Black Mountain

Lake Tomahawk July 24, 2024

Saturday, March 23, 2024

Sewing and other work

OK, I'll get on board and come up with some sepia photos that match the meme!

Sharing with Sepia Saturday this week.





A dogtrot shows in this abandoned home, a design of many where there was an open hall between the two side portions (often with a fireplace in each side.) 


Women in Madison County (right next to mine) 1936. The quilting frame would be worked on all sides by visiting "quilting bee" women, then raised up to the ceiling so the family could use the space the rest of the day.


Women were the seamstresses of the clothes, usually with a treadle Singer sewing machine once they were around. Before that, all men's, women's, boys and girls clothing in the countryside were hand sewn. Here the girls and women wear clothes made from flour sack materials in the 1930s.

Appalachian women either washing clothes or making soap. Certainly not the stewpot!

Today is:
National Puppy Day, 
World Meteorological Day

Today's quote:

The way the world actually is, is an enormously complex interrelated organism. —Alan Watts

22 comments:

  1. Hello,
    Great collection of photos, my favorites are the abandoned home and the quilting frame. Take care, have a great weekend.

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    1. Thanks Eileen. Glad you could stop by to see and comment here. Have a great weekend.

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  2. Geoff Charles' photos are worth seeing. There were some books published I think..

    I like that quilting frame...giving me ideas!!

    Didn't flour companies start producing sacks in decorated material because they found that people were making clothes from the sacks?

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    1. I had to enlarge the photo to see Geoff Charles had been the photographer. I'm not familiar with English photographers, so thanks for giving me a nudge. I have heard the designs came in that order, but am glad it happened, for all those dresses.

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  3. ...I find the dogtrot interesting. People were ingenious designing architecture to suit their needs around the world.

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    1. That's definitely true. So I'm always interested in indigenous people's homes...caves in Turkey for instance!

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  4. My first quilting frame was one of those hanging ones--great for a small house.

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    1. Wonderful. I hadn't seen them before, as my mother used a huge hoop for her quilts.

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  5. My daughter is working on a quilt for our 50th anniversary but her frame rolls the quilt. Very neat old photos.
    Snow here! Major storm.

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    1. Great to have an anniversary quilt hand made for you by your daughter! Glad to hear about frame that rolls it. New devices all the time!

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  6. Linda Sue here, The photos are fabulous! I want to paint the four girls in their home sewn frocks! Lovely! Of course a painting would look like stick figures if I were to follow through. You live in such a remarkably beautiful place- I looked it up on google earth. The dogtrot building makes sense! Keep the menfolk in one section and the women folk, un-vexed, in the other! Great design.

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    1. Well, a dog trot design could have been useful for many kinds of residents of those early houses. I'd love to see you make a painting of little girls in their patterned frocks.

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  7. Neat photos. The quilting frame that can be raised to the ceiling was one I'd never seen nor heard of before. What a clever idea. I like Linda Sue's idea of the dogtrot house being divided equally into two parts - one side for the women, the other for the menfolk. Might save a marriage or two? :))

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    1. I imaging there would have been various family divisions with those two sides to the home!

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  8. These are excellent photos! The divided house is unique, and I particularly love the moveable quilting frame -- another wonderful innovation. Even before technology, humans were so inventive, as these wonderful examples attest.

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    1. Humans have so many smart ideas, and they are passed along through the generations, as well as through book-learning.

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  9. Those photos are amazing. What a life.

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    1. The early pioneers all over the world had to invent so many new things to cope with their environments.

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  10. How clever that the quilting frame could be raised. To think that before the invention of the sewing machine all clothing was hand sewn. That’s most of history. Yet people around the world developed such a wide array of styles.

    Susan

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    1. And the early stitchwork has survived when you visit a museum and see, for instance, Mary Todd Lincoln''s dresses.

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  11. From Scotsue - first of all what a beautiful serene and calming banner photograph! . The term “dog spot” was a new one for me, so,thank you for the explanation. I did enjoy your take on the prompt-and the vintage photographs - the log cabin, the quilting frame which I have read about but not seen before, and the costumes of the working women..

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  12. Thanks for sharing these examples of mountain craft. The image of the quilting frame was especially interesting as I've never seen one suspended from the ceiling in that way. Many years ago I "inherited" a nearly identical frame that I believe must come from one of my great-great-parent's generation. The frame pieces are made of poplar wood and I've had them for decades now, thinking I might find some use for them in a furniture project. And every morning as I brush my teeth I'm standing on a braided rag rug that was made by my father's grandmother in Missouri in around 1880. The recycled cloth material probably came from even older garments worn by my ancestors.

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So glad to have your comments...whatever they may be. I'm one who likes to reply sometime or another, so others will see that; or you might happen back sometime and see what conversation might have started.