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.

Cathedral Windows Quilt from Cherokee County, Oklahoma

Cathedral Windows Quilt

Made in Cherokee County, Oklahoma

A closeup inspection of this colorful quilt makes it worthy of a lifetime achievement award.  Oh, it is ragged in spots and torn in places.  It is machine-mended but mostly hand-made.  Each color spot that you see is about 3 layers thick and has a great deal of time applied.  For Cathedral Windows, you start with a large square and then tack it back on four sides.  This one was done with the centerpiece of each square added last and sort of nudged into place with greater or less skill.  We can make some assumptions about when it was constructed by looking at all of those centerpieces.  Some are double-knit polyester of the kind popular in the early 1970s, and that seems to be the most recent distinctive clue--- I would say it was made from 1970s fabric... but it may have been put together more recently than that.

When I bought it, it was at a flea market or yard sale, and the seller told me it was made by a family member or friend---  a woman who lived at Woodall all her life and passed away at age 90 in a house fire.  Woodall is a community Southwest of Tahlequah in Cherokee County, Oklahoma.

How much time and patience, tenacity and artistry and skill such a quilt takes!  When I see a quilt like this at a sale, sometimes I can't resist to add it to my own little tacky quilt museum in the hall closet, as a tribute to the labor of women in a simpler time. 

Civil War Replica Quilt

Civil War Replica

Here is a fun quilt that I'm making possibly for inclusion at a Cherokee Nation facility.  Legislation passed into the Cherokee Nation Code states that when buildings are constructed, a percentage of the budget is for Cherokee art. 

I'm a Cherokee history buff.  This quilt is interesting because I've utilized replica fabrics which existed during the Civil War era.  See how the colors of red are turkey red?  See how there are two shades of blue... conrflower blue and indigo?  See how the green is more of a bronze color?  Greens back then were made in a two-stage process where indigo was overdyed with something producing a yellow.  Greens were transient colors, and if you ever look inside the seam of an old quilt, you can see what the original color more closely resembled.

The cream "blank" squares are natural unbleached muslin, but I then overdyed them with a camel color to sadden the fabric and give an aged appearance.  A quilt from the 1860s, now 150 years old, would not remain this bright.  Beth Herrington has a quilt from this time period, which was once featured in a Thompson House quilt show about 15 years ago.  It was a quilt that a soldier had carried with him in the war.

This one consists of four four-patches grouped together.  And while I have never seen a 16-patch, it is typical because it is geometric, pieced, contains squares of about four inches.  The sewing machine was invented or sold about 1824 or so--- it is a contemporary of photography and the industrial revolution in England.  But very few homes had treadle machines and almost all sewing was by hand.  This one was machine pieced (and when quilted, it will be machine quilted).  Unlike quilts from the 1860s, this one is retrospective.  The squares contain images (such as quilt block patterns) from the Civil War era, and also facts and information about the Cherokee condition in the Civil War.  Most of the facts were gleaned from Emmet Starr's History of the Cherokee Indians.  You would find the last names of some of the soldiers who fought together; some names of battles in Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory; information about impacts of the war; and some quotations; treaties; casualty summaries, and the like.

When I made this quilt before I added the war data, it seemed too new to be authentic and didn't tell much of a story except via colors.  Now with the fact squares, it 'speaks' about its historical context.  I'll be posting more Cherokee art quilts of this nature in the future from time to time.

I am seeking a Cherokee hand-quilter who would like to collaborate on this project, but my time frame is short.  If you would be interested in hand-quilting it (or know of someone who does that), then I would be delighted to hear from you.

Is Barack Obama Cherokee

I'm researching Cherokee quilts, 1780-1830.  In doing so, I ran across an article asking whether Barack Obama is Cherokee.  It seems there is a story in his family that he has some Cherokee ancestry.  So, I followed the link (above, if you click the title to today's blog) and found some likely surnames to research.

Payne is one surname, and I remembered the famous Andy Payne, who ran the Bunion Derby across America.  There's a documentary film about Andy Payne with historical footage.

I was most intrigued by Sarah Bunch, who shows up at age 77 in the 1870 Newton County AR census, and who claimed to be from Virginia.  Her age would tend to make her a Cherokee Old Settler from the period 1812-1817 in the original Old Settler domain stretching from Batesville to basically the AR River at Fort Smith (ish).  But I see a householder in the census who might be a son (if he was born when she was in her 30s) born in TN about 1830.  I suppose it is possible that she came West after 1830 (perhaps on the removal) and settled with relatives who were thereafter deceased by 1870, in the former Cherokee domain.  By 1830 most Cherokees had moved on to Indian Territory, or become assimilated into Arkansas which was I think by then a state.  Some Cherokees remained in AR and gave up their Cherokee affiliation by attrition and assimilation, in order to keep their land in Arkansas.  An earlier AR census shows that Sarah was probably married to Nathaniel Bunch.  In 1850 this family shows up with many more householders.  A characteristic Cherokee name is Larkin, and that is a name of one son in 1850 living with the family.

Creekmore is a prevalent Indian name, but I think they are Creeks or Chickasaws and this line of his family lived in the Chickasaw Nation at, if I recall, Ada..  Christopher Reeve, Mariel Hemmingway, and Lyndon Baines Johnson are among some of his far-remote relatives, albeit not necessarily Cherokees.

Merely clues for further speculation and research.  As for Justin Timberlake... read the enclosure link.

50's Style Ultimate Kitschen Apron

 

Here's a length of extra skirting that is similar to something I featured in my blog before.  Check out the wonderful stripey waistline piece that extends a bit into the ties.  It is long enough in back to make a bow.  This apron features a convenient left-hand pocket, banked to the inside, because if you've really got a pocket full of snow peas from the garden, you don't want them tumbling out when you bend and stretch.  Its an old physics trick that I learned from trial and error.

When I was a child, my grandmothers were big on aprons.  One grandmother wore an apron as the top layer of her clothes whenever she was at home.  She wore full aprons of the top and bottom kind, usually, and would take them off when going to the store.  They were handy for popping grease as she fried morning bacon and made gravy.  They had big huge pockets for holding lots of clothespins for hanging laundry on the line to dry in the outdoor sun.

My other grandmother wore aprons also.  She wore frilly aprons for serving lovely vanilla sugar cookies.  These cookies were usually pressed out by a granddaughter and sprinkled with white sugar, then served with coffee or milk.  

Both of my grandmothers sewed.  My maternal grandmother, Bigmom, had a dry cleaners and tailoring service.  She had the most amazing interesting things she made from fabric scraps.  She had woolen quilts made from pant-legs of the mens wool suit pants that had been cut off.  She had raggedy towels sewn together in layers to make pads the size of a fat quarter.  These were little footstool or ottoman pads, or to step out onto from the bathtub, or for wiping feet inside the back door, or for babydoll blankets.  When my daughter was a little baby, this grandmother is the one who made me promise not to use disposable diapers, saying they were gross and miserable for babies.  When she passed away, I inherited a wonderful twin sateen quilt top that she had made in pastel blocks in mint, pink, dreamsicle orange, baby blue and lemon yellow.  In her aprons, she looked like Lucy Ricardo... perky and frilly.

My grandmothers' aprons are my inspiration for making fun aprons.  I've taken quite a few to the stomp grounds for kitchen use there.  This style of mixed calicos and pinch-pleats is new.  In old times, our corn dance was performed with the women wearing aprons of simple thin 60-thread or 100-thread count plain white cotton.  These aprons were scant and tailored, and they reminded me of when I was a little girl and my mother would put a bowl of  starch (and sometimes the whites to be starched and ironed) in the fridge.  (Starch and bluing.  Do people even know what that is today?)

There is something practical about an apron.  You drag in from a tough mind-numbingly cerebral day at the office sitting in a chair for eight hours.  You're hungry for something delicious, but still in a black or navy colored suit.  If you cook in it, you'll have more work ahead at laundry time, making sure there isn't any gravy on the tummy.  So, throw on an apron to break the serious mood.  Voila!  You're Samantha, making perfect barbeque sauce from scratch and whipping up something divine in quick time.  Remember... when you are too tired to fix dinner, a magic apron will give you the strength and energy to cook up some strength and energy.

I'm listing a few new things in my online shops, so this apron will be showing up in one of my etsy storefronts for $18 or you can email me if its the perfect match for your cooking and entertaining adventures.

Ross & Kin, a Ross Genealogy Reprint by Vera Dean-Ross and Kathy Tibbits

Ross & Kin 

Ross & Kin is a compiled genealogy of the descendants of John Wesley Ross, who shows up in the Ozark Mountains having been born perhaps in the 1820s.  There are mysteries about where he was born, and there are stories about his possible origin.  Even today in Newton and Pope County Arkansas, many of the families are descended from this original settler family.   Granville James (Jim) Ross published this book in about 1982 and it is out of print.  Over the years his wife Vera Dean-Ross kept margin notes in her copy, which refine and enlighten the original... sometimes adding a new generation of information or correcting things or adding clues.  Recently, Kathy Tibbits sponsored the edition's reprint.  It is essentially a photocopy of the original with Vera's margin notes, albeit sometimes faint since these were in pencil.  Now today, it is an essential tool for the next generation of Ross Family genealogists because of Jim & Vera's meticulous work.  Some day it may be revised to add the generations which have been born since about 1980, more photos and the fascinating history of the Old Settler Cherokee ancestors as they came west by wagon to settle there, as well as missionaries to the Cherokees who intermarried.    $28.87  plus shipping, available only at Lulu.com.  

After costs are recovered, half of profits go to a scholarship fund for Ross heirs.  

Surnames:  (among others) Ross, Standridge, Blevins, Meek, Meeks, Martin, Phillips, Goates, Hull, Carter, Jones, and hundreds more.

Geography:  Carroll County, Missouri Territory; Treat; Jasper; Newton County; Pope County; Dover; Russelville; Clarksville; Arkansas Territory; State of Arkansas; Green County Missouri;  Clay County Missouri; Dardanelle; Summers; Box Oklahoma; Vian Oklahoma;  California, and many more places.