Peddles, Heddles, Shuttles and Warp Thread?

I guess we are going backward a little with this week’s story, but let me explain why.  The stories I share on Tennessee Mountain Stories are largely the result of research I’m doing for other writing projects. Recently I’ve needed to research fabrics that would have been used on the plateau in the late 1800’s. 

We know that feedsacks became more widely used around 1870, but even when the sacks were commonly available, the people of the plateau still had limited resources to buy store-bought feed or flour. 

So that led me to wonder how children were clothed and beds were covered.  Then I remembered that by the end of the Civil War, many of the Confederate soldiers were dressed in butternut-colored homespun.  In cotton-rich Georgia and South Carolina, it would seem very logical to use their most plentiful resource.  But was that possible on the Cumberland Plateau?  I’ve never seen a cotton field on the mountain and we certainly weren’t home to any plantations.

I started asking questions, and I thank God for our rich, oral history because I actually got some answers!  Do you recall my mention in the quilting article that my great-grandmother grew enough cotton for her quilt batting?  I guess you were all thinking, “Well, didn’t everybody?”  Turns out, yes, they did!  I even heard one story of a local lady who had a little tabletop cotton gin.  That was pretty exciting because I’ve cleaned about 1 ounce of cotton in my life and it was enough to tell me I did not want to do it for a living.  Flax was introduced to America by the earliest settlers.  It is now naturalized throughout most of the country.  Of course, you’d want to grow a domestic crop in order to have sufficient quantities to spin and weave, but it will certainly grow in our climate and soil.  And of course there have always been a few sheep around.  So it was easy to find the raw materials from which an industrious mother could clothe her children and decorate her home.

Peggy Casteel with her loom.

Now I needed to get a feel for weaving and my dear friend Peggy Casteel happens to have a loom – well 4 actually.  (Don’t things like that just multiply?)  She allowed me to watch while she worked on some fabric and she shared what she’s learned about the craft.  It was fascinating. 

As I sat in Peggy’s quiet sunroom watching her rocking back and forth with the motion of pulling the beater to snug the threads tight, I was full of questions but had to try to be quiet to allow her to concentrate on her pattern.  However, we discussed that when she was in the groove of weaving a simple pattern, she could weave and visit with no trouble at all.  It was easy to imagine the weavers of old who would spend endless hours at their looms.  If you wanted to visit with them, you would have to do so amid the rhythmic drum of that beater, the click of the pedals as they lifted the heddles with just a brief pause to throw the shuttle across the warp thread. 

It seems a solitary occupation, sitting before this big, wooden apparatus.  But the accounts of all the weavers that I’ve read relay tranquility and a strong sense of accomplishment as they watch their pattern develop and the cloth slowly rolling up on the cloth beam. 

Like the slow lines of a quilt, rows of knitting or the stitches of tatted lace.  Weaving seems to be yet another creation of art and love; something the creator pours herself into and produces something both lovely and practical.

A Quiltin'

Golda Stepp laid out the layers of her quilt and carefully smoothed the fabric.  As she tacked one end to the frame she wondered if she was starting this too early in the season.  You put a quilt up to work on when the weather is cool.  Summer months are filled with hoeing and canning.  Anyway, it’s hot in the summer and who wants to sit under the layers of a quilt inside the house when it’s hot?  Nonetheless Golda had a lovely quilt top that she was eager to finish and she had found a good quantity of unbleached domestic that made a fine backing so she would start this quilt today.

With the layers attached to one frame and the quilt rolled up as tightly as possible, she had just finished tacking the loose end to the remaining frame when she was called away by some inconsequential necessity of life - laundry or children or something like that.

She was just finishing the housework when she heard a light knocking and a familiar voice calling, “Goldie, you home?”  Her husband’s aunt, Bessie Baldwin had stopped in for a quick visit. 

Coming through the front door, the quilt frame caught Aunt Bessie’ eye hanging in the front bedroom; “Oh, you’ve put up a quilt.  Do you want me to run a line for ya?”

Quilts have many purposes and warmth while sleeping may be the least of these.  The fellowship around a work-in-progress is priceless.  So the two ladies took seats on opposite sides of the quilting frame and began their work.  As needles flashed and straight lines of neat stitches inched their way behind them, Golda and Bessie caught up on the news of the family and the neighborhood.  Hours can be lost in such work and the morning was gone before they realized it.

Whether it was the lowing of a cow, or the laughter of the children, something prompted Bessie to take her first look at the clock.  “Well it’s half-past eleven.  I’ve got to go fix Rufus some dinner.  But I’ll be back as soon as he’s headed out to the field.  We’ll get some more work done on this quilt before supper.”

Golda smiled, having enjoyed the visit and happy to see the progress on her pretty quilt.  The Stepps would need their noon meal as well and so the quilt had to wait a couple of hours. 

It was not later than one o’clock when the happy chatter of not just one faithful quilter but four could be heard coming down the lane.  Bessie had met her younger sister, Gretchel Baldwin and enlisted her help for the afternoon.  Gretchel brought along her own daughter and a visiting girlfriend. 

Now there were five needles flashing, and three were very experienced quilters.  A full quilting frame might see a whole quilt finished in a day.  This quilt went from the very beginning stages to more than half finished before the visitors had to go home for the evening.  And everyone was pleased with both the visit and the work accomplished.

It’s a bit dramatized but the story is true and it is but a single example of how quilting can bring people together.  Whole communities of ladies might gather together to create a single quilt or more depending upon the need.  Young couples who were just starting their homes, victims of fires or simply growing families needed to replenish their stock of quilts.  Remember that we are discussing a generation that didn’t run to the department store when something was needed.  There was neither resources nor opportunity to do so.

Last week I mentioned the quilt shows and the antique quilts they will often display.  I’ve heard their commentators mention the quality of stitching, calling it ‘utilitarian’.  I have to bite my tongue to keep from speaking out to explain that quilts are a utilitarian item, but those quilts were surely made with the same love and pride as we sew today – and maybe more for they were made not for sale or display, but to serve neighbors and loved ones.  They were used for years then handed down to someone else that needed them.

If these old scraps could only talk…!

Quilts

My Aunt Roberta has a sign in her sewing room that reads, “The one that dies with the most fabric WINS.”  Any crafter, quilter or seamstress can appreciate that sentiment.  Last week’s discussion about feed sack fabric and a one reader’s comment about ‘up-cycling’ got me to thinking about quilting.

I love quilts and have really enjoyed quilt shows that I’ve been able to attend.  We have truly talented people creating absolute works of art with fabric.  From monochromatic to wildly colorful, from traditional patterns to abstract designs, quilts are an incredible medium for your creative side.  But my favorite part at any show is the display of antique quilts.  Today’s quilter has an internet chocked full of pattern resources and fabrics in every color and print you can imagine.  We have sewing machines that will make stitches I could never even imagine and quilting machines that will knit together the layers of a quilt at lightning speeds.  Yesterday’s quilter had only her imagination, a pattern cut from stiff brown paper and innumerable hand-made stitches.

Our grandmother’s quilts tell a story on several levels – just as a quilt has several layers.

The top layer of a quilt is appropriately called the quilt top.  This is the pretty part that you usually see – it will be pieced in a design with carefully chosen fabrics and colors.  Traditional quilt tops were made of pieces of cloth redeemed from cast offs.  Shirts too torn to mend, dresses too small and worn, the corner pieces of cloth after a garment was cut out – all of these went into the quilt bag.  When a top was started, the colors would be laid and sorted to satisfy the quilter.  How precious to look at a beautiful patchwork and remember your little brother’s Sunday shirt or Mama’s kitchen dress.

The second layer of a quilt is batting.  This is the stuff that makes a quilt fluffy and soft.  Today’s quilters have an array of products available from pure cotton to polyester with a lot in between.  I suppose wool may have been used in some areas, but we traditionally used a cotton batting. While the Plateau’s climate isn’t conducive to large scale cotton farming, enough cotton to bat a quilt could easily been grown.  My great-grandmother, Nancy Livesay, would raise her own cotton, hand clean it (there wasn’t a cotton gin anywhere in the area) and card it to make her own batting.  She passed away more than a decade before I was born so regrettably I never got to see this process.  And I can scarcely imagine hand-quilting through that dense batting.  But her efforts (and I’m sure hers were not alone among plateau women of her generation) certainly illustrate the resourcefulness of the crafts-women. 

Finally, a quilt requires a backing.  Today we like to have a single piece of fabric for our quilt backings and that’s easy to do with modern, commercial looms.  But once again the resourcefulness of both the generation and the area prevailed and a substitute was found.  Do you remember the picture associated with last week’s article of a 125 pound fertilize sack?  A popular use for such a homely fabric was the back of a quilt.  It wouldn’t really be seen anyway since you would always be looking at the colorful top of the quilt and it was a very serviceable fabric.  My research led me to a lot of recipes for how to bleach out the writing on those sacks, but for a quilt backing only a good washing was required. 

This leads us to the actual quilting process… but alas, look how long you’ve already been reading!  That will have to wait till next week.  In the meantime, I’m still hoping some of you will share pictures of your heirloom quilts.  Just let me know, via a Facebook or Twitter message, if you have one and we’ll get it posted for all the readers to enjoy.

Feed Sack Dresses

Last week’s Decoration Day story and the comments it inspired mentioned all the girls getting a new dress.  For most ladies on the Cumberland Plateau for many, many years, the best source of fabric for new dresses or any new sewing project for that matter came from feed sacks and flour sacks.  I wanted to write an article about this ingenious recycling trend so I did a little research and learned some amazing facts both historical and current.

Historically speaking, cloth sacks were first used in the early 1800’s when the wooden boxes and barrels that had previously been used to move food stuffs became impractical.   They were bulky and difficult to carry and they did a poor job of keeping out pests.  However, making sacks that were strong enough to carry these products wasn’t practical until the lock stitch was invented in the mid 1800’s. 

Initially, sacks were made of heavy canvas with labels printed right onto the fabric.  Even these bags were re-used by industrious families.  We still have examples of quilts made of these plain white bags.  Fertilize continued to be packaged in the plain white bags.  But the best was yet to come. 

Sack manufacturers eventually realized that they could market to the women of the family by weaving beautiful prints, stripes, plaids and even solids.  Soon feed sacks and flour sacks had a market all their own.  How many of you have heard some man in your family tell of having to re-stack feed in order to find the particular print his mother or sister was looking for?  My Daddy remembers having to do this for his sister’s Decoration Day dress at least once. 

A coarse cotton weave replaced the initial canvas sacks and it was used for everything from bedding to dresses, curtains to dish towels.  A lady’s dress would require 3 matching or coordinating sacks while a single feed sack could make a child’s dress.  There was no shame in wearing these clothes for the fabric was used by everyone.  And all the homes of the day reflected the use of these sacks throughout.  Your neighbors assumed you were sleeping on feed sacks, scratchy though they might be.   In fact, flour sacks were sized and woven especially for pillow cases.  They were perfectly sized and some were even woven with an attractive border on the end.

The people of the Plateau have long been accustomed to making do with what they have.  A land that did not easily accommodate growing cotton and no great grazing ground for sheep probably meant even the earliest Plateau settlers struggled for textiles.  But we are survivors and we will find a way.  Bringing home a sack made of some usable material was a godsend.  Even had no one else in the nation thought these were worthwhile, I’m sure we would have treasured them. 

If you read this, or hear your grandmother’s stories with disdain, take a tour around the internet.  Vintage fabrics (especially feed sack fabrics) are quite the collector’s items now.  And if you’ve got a feed sack quilt hidden somewhere in your closet you may have more of a treasure than you realize.  Hey, if you have such a quilt, please snap a photo and send it along to me.  You can post it through Facebook – the link is on the right-hand side of the blog.

Decoration Day at Campground

The history of Decoration Day across the United States is somewhat contended but we have clear documentation that a Confederate Decoration Day was observed even during the early days of The Civil War. The stories that survive of Plateau Decoration Days are from the early parts of the 20th century.  The caliber of this annual celebration is worthy of notice. 

For those of you who have not had the opportunity to enjoy a proper Decoration Day, please allow me to explain.  At Campground on the first Sunday in June, the extended church family come together to place flowers on the graves, to remember those who’ve passed away, and to celebrate the lives we remember there.

Today, beautiful floral arrangements can be purchased in plastic and silk. But in the early days, the flowers were made by hand of crepe paper and wire then dipped in paraffin wax to help weather-proof them.  As with so many holidays, the culture of the day eventually extended far beyond remembering the dead.  Every girl wanted a new dress for the day.  For years, these were made from feed sacks but as more fabrics became available, the girls would try to pick enough strawberries to buy the fabric.  Strawberries came-in around the first of May so that allowed plenty of time to make the dresses. The young men were sure to attend the festivities for all the young ladies would be done up in their very best and would be quite a sight to see. 

The church yard would be full on this special day.  As late as the 1950’s, people came in horse-drawn wagons which were a great tool for you could not only carry your dinner with you but it made a convenient table.  At noon, families would always gather together for a special meal.  While some ate at the church, others would gather at a relative’s home for a hearty meal, before returning for an afternoon of visiting.  As family members had to move away to find work, they never forgot the holiday and would return from wherever they were living.  One cousin, Mrs. June Howard was raised in Monterey.  She remembers that as a little girl the family didn’t keep a car so they had to hire a ride; they really only got to go to Grandma’s about once a year and it would always be on Decoration Day.

Folks would come to visit whether their kin were buried at Campground or not.  The Beasley and Copeland families from the Elmore Community are remembered for having fine saddle horses.  Anyone who had such a horse would ride up and down the road along the cemetery showing off their mounts.  In addition to the wagons and saddle horses, a lot of people walked to The Decoration.  As more cars were available in the community, the roads would be lined for miles with parked cars.

Some pastors took the opportunity to preach from the porch steps or from a parked wagon – after all, there would be people in attendance that would not hear the gospel message within the church walls.  And there would always be all day gospel singing. 

As years have passed and we’ve become busied by other things, the crowd at Decoration Day has dwindled.  What do you think – is there value in spending time remembering our family?  Is it important to know our extended family or is it enough to know your Mom, Dad and siblings?

I truly want to hear your thoughts and certainly your memories of Decoration Days. 

What do I think?  Well, I write this blog each week in order to learn about and to remind you of our history, our heritage and our family.