still blooming plants in our yard, but things are a bit bleak outdoors now. A few daffodils are up, but I needed a photo scheme for February.

I’ve wanted to learn more about photographing indoor vignettes…some “sewing still lifes”, I guess you could call them. So yesterday, I pulled some hearts out to shoot. I found some jewelry, some buttons, and some fabric hearts I had made.

As I played with the red hearts and the companion fabrics I pulled to use as background, I began a plan for a heart quilt.

I made a blue one a few years ago, Loving Blues , by stitching hearts on blocks, then assembling them.

This toile heart is posing on the linen tablecloth I plan to use as my background fabric. See the red border already in place?

This time, my plan is to start with a linen tablecloth from Europe. It has a red border woven in, so that’s convenient…and I won’t have to assemble blocks when I’m done with the hearts.

I’m planning some appliqué, some embroidery, and some who-knows-what for the hearts. I’ll use many of my vintage fabrics, but I have some nice commercial prints that I’ll likely include. I’m thinking one heart per day in February…but these plans may change. They often do. I won’t bore you every day, but I will keep you posted.

And I’ve begun with a heart made from my sister’s red and pink toile drapes that she moved with her from house to house over some 40 years.

I suspended this favorite February pendant of mine over the back of a quilt with red in it. I’m liking this kind of play with the camera.

108

In the last couple of years, I’ve been obsessed with circles.

One of my explorations dealt with blue and white circles appliquéd to a brown linen tablecloth. For all these projects, I didn’t count the circles…just made them until I thought I had enough. I laid the blue circles on the brown linen until I liked their distribution, pinned them in place, and started appliqueing them.

I wanted to hand quilt this larger piece using the seed stitch. I love the texture that stitch gives. I’ve used it on smaller pieces a lot, but wanted to see it on a big piece. I used Aurifil #12 thread, stitched a double seed stitch overall though only the top and batting. Then I added a backing layer (a piece of an indigo overdyed linen sheet) and stitched through all three layers with the same thread around the circles.

I never had a title in mind for this as I worked – I presumed one would come to me. My working title was “blue circles on brown”. That could have worked for a final title. But as I neared the end of the stitching, I decided to count the circles. 107. That could work..it’s a prime number and I like those. But, I needed a label on the back. If that label was a circle, I’d have a total of 108. 108 has meaning in my life and I love for the quilt title to have meaning.

I grew up in Turner County. During the years I was learning to drive, our county’s number was 108. So, the title of this quilt was born.

Between 1957 and 1970, county codes were used as part of an auto’s car tag. The first numbers on the tag were based on the respective population of the county. Out of 159 counties in Georgia, my home was 108^th in population those years.

Notice that on the label, I used some of the trims I’ve recently dyed with black walnuts. It’s tempting to “save” those precious bits we made or altered, but I’m in the business of using them. Here the tatting that took the dye so well borders the 108^th circle. Oh, and the fabric circle is cut from the center of the napkin with the embellished corner.

I made Dots and Vines, which you’ve already seen, stitched some circles on a bit of linen for a scarf, and made these blue circles and appliquéd them to a remnant of a brown linen tablecloth. I have lots of prepared circles waiting to become part of another quilt, too. The post on Dots and Vines is here.

I guess this little brown linen pillow with buttons attached fits the circle category, too.

I’ve referenced my love of the blue and brown connection before. One post describing a rolled up quilt exploration is here. And a sweet little case I found that’s blue and brown and toile and bows is here.

This finished quilt measures 40″ x 60″, a lap quilt for reading or watching tv. And, yes, for napping.

Quarantined in Eden

A friend called to remind me that I had not yet written about my journal quilt from my time at home during Covid. She’s right – so here it is.

I’ve kept a daily journal for years. And I’ve always loved to start an entry with “home all day”. But with dashing here and there running errands, going to meetings, and just out and about, those at-home days were sometimes hard to find.

In the Spring of 2020, things changed. Every day was “home all day”.

Soon I decided a visual record of these days should be part of a Covid journal quilt. It was easy to review my journal entries and tabulate things. The legend is included on the quilt…a yellow (his favorite color) backslash for Jim, blue forward slash for me…to clarify our days at home. I included January and February of 2020 for comparison of our normal days before the pandemic.

My beginning plan was to document the days we were spending at home. An old linen calendar provided the perfect stitching background. ( I just happened to have a calendar from 1986 – a year in which the days of the week and dates were the same as 2020 – in my stash. And later, a 1971 tea towel provided the right day/date combination for 2021.)

As time went on, I continued to think of other things to include in this journal quilt. Our time spent working in the yard, playing chess, binge watching tv…all were candidates that made it into the quilt.

I made the blocks not knowing how I would put them together. I ended up attaching them to a bit of a vintage quilt remnant 10 ½” wide and rolling it up on a stick. It measures 64” long when stretched out.

The title came from our daughter’s remark when I told her we didn’t mind being at home. I was feeling guilty that we were actually enjoying the solitude while so many people were frantic that their schedules were disrupted. She replied “not everyone can be quarantined in Eden.”

I included our days at home through April 2021…past our vaccinations and including many days of “out and about” again. Since then, the Delta variant has added more days at home. Maybe I need to find more calendar tea towels…

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