Nedra's Childhood -My Childhood Sketchbook

Fond memories of my youth in Louisiana inspired this theme.  Eight years younger than my sister Lydia, I often felt a bit like an only child and spent many hours entertaining myself when friends weren't around.  Given the climate, much of my time was spent outdoors.  Of course there was TV which I enjoyed on a rainy day.   This sketchbook includes many of my favorite toys and activities as a young girl - a bit of a tomboy!!

 I enjoyed seeing the pictures of Andrea's 30 day Sketchbook challenge she shared on Instagram and our blog.  Never considering myself able to draw either, I decided to challenge myself to sketch all of these fond memories.  I used a plain cotton lawn and a micron pen to sketch the images.  A combination of micron pens and inktense pencils were used to add color and detail.  All of the images were carefully cut out and then fused to another background piece of cotton lawn.   I was too scared to sketch all of the items onto one piece of fabric as I was soooo afraid one bad drawing could ruin the whole piece and I would have to start anew.  This process worked well and I continued to add to my sketchbook page.  When I was satisfied with the collection of images, I started to add descriptive words and other details to fill in the page.   Next,  I cut the fabric to look like a page from a sketchbook and fused it onto the black fabric.  

I then did some machine quilting to accentuate the open book page.  The dates of '55 to '67 include the 10 years of my young life.  Nedra's Childhood Sketchbook is quilted in the black background but is hard to see.  

This was a fun piece to work on and brought back many wonderful memories!!  Here is a picture of one of them that I included.  My tricycle with a personalized vanity license plate which I adored!!!!! 

Spring Lane Childhood

 Two photos from my childhood are featured in my quilt. I scanned the photos and then printed them onto a Jacquard ink jet photo printing product. I wish the images were more clear!  

My family moved to Austin and to Spring Lane when I was three years old. I lived there until I got married. It was an idyllic place for children!  The bottom photo shows all of us from toddlers to teens who lived on Spring Lane. Right across the street from our house were two girls, Kitty and Judy, who became, along with Betsy who lived down the street, my earliest friends. 

An earlier photo of me, my older sister Kathy, and younger brother Joe is the top photo.  (Our little sister Martha hadn't yet been born.) Growing up on Spring Lane in the '40s and '50s really was idyllic.  These were the days before air conditioning, and the hot Texas afternoons were often spent with Kitty and me, with sometimes our brothers (hers was also named Joe), playing cards and board games on a quilt under the trees in our front yard. At times Kitty and I made paper dolls or doll clothes for our Story Book Dolls. (My earliest sewing projects!)

The long summer evenings held exciting, block-long games of Hide and Seek.  In the mornings before it got too hot, we rode bikes, venturing far from home and no one's mother worried about where we were, and we always made it home in time for lunch.  One memorable summer we played a summer-long game of War.  The bigger boys dug trenches in a vacant lot behind Kitty's and Judy's two houses and our weapons were mud balls.  We younger kids were assigned the task of making the mud balls, a boring but a less scary occupation than actually taking part in the battles!  

For my quilt I chose black and white fabrics to coordinate with my black and white images.  The checkerboard fabric reminded me of the endless games of checkers we played on that quilt!  I decided since I was featuring "vintage" photos, I'd make a vintage, traditional block for the background, one called Double Four Patch.  I machine quilted simple diagonal straight stitches and then used a serpentine stitch for the borders.  I've zoomed in on the two photos and posted them below, in order for others to see them better!

 Kitty stands beside me in the photo. I’m the little girl with shoulder length hair, the fifth child from the right. On my other side is my brother Joe. And I have my hands on the shoulders of little sister Martha right in front of me. Our big sister Kathy is the next to tallest girl on the far left.

I'm sitting on the arm of the chair beside big sister Kathy, 
and Joe is sitting on the ground.  As I said above,
little sister Martha had not yet been born.