Memories of a Quilter

Gee's Bend Quilters 10-09-2008With all the news coverage of the 50th Anniversary of the Selma March, I remembered our 2008 vacation when we crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on our way to the Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective about an hour away.

It’s strange how you can look at something and recognize it without knowing why. I could have sworn I had posted photos from our visit, particularly since Wife Lila had written her recollections of it in 2009. So, here’s what she wrote then, with a an update from 2015.

Click on the photos to make them larger.

Written October, 2009

A Quilting Journey… from Grandma’s House to Gee’s Bend and Back Home

A year ago in October, Ken and I visited a place that had become my own personal Mecca. .. Boykin, Alabama, the home of the Gee’s Bend Quilters.  I am a quilter… the old fashioned kind, I do the quilting by hand, and when I first saw these women’s story on CBS Sunday Morning a few years ago, I could not get it out of my mind. The Gee’s Bend women are descendants of slaves brought to Alabama early in the 19th century.  They made beautiful and unique quilts from whatever they had, and they continue making the unique style of quilts today. I had to see the place and meet the women who loved making quilts as much as I do.

Got directions from Allie Pettway

Gee's Bend Quilters 10-09-2008The Gee’s Bend Quilt Collective was not at all what I expected. It was way far away from the main road. Without a GPS, I am not sure we’d have found the place. .. a GPS and an accidental visit to a lovely lady at the end of the paved road. We had passed the place and stopped for directions. She said to turn around and go half a mile back the way we came.

The building’s not much to look at

Gee's Bend Quilters 10-09-2008On the return trip, we saw a small hand-painted sign in front of an unassuming white building on the south side of the road.

A roomful of quilts

Gee's Bend Quilters 10-09-2008Once inside, I knew I was in the right place. There were three women sitting next to tables full of small pieced and quilted squares.

Squares were signed

Gee's Bend Quilters 10-09-2008Each square had the signature of the person who made it. There were quilts hung all around the room. They were variations of the ones I had seen in the report years before, but definitely the Gee’s Bend style.

Way out of my price range

Gee's Bend Quilters 10-09-2008On a rack, there were about 30 completed quilts folded to the same size. I saw several that I would have loved to have had. Unfortunately, they were properly priced… and way out of my price range.

Worth every penny

Gee's Bend Quilters 10-09-2008I know they were worth every cent of the asking price, because I am a quilter and know the amount of work that goes into even a small quilt. A quilter does it for the love of quilting. Even if minimum wage were charged for the hours worked (sometimes months), the cost of a quilt would be prohibitive for me. Most of the quilts I’ve made have been given to someone who appreciates them.

We met the quilt artists

Gee's Bend Quilters 10-09-2008I chose several of the small squares and had my picture made with the woman who made each one. Annie Kennedy and Nancy Pettway were there, but Allie Pettway was at home. Before I could blink, one of the women said she lived just down the street, and she’d give her a call. She hung up the phone and said, “Allie said to come right down.”

“Allie said to come right down”

Gee's Bend Quilters 10-09-2008We headed down the road only to find that the woman who sent us in the right direction earlier was Allie Pettway.  We spent about half an hour on Allie’s front porch, talking and watching her stitch one of the small blocks sold in the collective. I was awestruck. She was a delight. Spending time with her was the highlight of my trip.

The highlight of the trip

Gee's Bend Quilters 10-09-2008When we visited Gee’s Bend Quilters, I bought a video with the quilters’ story. This afternoon, I watched the video, and I felt like I was back in my grandmother’s house hearing her words. On the video, the women said, over and over again, that “nothing was ever wasted… not food, not a single scrap of cloth”. They spoke of making quilts using good pieces of fabric cut out of worn clothing.

Hearing their story unleashed a flood of childhood memories about not ever wasting anything and about my love for quilts and quilting.

Came from long line of quilters

Gee's Bend Quilters 10-09-2008I come from a long line of quilters. One of my first memories, of anything related to quilting, was crawling around under my grandmother’s big quilt frame in her back room. She and her mother, some number of her five sisters and various other relatives and friends would sit around the frame and work on a quilt. When one was finished, an aunt or cousin or sister would bring another to be quilted. There was always a quilt in Grandma’s quilt frame.

It was the pretty yellow-trimmed pinwheel quilt that is on my guest bed and the butterfly quilt that my mother used on her bed until it wore through in places. (And even then, it was darned on my mother’s sewing machine and put back into service.) As her granddaughters got into high school, Grandma gave us each a set of floral squares to be embroidered (that whole learning thing, again) with whatever colors we wanted. When we completed the project, she made them into quilts and put them the frame. Each of us got a quilt for our hope chest.

Wedding quilt for Adam and Carly

Lila Steinhoff quilt for Adam-Carly 12-24-06I am fairly certain it was not the one I used on my own bed for 20 years… until the flannel back wore through. There was no chance that the front ever would have worn through, because it was made from pieces cut from my grandfather’s gray work clothes. He was a machinist at the cement plant in my home town. My great-grandmother made the quilt after my grandfather was injured on the job and could no longer work. The work clothes were too thick to be quilted with pretty patterns. It was sewn in a grid with 6-ply variegated purple embroidery thread… an amazing piece of work.

Hand quilting is dying art

Lila Steinhoff quilt for Adam-Carly 12-24-06There are lots of quilters today, but most of them design and piece quilts that are works of art to be seen, but not necessarily used. Fabric is purchased in just the right shades and the patterns are beautiful and intricate. The quilts are pieced and then sent out to be ‘machine’ quilted using computers for the patterns.  I have watched the hand quilting I learned and love become a dying art. That makes me sad, because it is such a joy to me.

When I make a quilt, I do it with intention of them being used everyday. I have and use quilts made by my grandmother from all sorts of scraps. The pinwheel quilt in my guest room has pieces of my grandmother’s floral print dresses originally made with feed and flour sack cloth. There are scraps from a shorts and top set my mother was wearing sitting on a merry-go-round in a picture taken in 1940. There is a piece of red plaid fabric that looks suspiciously like a dress I was wearing in a picture taken in 1954. And always, the most spectacular patterns were quilted by hand.

Grandmother’s stencils

The ornate patterns were penciled onto the fabric, when the quilt was stretched in the frame. I still have some of the stencils that my grandmother used for years and passed on to me. They were drawn on whatever was handy… even the church bulletin. The stencil was glued to a piece of fine grit sandpaper to make it non-slip and stiff enough to draw around.

I can’t begin to count how many times I heard “don’t waste” when I was growing up. Besides not wasting things, we were taught not to waste the chance to learn something. It wasn’t a choice… it was expected of us. I learned to pick, clean and can green beans, tomatoes, etc. from my grandmother’s garden. And, when I was 8 years old, my grandmother taught me and my sister to quilt.

I still have my first quilt

Quilt Lila Steinhoff made as little girl 03-09-2015We (my sister and I, and at least four of my cousins) had Fab dolls. My grandmother got the dolls by mailing in the box tops from Fab laundry detergent. My sister and I had little metal doll beds to go with our dolls. If there was a bed, it needed a quilt, so my grandmother sewed together a 20” x 25” quilt top of 2-inch brown and yellow floral squares and one of the same size squares in blue shades. I had to have the brown and yellow one. They were my colors.

My grandmother made two very small ‘quilt frames’ from narrow strips of wood, held together on the corners with C-clamps.  She gave us a thimble, a needle and thread and showed us how to run the needle across the fabric instead of pushing it all the way through and back up. That summer, I quilted, and I haven’t stopped, yet.  I still have that first quilt I made more than 60 years ago… one of my treasures.

Great-grandmother’s thimble

Lila Steinhoff's great-grandmother's thimble 11-30-2010There is something magical and satisfying about taking pieces of fabric and turning them into something beautiful and useful. Quilting tools are few, but very important to each individual quilter. I can’t quilt without my homemade goatskin ‘catcher’ thimble or my great grandmother’s thimble that I use for ‘pushing’. I have a trademark quilter’s callous on my second finger, left hand.

Started quilt in 1974

Lila Steinhoff w quilt for Sarah Steinhoff 05-12-2009Currently, I am finishing a quilt I pieced in 1974. I had it in the frame, but had done only a couple of inches in one corner when my first son was born. I put the unfinished quilt in a box and the frame in the attic. My intention was to get it out when my son got older, but it didn’t work out that way. I had a second son and forgot about the quilt.

Finished it for Sarah in 2009

Lila Steinhoff w quilt for Sarah Steinhoff 05-12-2009Earlier this year, my husband was cleaning out the top shelf in a closet and found the box.  Now, 35 years later, I am hurrying to finish it for Mother’s Day… for my daughter-in-law. Sarah married first son Matthew, the one who was the reason the quilt was boxed, and she has given us our first grandchild. She was struck by the colors, when she saw it… 1970’s blue floral with a little apple green which are her colors. I think it is destiny that she have this quilt.

Update  March 9, 2015

Lila Steinhoff quilt 05-19-2004

Malcolm’s snowman quilt

Since I began writing this six years ago, I have completed three ‘snowman’ quilts made of the same fabrics, all slightly different, for three grandsons. This is the one for Malcolm, our first grandson.

I was given some fabric with snowman squares at least 20 years ago. I really liked the design and the colors, so I put them in the cabinet. I had no idea what I was going to do with them, until the quilt for my oldest grandson became the answer. I wanted to make something for him that no one else would have. Surely, no one else in Florida would have a snowman quilt.

Graham’s snowman quilt

Graham Steinhoff with Lila Steinhoff and the Snowman quilt she made for himAs each grandson was born, I made a snowman quilt with my name and their birth year sewn into it. Each quilt has one snowman unique to it. Even if they each weren’t made a little differently, each grandson would know which was his by the one snowman that they each have that the others don’t.

Elliot with his quilt

Graham (4) Elliot (2) Steinhoff Birthday Party 02-07-2015Quilts are beautiful and utilitarian, but also, they are history and family. I wanted my grandchildren to have something from me that no one else would have. They all have a snowman quilt made by me with the same snowman squares and the same white and blue fabrics. This is something that will always connect them to me and connect them to each other. Hopefully, years down the road,  there will be at least one small shred of fabric left that they can show their grandchildren.

It is a thought that makes me smile all over.

Birthdays 2 and 4

Laurie Everett on toy tractor 09-09-2014In another of an infrequent series of posts about how living in Florida in the wintertime isn’t bad, I invite you to a birthday party for Son Adam and Wife Carly’s boys this weekend. Both of them have birthdays in February – Graham is 4 and Elliot is 2 – so they have a combined party for now.

Back up to September: Wife Lila’s niece, Laurie Everett of Annie Laurie’s Antique Shop fame, had a toy tractor that had come in from an estate sale. Lila said I should pick it up for the boys and haul it 1100 miles back to West Palm Beach.

Tractor made it to Florida

Graham (4) Elliot (2) Steinhoff Birthday Party 02-07-2015We decided that Christmas had so much going on that we’d hold the tractor until Birthday Season. It was well received.

Is this a good idea?

Graham (4) Elliot (2) Steinhoff Birthday Party 02-07-2015Graham was all about the bounce house, but he wasn’t convinced that going down the slide was a good idea. I remember that feeling the first time I climbed onto the high dive at the Capaha Park Pool.

Dad comes to the rescue

Graham (4) Elliot (2) Steinhoff Birthday Party 02-07-2015Dad Adam was a little more sympathetic than the pool lifeguard who growled, “Kid, those are one-way steps. There’s only one way back, and that’s off the end of the board.”

Graham remained unconvinced. He’s going to be the conservative kid in the family. I remember him complaining at last year’s party “That music is too loud.”

I’m alive to see 5

Graham (4) Elliot (2) Steinhoff Birthday Party 02-07-2015THERE’S a kid who is limp with relief that the experience is over and there’s a chance he’ll be alive to see his fifth birthday.

Here’s trouble

Graham (4) Elliot (2) Steinhoff Birthday Party 02-07-2015Elliot is going to be the one who, like his dad, will try anything at least once. As soon as he figured out how to climb up to the top of the slide, he was beating feet to do it again and again.

A gift of love

Graham (4) Elliot (2) Steinhoff Birthday Party 02-07-2015Lila is a quilter. Not one of those machine quilters, but an real old-time hand quilter. She made a snowman quilt for Matt and Sarah’s Malcolm, and a similar one for Graham.

She presented Elliot’s to him today. When you are two, it’s probably not as cool as a tractor, but he’ll appreciate it over the years.

Graham and Elliot are expecting a brother to come along in a couple of months, so Lila better get busy.

Graham with his quilt

Graham (4) Elliot (2) Steinhoff Birthday Party 02-07-2015Graham knew right where to find his quilt in his bedroom. (You can click on the photos to make them larger.)

 

 

Steinhoff Rocket Launch

Malcolom Steinhoff rocket launch 01-25-2015Grandson Malcolm needed to launch some rockets for a school science project. There’s something about the possibility of seeing something blow up that is deeply embedded in the Steinhoff genes (check out Dad blowing up a bridge), so Son Matt, Son Adam, Carly, and Grandsons Graham and Elliot assembled on what passes for a hill in South Florida – a landfill that has been turned into Dyer Park. Across-the-street-neighbor Cheyenne came along. She and her sisters practically live at Malcolm’s house, so she is almost an honorary Steinhoff by osmosis.

Highest altitude

Malcolom Steinhoff rocket launch 01-25-2015These rockets aren’t the cardboard tubes that my buddies and I stuffed with gunpowder: the engines are made to produce consistent results. An Estes A8-3 engine, for example, produces eight seconds of thrust, pauses three seconds, then sends a blast out the other end of the engine to cause the nose cone to come apart, pulling out a parachute.

 Returning to earth

Malcolom Steinhoff rocket launch 01-25-2015Instead of an old-time fuse you lit with a match, these have electrical igniters to set off the explosives. That’s where I came in. When I climbed to the top of the hill, I found the launch team deep in contemplation after several failed launch attempts.

When they said they had run connectivity tests to make sure there was loop current, I suggested that there might be juice present, just not enough. Of course, there was no spare battery.

Then it came to me that I had left a camera bag in the van that contained 9-volt batteries for my wireless mike. That solved the problem. I refrained from swaggering up and growling, “Failure is NOT an option.”

The white smoke in this photo was caused by a burning piece of wadded-up paper towel that served as wadding to protect the parachute when the backblast blew off the nosecone.

Recovery team in action

Malcolom Steinhoff rocket launch 01-25-2015Malcolm and Cheyenne race to recover the falling rocket. Well, Cheyenne races to recover the rocket.

Malcolm isn’t the kind of guy who feels the need to demonstrate his alpha maleness if it involves the exertion of energy. That’s another Steinhoff trait.

Wife Lila informed me that Malcolm isn’t loafing: he’s conserving his energy for a soccer match. He didn’t want to take a chance on pulling a hamtwitchit or whatever it is that causes athletes to get carried off the field.

Another Cheyenne capture

Malcolom Steinhoff rocket launch 01-25-2015That gal has serious wheels. She was great at getting under the rockets.

Record the results

Malcolom Steinhoff rocket launch 01-25-2015After each launch, Malcolm would write down the stats recorded by a gizmo that blasted into space inside the rocket. It tracked all kinds of variables.

For example, I’m pretty sure it was the rocket on the pad in the photo below that set the record for the day: 264 feet altitude; 83 mph top speed; 26.3 seconds of flight time.

Busted

Malcolom Steinhoff rocket launch 01-25-2015I saw a park ranger car pull over at the bottom of the hill. Somehow or another, I got the feeling that the ranger wasn’t there to enjoy the launch event.

Sure enough, a very nice woman ranger came up and said that rocket launches weren’t allowed in the park “because the air space over the park” was controlled by a model radio-controlled club on another hill a tenth of a mile away.

Matt explained the science fair project and said they needed to do three launches of three different rockets to get the results Malcolm needed, and there were just two more to go, with one rocket ready on the pad.

Go for launch, then get gone

She said to go for launch on the last two, then get out of there.

After it was over, Matt said he had checked to make sure the FAA wouldn’t have problems with the location and altitudes, but he never thought they would run into a problem with “controlled air space” in a park sitting on top of gigatons of garbage.

 

Kapok Tree Blocked

PB Kapok Tree 01-17-2015You know from yesterday’s manatee post that Road Warriorette Anne in in town for a few weeks to escape the cold in Texas. Saturday morning, she walked on the beach with Wife Lila, then in the afternoon she suggested we do one of our favorite bike rides – the Lake Trail in Palm Beach.

It’s about a 19.33 mile round trip from the house to the Palm Beach Inlet, and I haven’t been on a bike in so long I’m embarrassed, so I wasn’t disappointed when she said, “Let’s just go to the Kapok tree by the Flagler Museum and call it a day.” (That made it a 10.35 mile ride.)

The first thing we saw when we rounded the corner by the big tree was a gate over the walkway, some fresh fencing and a sign that said “NO PUBLIC ACCESS.”

Palm Beach doesn’t care much for us

Sarah, Matt and Malcolm Steinhoff with kapok tree in Palm Beach 11-09-2008Palm Beach isn’t fond of outsiders (who don’t have ostentatious wealth). They make it difficult to get access to the beach, and parking is expensive and closely monitored. Forget about parking on side streets. So far as I know, there are no public restrooms in town (although the guys and gals at the fire stations will give you a break if you ask).

Still, restricting access to a landmark like the Kapok tree, which was seen by Henry Morrison Flagler’s guests as they were pulled by it in Afromobiles at the beginning of the 20th Century, is a particular affront. It must have just happened, because everybody who came by, including parents who wanted to let their kids climb on it, was surprised and outraged.

Son Matt played in its huge roots when he was a little boy, and he brought HIS son, Malcolm, and Sarah there for a family portrait in 2008.

Photo gallery of the Kapok tree

It didn’t take long to come up with a representative sample of photographs showing people enjoying the tree. I’ve posed out-of-state bike tourists with it, and photographed scores of kids (and adults) marveling at the living landmark. There was almost always someone there when I’ve ridden by it.

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.