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.
This time of year we see hearts in abundant numbers. This symbol of love is everywhere, and often seen in shades of red.
I love the heart motif and have it all around my house and in quilts I’ve made. This year I’ve been adding to my bowl of blue hearts in the breakfast room. I made a few last year and in the past couple of weeks, I’ve been adding more.
I’ve used ribbons, buttons, and lace to embellish some of them. In other cases, I just stitched and stuffed some of my favorite fabrics. I added French knots to one. On another I stitched pearls from a rescued strand I bought. The fabrics include barkcloth, vintage ticking, African indigo batik, hand-dyed linen, bits of an old quilt, and fabrics from well-worn clothing.
Oh, I can use red fabric, too.
In 1952, he was four years old and wanted to fly a kite. In this photo, he watched as his Daddy held the string and the kite climbed higher and higher. The air was crisp, the wind pulling the string quickly. At the moment the photo was taken, the boy sensed disaster on the horizon.
When asked for appropriate titles for this art quilt, he said, Childhood Trauma, or Hold Tight, Daddy, or Don’t Let Go, would all be appropriate. In truth, he barely remembers the day, and probably wouldn’t remember it at all were it not for the photo. This is exactly the kind of experience I love to capture in cloth. A memory. A story. A moment frozen.
I appliquéd the kite using a bit of French General red fabric, and hand embroidered the kite string and tails. When I added machine quilting stitches, I used dark thread to emphasize the fence posts and trees.
The piece finished at 16” x 22”. A vintage doily serves as the label.
On this Black Friday we wanted to drive backroads with the camera and maybe find an antique shop or two. One goal of photography was some country Christmas scenes. The treasure of the day was a church decorated with Christmas wreaths on every window. And, this church has a chimney. I’ve never seen a church with a chimney. An old cemetery surrounded by a white picket fence is well maintained by a local boy scout troop.
We had lunch at our favorite locally owned restaurant in Monroe, GA, across the street from this pocket park. The focus of this park is an old bank vault (left when the downburst of ’93 destroyed the building). Two treasures here: the safe itself and the fact that the town preserved it and made a park there.
Visits to a few antique stores generated minimal purchases. The highlight for me was packages of old bias tape and rickrack, all cotton, all unopened, bearing original $.19 price tags. I could imagine the vendor thinking, “nobody will want this old stuff.” And, I’m thinking, “WOW. What fun is this!” The wicker item had a tag saying “lampshade,” but I thought “bee skep”.
Yes, we did some shopping on Black Friday. But we didn’t elbow anyone out of the way, never stood in line, didn’t get frustrated, and had no traffic snarls to navigate. Back roads and small businesses, that’s the way to do it.
Yesterday Jim and I went junking. Well, not really. Dumpster divers we aren’t. We aren’t even heavily into yard sales or estate sales. We like antique malls where someone else has made the selections, maybe done some cleaning up, and displayed items in a pleasing manner. Well, the last is not always true. But, we do like antique malls.
But I did find a few things I couldn’t leave behind. An old quilt with a masculine look will be perfect as the backing for men in photographs. The homespun backside is amazing, too. A blue cross-stitched linen tablecloth. A couple of bargain pieces which will be amazing labels, and a lovely bee!
I didn’t really plan to spend a day this week cutting apart old wool coats and felting them. But at $5.00 each, these 100% wool coats begged to be included in a quilt project. Ok, will do. Any ideas about what to do with the fur collar?
And I found inspiration! Not so much in the textiles themselves, but in displays. Old suitcases opened with vintage trims and fabrics inside, laces and ribbons wrapped around old wooden spindles, jars of buttons pleasingly arranged. These kinds of things make my heart sing.
Neither of them ever married. This photo was taken sometime around 1912. They were 18 and 15 at the time. Within ten years, their mother would be confined to a wheelchair, their older sister would die in childbirth, leaving two young daughters to their care.
During WWII, the teacher was offered “script” as her paycheck (a promise for money from the state someday), so she traveled further to work in a naval ordinance plant. The younger worked as a switchboard operator and in so doing, connected many families to news of their beloved ones. She was the first in town to get the word that the war was over, running down the stairs of the downtown office to spread the news.
Details of quilt: A vintage photo (circa 1912) of two unmarried sisters was printed on a remnant of a vintage linen tablecloth. Hand-guided, free-motion machine quilting was used to add detail, lace collars and beading were added with hand stitching. The linen background for the photo was attached to a vintage linen log cabin quilt made from silk. A vintage cotton doily was used for the label.
