My Sister's Quilt

Karen's Quilt

Summer a year ago, my mother and I decided to make a quilt together for my sis, Karen Carey.  We picked brighter colors for the top to match the bedroom decor, and a neutral back fabric.  I was to make the top, and Mother planned to do the quilting on her home sewing machine.  It turned out that she got ill at the end of Summer, and then didn't have the energy to quilt it.  After Mother passed away, I found it still in the sack in her sewing room.  This year, I finished it, with nice pure cotton batting, as a final gift from our mom and from me.

The Consolation Prize - Potato Quilt

The Potato Quilt

Just when I think my creative energy is exhausted, out of nowhere comes some silly inspiration.  I had one last Grandchild quilt to make.  The 4 granddaughters and one grandson of Bertie Carter, during her lifetime always spent Christmas Eve at her house and this is their first year that she will have been gone at Christmas.  So, I set about making 5 quilts (one for each) with no plan for which grandchild would get which quilt.  Katy, my daughter came up with a plan:  We'll play board games and the winner will get to choose a quilt, then the second winner, etc.  What is the incentive to go beyond the usual deference to each other, in politeness?  The Potato Quilt!  Who would want the last remaining reference to grandmother to be in the form of a quilt that has potatoes on it?  Maybe someone.... or then again, maybe it will be the last place consolation prize... or the quilt of any child who fails to attend.  Who would say we have not kept our sense of humor?

Swirly Nana Pop Art Quilt

This "Swirly Nana" Pop Art Quilt has a lot of optical illusion in it, and it is one in the series using my mother's fabrics for a log cabin square in the center.

Little Jungle Nana Quilt

Little Jungle Nana Quilt is one in the series of quilts with a log cabin square center made of my mother's diverse sewing stash.  It has a jungle border on the sides with some sort of plant in the lily family.  Perhaps it is pitcher plants.

Confetti Quilt Top

Confetti Quilt Top is one of the tops in the Nana Series.  The centerpiece "log cabin" pattern is made in part from Nana's fabric stash.  This one is pictured not yet quilted.

Riley White Painting - Jingle Dancer

Riley White Jingle Dancer

Today's post is just a memoire.  It is of a treasured painting that hangs on my office wall.  Here I have taken a digital picture of it, and cropped away the frame.  You can see it is slightly distorted because it was photographed at an angle.  I did not remove it from the wall to snap a pic.

It is special for a couple of reasons.  I just like it.  Riley White was my father in law and I keep this painting for my son Justin, so he'll have one of his grandfather's artworks.  I also like the colors and the iconic historical angles... which to me are evocative of the 1930's and 1940's public art industrial movement paintings.

Riley White was a contemporary (age mate is perhaps a better term) of Woody Crumbo and the Kiowa Five.  One or more of his works are at the Museum at Bacone.  He was a prolific painter and his works are still found from place to place.  I think this one was either purchased at Cherokee Gift Shop or gifted from a co-worker, Mrs. Louise Covey aka Louise Ballard.  She taught Home Economics at Sequoyah High School and in the very early 1960s my mother was her intern teacher at Sequoyah High School in Home Ec.  Riley taught Arts and Crafts at Sequoyah High School and many gifted artists still living were his students.

Green Nana Quilt Topper

Green Bed Topper Quilt from Nana's Fabric

Here's the latest small "bed topper" quilt in the series I have been making from fabrics saved from Nana's sewing closet.  When she passed away in February, I brought home a box of her fabrics and have been making quilt tops for her grandchildren.  Gracie Piddlewhiskers is a good helper when I quilt, because she chases the threads and models quilt tops as soon as she sees me laying them out for a view.

Gracie Models Green Topper Quilt

Green Topper Quilt

Gracie Piddlewishkers, aka The Vanna White of Zion Community, is here modelling a green topper quilt, one of several in a series of quilt tops for the descendants of Bertie Carter.  Gracie is not only an attractive model but also a sewing helper extraordinaire.  She's wanting to snuggle because it is late and I am preparing this blog ahead of time.

Pink and Blue Floral Topper Quilt

Number Two in the series of quilt toppers made from Nana's scraps is this pink and blue topper.  Woops!  I see a mistake that I never noticed before.  See how in the middle the pink rectangles are on the outside corners?  All but one?  And the one that is in the upper righthand corner of the lower righthand corner should be in the corner also.  Apparently, I sewed the gold-looking print border on the wrong side and it caused me to sew the whole square in sideways.  If you don't quilt, it might be a year or two before someone would finally notice and wonder why that wasn't symmetrical.

The Nana Quilt Topper series involves a lot of florals and prints with easter bunnies and eggs.  There were plenty of fabrics I could not use because they were voile dotted swiss or some other shirtweight fabric that isn't strong enough to withstand the rigors of quilt life.

This one will go to one of Nana's four beautiful granddaughters--- some of the most gorgeous young women in the Cherokee Nation.  Smartest, too.

Family Topper Quilt for a Man

I'm working on a series of five quilts for the grandchildren of my mother, Bertie Carter.  We ended up with a huge stack of odd fabrics, so I've brought them to my house and blended them with a few pieces I already had.  My inspiration was a quilt Dennis owns, made by his grandmother in the 1960s or 1970s, with a Log Cabin variation called Sunshine and Shadows where the lights are all on one half and the darks are all on the other half of a block built with strips "going around". 

So, Nana had five grandchildren-- My sister's three girls and my girl and boy.  So we needed one quilt that would look a bit more masculine.  And this is it.  It has darker colors, less floral print, and more geometrics. 

These quilts will be toppers--- quilts just the right size to lay on top of a full bed, adding color and weight.  Any more size than that, and I wouldn't have had the tenacity to make a set of 5 quilts that are all similar.  I'd be too bored.  This is just a top and it has not yet been quilted.

In Memory of Bertie Kirk Carter

I've learned something about cancer this year.  I thought all cancers were kinda alike.  It turns out that some grow slowly, or are more capable of treatment than others.

After Christmas, my mother, Bertie Carter felt tired and listless--- even to the point of not being terribly clear-headed.  When my father and sister finally talked her into going to the ER, they kept her and gave her five pints of blood for anemia.  It turns out that her hospital visit led to tests which led to a visit to the cancer treatment center in Muskogee, where capable Dr. Vasseraddi (sp.) told us, "She has acute, or fast-growing, myopathic leukemia.  Statistically, the 10 to 15% who do live five years out from a diagnosis, are not those who are 72 years of age.  There is treatment-- chemo-- but it would not be successful for you."  The next week, we embarked on Nana's first week of dacogen.  She had four hour-long IV injections of it, but on Friday there came an ice storm and everyone was snowed in.  By Monday's treatment time, she had passed.

So many people have expressed their regards and offered to assist us in this time.  I speak for all of us in saying that we have felt the loving bond with so many friends and family over these few days since Monday, February 1 when she passed.

It has been a journey of less than three weeks, but a very hard one.  Words can't encompass how capable, funny, sweet, beautiful, compassionate, tirelessly energetic, creative, patient and clever my mom was.  She left behind two girls with advanced degrees, 2 at OU, one with an NSU degree and a grandson who loved her very much.

She got to know her first great-grandchild for a bit over one month before passing.  This pic is from November at El Zarape, where she always ordered the chicken lime soup.

The last night, Sunday January 31st was a turning point for her.  I had called her before bedtime and our plan was that I'd drive her to chemo in Muskogee in my truck with four-wheel drive, since snow and ice were still packing some of the streets, highways and bridges.  "OK, Sugar-Babe.  I'll see you at 9:30.  Love you," she said.  We've never been shy about saying we love each other.  My father went to bed early with her.  At 1:30 he noticed she was gone, and found that she had gone to the other bed but was breathing shallow, perspiring and ill.  He stayed awake concerned, but she fought him to keep him from calling an ambulance.  At dawn, he called my sister who came over and called them over Nana's protests.

She was frail but polite going to the stretcher, and thanked the medics.  On the way, her blood pressure bottomed and she was resuscitated-- and again after arriving at the hospital.  She had tubes everywhere when I went in to see her.  The doctor had braced me for it.  Her heart flatlined as my sister and I  sat holding her hand and kissing her forehead.  Now she could be free of the pumps and beeping machines, the painful pricks and the aches and stinging.  She could be beautiful again and free.

When I think of her, my favorite (recurring) image is of a coifed 60s mom, age 30-something in pink lipstick wearing a shorts set and holding a trowel from having just planted roses.  She wrote all over her final instructions "Closed casket, please."    And that was so others could remember her from better times.

In our family, we're not weepy nor regretful nor angry.  My little sister says it like this:  "We just put on our Big Girl Panties and deal with it."  We know Nana is over the pain.  At the memorial, Dennis sang, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."  I like to think of her as a flitty little sparrow, who has flown away because she has important sparrow business to take care of, and she has done her best to give us the tools in life to carry on with things earthly. She was never just ours anyway--- she belonged to NSU, to the Hospital Board, the town's Planning and Zoning Commission, the sick, the elders, the children, the teens who needed chiffon-dreamy gowns for Prom, the mentees, the exchange students, the pastor's crew, the pitch players and domino players and golfers and History Day students, the intern teachers and the local beauty pageants and fashion shows, the renters and grandchildren.  The pastor remarked that her accomplishments were so great that the Energizer Bunny would be giving up and waving a white flag in concession to her.

Bertie Kirk Carter was b. February 6, 1937 at Braggs Oklahoma. She attended school at Stone Chapel, Boudinot, and Bagley, and perhaps other places.   In 1955 she married Eugene Clinton Carter at the home of Reverend Krouse at or near Welling.  They made their home in Tahlequah, having built a house in Boone Addition.  Then they built a house in Monks Addition at 601 Victor Street.  They had two daughters, Kathy Jean Carter and Karen Jane Carter.  She succumbed to Leukemia on Monday, February 1, 2010 just sixteen days after having been diagnosed.  Donations to NSU foundation will support scholarships in her honor.