A Twist of Tobacco

I received the sweetest letter yesterday from the kids at the Parkside Baptist Churches summer camp program. I had presented a program on antebellum dress during their lunch period.  They were engaged and curious and we had so much fun as I stood there in 14 layers of clothing while they were all wearing shorts and t-shirts  LOL Even the boys enjoyed the program.  One youngster texted his mother and said, "We're watching a lady take her clothes off."   As Art Linkletter said "Kids say the darnedest things!"

When you are one of many at a convention, Sales show or multi book signing you want something to grab the casual lookers attention. But ... it also needs to relate to your product. In my case, these days that product is my book series "A Twist of Tobacco"  . Last week I spent four days at the Sons of Confederate Veterans National Reunion and knew that I would be competing for the attention of the attendees. There were antique arms dealers, reenactment clothing dealers, and more books about the civil war than you could shake a stick at. I really needed something to draw attention to my fact based historical novel. Here's what I came up with.... Of course the eye catcher is the red white and blue quilt which was made by my great-grandmother who is also featured in my book series. Then people notice the display board. It contains photos of my ancestors; newspaper clipping of thre brothers who fought for the confederacy in the Civil War; The United Daughters of the C...

Exciting news........ or at least for me it is exciting. As I was getting ready for the Sons of Confederate Reunion last week I wanted a table covering that was indicative of the Civil War era. I dug through my old family quilts to see if there was anything that would work. I saw this red, white and blue that satisfied my needs. It was from my fathers family, on which the " A Twist of Tobacco " series is based. All of the years I have assumed my grandmother made the quilt. She married in 1913 and died in 1959.   It looked really nice and distinguished my display from others. As I sat there for 4 days I became fascinated by the blue print. Now, I have bought and sold vintage and antique fabrics for more than 15 years but I just couldn't place any of these prints. I took these photos while I was sitting there and posted them to one of my vintage and antique chat boards and can you imagine my surprise when they told me this is a 1860-1880 ...