My Cathedral Window Quilt

As you all know, I make quilts. The first quilt I made that had a "pattern" to it was a Cathedral Window. I really didn't know what I was doing because I had never seen one. I had just seen a picture and thought it was beautiful. I decided to use double knit as I had a good supply of that on hand. As I recall, it took almost two years to finish and was so heavy I just about couldn't lift it! I still have it. I love using it on these cold winter nights. After many years of experience and observation in the quilting community I have started another Cathedral Window quilt. This time I am using unbleached muslin as the main fabric. We will see how this one turns out. I think it is fitting that this pattern should be the first quilt I made and, probably, also the last one I will make.

Working in the Fields

When I was 12 or 13 years of age, I was expected to do a little work in the field. I recall my dad planting a small acreage of peanuts. My sister, Dessie, and I were the ones who were put to work hoeing those peanuts.

On occasion I would chop down too many of the plants.  I could imagine that my dad would be very upset if he came along and saw all those bare places where the plants should be growing. I would stop chopping, get down on my knees, and very carefully try to re-plant the peanut plant! Of course it had no chance of living because the roots were already gone!

I don't know if he every knew what I did, but if he did, he never said a word to me.

Food from Heaven

On long, hot summer days I had very little to do when I was a child. I especially remember walking down the dirt road about a quarter of a mile to visit one of my sisters-in-law, Opal. She was married to my brother, Ned.

Opal was a very nice, quiet, soft-spoken lady. She would quite often think up some kind of “goodie” to bake for us.

On this one particular day she chose to bake a pan of gingerbread. While this was baking she got out of cup of real cream. This cream had come from the top of cold milk that came from their cow, not store bought. She whipped up this cream until it was nice and thick, adding a little vanilla flavoring and about a fourth of a cup of sugar. When the gingerbread came out of the oven, she cut us each a big square, topped it with the cold, sweet, whipped cream. That had to have been the most delicious thing I had ever eaten!

Gingerbread

 1 2/3 cups          All-purpose flour

 2 teaspoons      Ground ginger

 1 ¼ teaspoons  Baking soda

 1 teaspoon        Ground cinnamon

 ¾ teaspoon       Salt

 ¼ teaspoon       Cloves

 ½ cup                 White sugar

 ½ cup                 Dark molasses

 ½ cup                 Vegetable oil

 1                          Egg, beaten

 ½ cup                 Boiling water

Directions:

1.    Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

2.    Grease and lightly flour a 9-inch square baking pan.

3.    Whisk flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, and cloves in a bowl.

4.    Stir sugar, molasses, oil, and egg into flour mixture until just combined.

5.    Pour in boiling water and whisk until the batter is smooth and shiny, about 1 minute.

6.    Pour batter into prepared baking pan. Tap pan gently on the counter to remove any air bubbles.

7.    Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 35 minutes.

Top with whipped cream if desired. Recipe may be doubled for use with larger pan.

Hot and Dry

I remember summer always seemed so very, very hot. There wasn’t any kind of cooling system. One summer when I was a child must have been hotter than usual because we had no water!

Our water supply was rain water collected in a large metal tank located beside the house, at least that’s where it would have been if we had any! Since it hadn’t rained in a very long time there was none.

My Dad hitched up the team of horses, loaded several empty barrels in the wagon, and prepared to go get water. I was excited because he let me climb up beside him and go along.

We had to travel about five miles on a dusty, dirt road to a large, open well. It was spring fed with wonderful supply of water all year round.

When we arrived at our destination I was amazed to see a procession of wagons, all lined up with their empty barrels, waiting their turn to get a supply of water!

Digging Through '#$!*'

My cousin and I were seniors together in high school. We graduated together and also received some of the same gifts for our graduation presents.

One gift she received that I didn’t was a gold wrist watch. I think her parents gave it to her. She was very proud of the watch and wore it all the time.

She had a very unfortunate incident happen to this gift. If you know about out-door toilets you know what hot, stinky places they are in the summer! On one of Jewel’s visits to their outhouse shortly after graduation she was wearing her watch. The clasp got hung on her clothing and came open. Before she could catch the watch it came off and fell down into one of the holes. Needless to say, she was horrified.

When her dad came in from working in the field she told him what happened. He suggested she get a rake and sain through the ‘mess’ and see if she could find it. Sure enough, after several hours of trying she came up with the watch. After a good scrubbing and cleaning, the watch appeared to be as good as new. She was very happy! 

Pictures & Prices!!

It is exciting to finally have pictures, descriptions, and prices for all my quilts. Thank you for stopping  by to take a look. There are several very intricate quilts, some more interesting in their construction than others. All of them involved many long hours of hard work. 

I'm sorry to say the pictures don't really do them justice. I don't have the facilities to photograph such large items. If you are interested in a particular quilt I will do several close-up photos for you and send them to you by email. 

Is it Worth a Paddling?

When my sister, Dessie, four years older, started trying to “look pretty”, she wanted to curl her hair. We, of course, had no curlers so we had to make some. I say ‘we’ because when she did something, I immediately thought I should do it also.

Prince Albert tobacco cans were available, as we had brothers who rolled their own cigarettes. We cut half inch wide strips from those cans with scissors and made them about three inches long. Yes, those were my mother’s only pair of scissors, and we probably ruined them. We then wrapped those strips in several layers of fabric.

Dessie used me as her guinea pig and rolled my wet hair that afternoon. Naturally my hair wasn’t dry by bedtime. My parents said there was no way I was going to leave those things in to sleep on them.

Dessie took my hair down and we went to bed with me crying as loud as I could. My Dad said that if I didn’t stop that hollering he was going to come in there and paddle me. Dessie was upset that she had to take the curlers out so she told me that if I would keep on hollering as loud as I could, she would change sides of the bed with me and take it for me. My Dad knew which side of the bed I slept on and he wasn’t going to light a lamp to see differently. True to her word, she took the paddling!

Freezin' to Death

Winters always seemed to be colder when I was a child. In part, I’m sure,  because we had no good way of keeping warm. The wood-burning fire places kept us warm as long as we stood directly in front of them, and even then we needed to keep turning around to keep the other side warm.

There was also the problem of being able to dress warm when we went outside. My family had very few warm clothing, especially the children. We were kept inside on the really cold days.

 One cold winter, when I was maybe five or six years old, my brother, Reuben, came over to tell us his oldest daughter, Jewel, had slipped and fallen on the ice on her way to school. She had apparently broken her leg.

The next morning it was still very, very, cold, but my parents decided we should pay my brother’s family a visit and see for ourselves how Jewel was doing.

My Dad hitched up the team to our wagon. We bundled up as best we could and loaded in the wagon. Mom wrapped my sister and me up with an extra layer of quilts. We proceeded to travel the four or five miles from our house to theirs.

We reached our destination without incident, but when I started to get out of the wagon, I couldn’t feel my feet. Dad said they were frozen. Once we got inside Mom got a pan of warm water for me to soak my feet in until they thawed.

Jewel did okay with her broken leg. She learned to use crutches just fine. The only problem she had was going from being a skinny little girl to being a little too chubby.

Butterflies on Zennias

I have a very happy memory of a time when I was probably four or five years old. One very warm, summer day my parents decided we should go visit my sister, who had been married for a few months.  My Dad harnessed up the horses, hooked them to the wagon, and my parents, sister, and I took our usual places. My parents on the one board seat in front, with my sister and I sitting on the floor in the back. I’m not sure just how far away my sister Mary and husband Bert lived, but it couldn’t have been over a few miles. I always enjoyed riding in the wagon, seeing new sights, and feeling the soft breeze on my face.

When we reached their home, I was amazed to see her front yard covered with beautiful flowers. She planted Zinnias, or as was commonly called, “Old Maids” all over her yard. I spent my visit in that flower garden chasing butterflies!

The next spring my sister brought over a handful of flower seed, told me to plant them, and see if I could get them to grow. At first I couldn’t think of a place to plant them. We had a bare yard where noting grew because the chickens would immediately pluck up any green plant that was brave enough to peek up out of the ground. My mother came up with the idea of my planting my seed in the chicken pen, as the chickens were running free in the yard. I spent many hours digging holes and planting those seed.

Imagine how thrilled I was when I eventually had a beautiful flower garden with butterflies coming to visit me, just as my sister had the year before. I was a happy child.

Ewww gross!!

Another ‘as told to me’ story: 

It was a custom for the mothers to make a “pallet” on the floor for their small children or babies to play while the moms sat near-by preparing their fresh garden vegetables for cooking.

On this particular day my sister-in-law and my mother had placed a quilt on the floor for my niece and myself. They put us down to play while they sat close by snapping green beans. They noticed my niece pulling at something. Could it be a piece of white elastic tape? Not likely as our baby clothes had no elastic. They stopped snapping beans to give closer inspection to what Jewel was pulling. Imagine their surprise when they pulled it out and found it to be a tape worm from me! (Sorry, I don’t know the length.)

FYI: Rid your pets of fleas. Fleas are the easiest way for humans to contract tapeworms. They are the perfect host for worm parasites and are the easiest and most common way for humans to contract a tapeworm. A flea will eat the tapeworm embryo and then pass them off to your pet when they clean themselves off from fleas by licking and ingesting the flea. If your pets don't have fleas and you don't eat any raw meat, contracting a parasitical worm is just about impossible. Use an over-the-counter flea remedy for pets. Talk to your veterinarian for their suggestion or if the treatment you have been using does not fully remove all the fleas.

Dog in the flour bowl.

My parents had it pretty hard growing up, but so did most everyone else so they didn’t really know how bad off they were. As an example, Mom said they usually got one small bag of sugar each Christmas and it had to last them all year. Had they known how bad the odds were against them they would probably have given up!

Another story she told was about their trip from DeCalb, Texas to an area near Caddo, Oklahoma. The trip was made in a covered wagon. I recall Mom telling the story of one cold night spent on their way.  They woke up the next morning to find their dog sleeping in the large, wooden flour bowl! They also said their matches had absorbed moisture so they had to go to someone’s house and borrow a few hot coals to start their own fire.

Hiding Under the Porch

My parents often told me stories. My memory has blurred so much that I don’t really know what I experienced and what they told me, but I remember this story from my mom.

My mother told me about the time when she was four or five years old. She was hiding under their front porch. Mom heard her mother call Mom's brothers and sisters to the front porch. Standing on the wooden planks above her head her mother was talking to them. She told them that she couldn’t find their baby sister anywhere.  She told them they should go down the road to their neighbor’s house and see if she had wondered off to visit with them. My mother immediately crawled out from under the porch to go with them!

Mom said she was pretty sure grandma knew she was under there all the time.

G

Great grandma hid under the porch as a child.

Cookin' Breakfast

I do have memories of my mother in the kitchen. We had a big, black wood-burning cook stove at which she always seemed to be standing. She would be frying, stirring, putting in wood, taking out large pans of beautifully browned fluffy biscuits, skillets of corn bread, and sometimes even pans of baked meats.

The memory of my mother making breakfast is particularly vivid. It was a mystery to me how she managed what she did. The meat she cooked varied by the season of the year and what was available. Sometimes it would be chicken.  She would get up early, start her fire in the stove, put water on to heat, go out to the chicken pen, catch a fryer, wring it’s neck and when dead, dip it in that very hot water, pluck the feathers and prepare it for cooking. She would fry the chicken, fry some eggs, and make biscuits and gravy!!

I know none of this was an earth shaking event, but to do all of that early in the morning before the men of the house got off to work, to me, was astounding. It would have taken me at least until noon.

My Baby Years

Write? No way!! I do not write, I have never written and never intended to write. But my daughter says write, so…here goes.

My earliest memories of my life are only memories of what my mother told me. I was born at home with no doctor present. My Great Aunt was the mid-wife in attendance as was customary with poor people of that time. 

Since I was the last of ten children, my mother was not too enthused with another crying mouth to feed. I remember sitting in my Dad’s lap as a child I have no memory of ever being in my mother’s lap or arms. She probably never had time for anything like that. The picture below is Mom, Dad, Grandpa and my four oldest siblings. There were fewer pictures taken as more children were born into the family. No pictures were taken of me as a baby. 

Only three of my siblings still lived at home, my next oldest sister and two brothers.  I don’t have any memories of playing with my brothers or sisters. They were probably all too old and busy to play with their baby sister. I’m sure my sister did take care of me and play with me some. 

I do remember having a rope swing on a tree in our back yard. I don’t remember having toys. I suppose I played with sticks from the yard.  As I got older I might have fashioned a doll out of something. My first memory of having or getting a toy came when I was around four years old. My older brother, the seventh of the ten, had gone to CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp). It was a government run program similar to the WPA. It put poor people to work. He used a little of his pay check to buy me a Christmas present, probably my first. It might have cost him a whole fifteen cents, but that was a lot back then. It was a small doll, about 3 or 4 inches tall. I remember it didn’t have clothes so I wrapped it in a little scrap of cloth and called it my baby.