A few words about Gert...

I've been sewing for over 20 years. I've done everything from home dec to heirloom, but I have a special love for quilting in my blood. I call it the "needle-'n'-thread gene." Not everyone in my family has it. My mother sews - some. My grandmother, not so much. But every member of my family has been blessed with a quilt (or two) that was made by my great-grandmother, Gert. So, I figured that for my initial blog post, the best way to introduce myself and my love of needle-'n'-thread was to introduce you first to Gert.

Gert was born in 1905, grew up in Northeast Arkansas and led the hard-scrabble life of a farmwife during the Great Depression. Typical of her era, she saved every scrap of fabric she ever had - including those famous feed sacks - and pieced them on her treadle machine. I don't know if Gert ever thought of her quilts as art, but in her younger years, this mother of five made them because she had to. Later in life I'm sure she kept on making them simply because she enjoyed it, but whatever that needle-'n'-thread gene is that drives you and me to want to cut up fabrics only to sew them back together again, she certainly had it. And she passed it on to me.

No doubt her fabric choices were questionable sometimes, and her seams were rarely "perfect," but the woman was blind in one eye, so I'll cut her a little slack. When my grandmother (her middle child) was six years-old, the family lived on a farm in Arkansas very near the Mississippi River, but they were forced to flee due to the historic 1000 Years Flood of 1937. The water rose, and the family was evacuated to nearby Memphis. The devastation was so great that the city was forced to house refugees like Gert and her children in camps at the fairgrounds until they could find somewhere else to go.

A fascinating and frightening time in my local area's history, there is an excellent archive of pictures from this era at the Memphis Library's Dig Memphis site.

My grandmother remembers vividly the 10 dreary days they spent in the refugee camp, and maybe I'll delve into that in another post someday, but the takeaway here is that not only did the children take away a serious case of head lice back with them from the camp, but Gert took meningitis. The disease blinded her completely for a time. Eventually she regained sight in her right eye, but the illness took her left eye entirely. For the whole time I knew her she wore a prosthetic eye. She never let the loss slow her down, though. She couldn't. As my grandmother says, "Mama was a pioneer-type woman. She was tough - she had to be."

A few years after the great flood, Gert got the treadle. My grandmother remembers when it first arrived and has told me stories of the dresses, shirts, coats, and yes - quilts - that were made on that machine. There's a certain flying geese quilt that sits on her guest bed. Pointing to each patch, my grandmother will say, "That one was a part  of a dress she made for me... These were scraps from some of her 'dusters.' (That's what she called her housedresses.) I just love this quilt," she says. "It's like wearing Mama."

The treadle, a 1939 Godzilla-finish Singer model 127 (whom I lovingly now call “Gertie") has definitely seen better days. Several years ago, my mother and grandmother and I traveled back to Northeast Arkansas and “rescued” her out of some fella’s basement. He wasn’t home at the time, but they both assured me he knew we were coming. The scary barking dogs outside did not seem so sure. I don’t think he was family, though. If he is he's a distant cousin of some kind. Upshot is, I don't know him, and although Gert and I were never super-close (she had her favorites, and I was not one of them), I am one of the few who got the needle-'n'-thread gene. So my grandmother decided that her mama's treadle should live with me instead of that guy. Someday I hope to fix her up and get her purring again, but that’s all a post for another day.

Born in 1905, Gertie died in 2003 at the age of 98. It's amazing to think of everything she witnessed during her lifetime. Two World Wars. The Space Race. Everything. What's funny is that my grandmother and I both think she would've been most fascinated with how her hobby-born-of-necessity has evolved and grown into a huge industry and respected art form. I am proud to carry on her legacy of making "useful, beautiful things," with both my slightly more modern equipment (and design aesthetic), and MAYBE (hopefully) even Gertie the Treadle someday soon.

Some of Gert's treadle-pieced quilts (with a longarm lurking in the background).

Oh, and as for the "Clever Critter" in my blog title - that's my homage to owls. I really really love owls. Somebody asked me why once, and she may have gotten more of a story than she bargained for. I love owls because of my granddad. He was another one who was all for making something out of nothing. But again, a post for another day.

Until then, happy stitchin'!