Grandmother's Choice - the quilt and the book

I finished Dana's Green and Yellow Grandmother's Choice quilt last week and got it mailed off to her on Wednesday when her book arrived.

Here's the quilt: 

And here are a few photos showing some of the blocks.  You've seen them before since I photographed and blogged about them as I made them but I'm really happy with the look of the whole quilt.  Vicki Welsh's custom hand dyed William and Mary greens and yellows are truly the star of the show.

I made the binding out of 5 of Vicki's shades of green, with the lightest at the top and darkest across the bottom. You may be able to see that in this photo of the back of the quilt.

When I made the Civil War block of the week quilt, Laurie asked me if there was a book with an explanation of the blocks. In response, I used the Blog2Print service to print a book of my blog posts. I know she and Roger appreciate it, even though the text was very "quilty" in focus and jargon. For Dana's quilt, I wrote my posts with the intention of publishing them in a book.

I was unhappy with one aspect of the blog book for Roger and Laurie: I had no control over where the photos were in relation to the text. Where possible, they stacked three photos on one side of the page with the text in a column on the other side, so it was dissassociated with the photo being discussed.  And worse, sometimes the text was on one page and the photo on another. The best compromise with the Blog2Print service  - still imperfect - made the book almost 50% longer and therefore rather expensive - and the photos came out different sizes. Their algorithm for page layout, in almost every case, did not choose the same photos I would have to make larger. So I did some research and first looked at Blurb.com. They claim you have full control, but their layout interface was  complicated. Getting my photos in the the size and location on the page was a big frustrating learning curve for me. I decided to try lulu.com. Blog2Print did save me a lot of time in comparison to the Lulu solution, since the Blog2Print program automatically fetched all the relevant blog posts, and put them in the order I requested. But doing the labor myself with Lulu.com gave me complete control and made the book come out exactly as I wanted it to be. I simply downloaded their document template and copied the text one blog post at a time for the 50 odd posts. This solution not only allowed me to make sure the text about a photo (including identifying captions naming the people) was not a page turn away, but also gave me the choice on photo size. I decided the block photos could be small, since Dana would have the real thing in the quilt, but I could make them larger if that put the page break where I wanted it without a lot of blank space.  It was also easy to correct typos and I was able to add a few details like full family names and a photo of the quilt in progress that I had never posted on the blog.

This is the cover of Dana's book. (The smear on the cover is from where I edited out my grandmother's full names.) Lulu.com does not advertise their name anywhere on the book - it looks exactly the way it did when I finalized both the cover and the inside pages. The photo is of Dana's father, my parents and my two grandmothers at Carl and Beth's wedding.

 

I had Dana's book printed with a hard cover on Lulu's standard paper. The quality of the paper was better than I expected, though the colors are not as bright and true as when I print them on my Epson R1900.  

Here's an example page where the block photo is quite small in comparison to the photo of my grandmother with her friends, and the one of Dana's father as a baby with his brothers.

The turnaround for the book from when I placed my order to having the book in my hands was around two weeks. I am quite happy with the way it turned out. I would use the Lulu service again, with the only caveat that if color were really important, I would get the paper upgrade.

Block 52 - Sister's Choice

I was surprised that Sister's Choice was not one of the blocks Ms. Brackman chose for the Grandmother's Choice quilt, and almost from the beginning, had an idea for a family story to tell to go with the block.  I made the block in the greens and golds I think of when I think of Faye's house.

I'll let my sister Joyce tell her Sister's Choice story.

Sometime after Grandpa's disabling stroke, Mom moved him to the Glen Ellyn house so she could take care of him in his last years. Grandma still lived in the Elburn house but eventually, when she was in her nineties, taking care of the old house by herself was too much. As she prepared to move to an apartment in Kaneville, her daughters all helped to go through her possessions, including the boxes in the attic. Among them, everyone was surprised to find a silk dress and the shoes I photographed for Cheryl's Week 19 - Old Maids Ramble post. Grandma was surprised too - it was her wedding dress and she kept saying it was not possible because, she repeated, "I burned that dress!" (In those days, people in the country burned their household refuse.) Obviously, she had not burned it - perhaps Grandpa was designated to do the job and couldn't bring himself to? In any case, the dress came down from the attic, where it was examined in detail. I tried it on so Grandma could see it.

Joyce in Faye's 1913 Silk Wedding Dress

Grandma's mother, our great grandmother Carrie, made the dress, and we all marveled at the techniques she used. This dress was an extremely up-to-date style for its day, as evidenced by the Butterick pattern illustration Cheryl used in the Week 19 post, and in this photograph from the New York Public Library collection. They say this is Margaret Wilson, but from reading the Wilson family history, this must be Jessie Woodrow Wilson, who was married in the White House in November 1913 (Margaret Wilson never married.)

Image courtesy of the New York Public Library. Their record at this link.

Notice the touches of lace, the detail of the gather in the hem of the skirt and the blouson style of the bodice of both dresses.

Silk is very strong, but unfortunately, it used to be treated in a way that destroyed the fibers. Hiding in the attic for decades undisturbed, the dress held together but by October 1988, when I was going to get married, it had shattered and was not wearable. Mom copied the design, making a pattern by tracing off the seam lines of the original dress, so that I could wear it more than 75 years after Grandma and Grandpa's wedding.

Joyce and Don

Unlike the silk, the original lace was in good condition. Mom was able to use it to trim my dress. The sleeve detail is shown in this photo of Dad walking us down the aisle.

Cheryl made her dress and chose a pattern that repeated the gathered hem detail of the original dress in her lace over-blouse. She also copied the decorative buckle on Grandma's dress best shown in these photos.

Although Grandma did not live to see me get married, Mom finished the remake about a month before the wedding, and Grandma got to see me in it when it was done. It was wonderful to be able to wear the dress for my wedding as a tribute to my grandmother and her long lasting marriage to my grandfather.

Joyce

Faye and Fielding at the front door of the Glen Ellyn house, probably in the mid to late 1970's.

Block 51 - Indiana Farmer

I may have some kind of masochistic streak to pick the Indiana Farmer block to represent Faye. This was an exceptionally difficult block to piece in an 8 inch size.

I made it with machine piecing with some hand applique of the ends of the little yellow tab shapes.  I think when I quilt it, I can straighten it out a bit.  The green and yellow print fabrics in the star shape (perhaps it is a cogged wheel?) reminded me of Faye's Elburn living room. 


Difficult as this block was to put together, it seemed like the right block to represent Faye who was born and raised in Indiana.  She and Fielding left for Illinois only when their farm failed in 1928, when my mother was a baby.  They remained farmers all their working lives, raising dairy cows, pigs and chickens as well as feed crops. Before Fielding's heart attack, they had a farm near Waterman, Illinois which sat on a bed of gravel. The proceeds from the gravel operating lease allowed them to retire and move back to Elburn where my mother had grown up.  Fielding continued to work into his 80's, gardening for hire, selling Watkins products, and as a watchman at the Kaneville High School.  Faye was the quintessential farmer's wife, as evidenced by the letters she wrote to my mother when she was a freshman in college.  Happily, my mother saved these letters and I have transcribed them for future generations to read of Faye's  work on the farm and love for her children in her own words.

One more reason to choose the Indiana Farmer block was this photograph from Aunt Alice's collection of Faye on a Farmall tractor.  I believe most of the time, Faye worked in the house and in the chicken yard. Someone probably thought it was worth taking a photo of her in her house dress at the wheel.  This tractor would be bright red.

 

Block 50 - Crown of Thorns

My setting for Dana's Grandmother's Choice requires 52 blocks. I decided to make one for each grandmother, and one more.

Today's block is for my grandmother Mary.  Mary was a devoted Catholic from a strong Catholic family -- two of her sisters were nuns.  The strength of her faith is an important part of my memory of her. With my good friend Dorry's help, I chose the Crown of Thorns block to represent that memory.

This Crown of Thorns is made with ornate and metallic fabrics that evoke for me the interiors of Catholic churches here and in Europe.

One childhood memory that includes my Grandmother Mary is the 1965 family trip to New York City and Washington DC.  That year, the Vatican Pavilion at the World's Fair displayed Michelangelo's Pieta, the only time the statue ever traveled outside of the Vatican City.  The Pieta was set on a special platform in a theater with a deep blue background, while viewers moved slowly across the theater on mobile walks at various heights. I was only a child, but looking at the statue with my grandmother made a lasting impression on me.  I know Mary made a trip to the Vatican later (she traveled extensively in retirement) - I wonder if she saw it again?

During that era, most of our family memories were captured on movie film. But we have one very special photo from the trip. We had tickets to the Senate. Richard Anderson, our minister's son, was living in Washington and escorted us around, taking us by way of the Capital Subway system.  It happened that we rode it at the same time as President of the Senate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who was traveing with his photographer.

Mary is in the background behind Mom's shoulder and Dana, Hubert Humphrey has his hand on your dad's shoulder. At five, Joyce was too young to be admitted to the Senate chamber and was entertained by Richard in the lobby while we got first-hand exposure to our representatives in action. It's hard to imagine that we all traveled from Chicago to Washington and NYC and back in a 1959 Chevrolet station wagon, luggage and all.

Week 49 - An Arc

Ms. Brackman chose an arc to symbolize that the fight for equality is not yet finished, and a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice." The quote is based on abolitionist minister Theodore Parker's much earlier writing.

 

This is the last block of the series - I have three extras for my setting for Dana's quilt, but I decided to elaborate on the given block to make this fan. It was really fun to see my fussy cutting come out the way I intended it to!

My posts for last three blocks will feature more family photos, but today I am sharing three more of Faye and Fielding through the years. 

This one is undated, but Faye and Fielding are wearing the same clothing as in the 1940 era photo of them with their five living children that I posted for Week 11 back in November.

This photo is from Aunt Alice's collection, labeled Anniversary.  Their glasses may be the same, but Faye's dress and jacket are different than what she wore for their 50th in 1963. (photos at this link).  It was probably also taken in the 1960's.

 And finally, I believe I took this snapshot with a little Kodak Instamatic when I was in 4-H taking a photography project, so it was probably from around 1970.  Faye and Fielding are sitting on a picnic bench in the Johnson Mound Forest Preserve in Kane County, where my mother grew up and where they retired. I know it was not a posed shot, they were simply enjoying the family outing together. Fielding would have been about 80, and Faye just two years younger than he was.

 

Week 48 - Fair Play

This week's block celebrates Canada, for granting women the right to vote in recognition of their service contributions to Canada's effort during the first World War.

My block in yellow and green does not relate to Canada, but I will use the reference to honor my Grandfather Fielding, who, in late July 1910, left with fourteen other young men to go to Iowa to work the wheat harvest. Fielding kept moving and working through the fall. By early August, he was in Minnesota where he got a job that paid $2.50 (Aunt Alice guessed that was per day).  All but one other young man had returned to Illinois and back home to Indiana.  Fielding worked "only" 10 hours a day stacking grain for his pay. Later that month, he worked in South Dakota, and then got a job in North Dakota in Guelph.  He stayed there from the first of September until the end of November. Guelph was named for a town in Ontario.

Aunt Alice recorded as much as we know of Grandpa's trip west using the cards and letters he sent to family. He went on to Montana and Washington, then down to San Francisco and Los Angeles by boat and rail.

I assume this photograph of Fielding was taken when he was departing from home in 1910, just 20 years old.

Week 47 - Heroine's Crown

The Hero's Crown block got a change in name to Heroine's Crown to celebrate the women who had worked for decades for women's rights.

 

I wanted to reuse some fabrics, but then spotted the lively green and yellow print for the background.  I think it modernizes the traditional nature of this applique block. Once that was decided I had to figure out what would show up on it. The little dotted fabric from Dorry came to the rescue, and I was able to settle on the other coordinating prints after that.

Today being late in July, I am reminded of  the very large Family Reunions we attended every year with my mother's aunts and uncles and cousins, often in Indiana where Faye and Fielding were from. My Dad took a lot of home movies so we don't have many photos from the early 1960's era when there were taken, but I have some of Alice's collection, so these were hers.  I would not recognize myself in this photo, but it makes sense I would hang around with my Grandpa (who seemed to have infinite patience with his grandchildren) among a lot of people I didn't know very well, and that Faye would be smiling close by. Hard to believe, but I was pretty shy at that age.

 

Aunt Alice also labeled this one from the early 1960's and it appears to be from the same reunion, but she only noted Grandpa Fielding and Dana's father, my brother Carl. Grandpa is the man,kneeling and looking away from the camera. The boy to his left looks a little like our distant cousin Tom to me, so Carl might be the boy in the boat (If some family member has a different idea please correct me!)

There aren't many cousins left from my mother's generation, but family reunions are still taking place annually in late July or August. Mom was very proud of her extended family and kept up with them through the years with what they called "the Cousin's Chain Letter."  Each participating member would write to the others and enclose the letter in a thick envelope with everyone else's letters, following a set rota.  Those envelopes managed to get around to the dozens of cousins about 3 times a year. Mom pulled out her old letters when the "chain" came back to her and saved them. They now form a sort of autobiography of her life from the 1970's until she died in 2010 that I have digitized and transcribed for future generations.

Week 46 - Barrister's Block

This week's block is an interesting one I've never considered making before, Barrister's Block, with the discussion about whether women had any ability to be lawyers.

It's a complicated looking block, just like all the legal mumbo jumbo they read at the end of ads... I started with the circles print and built the block from those colors, looking for contrast with the white and tan print background.

In our family, we have one lawyer, Roger.  Faye, holding this new born baby 60 years ago (he was born in early July 1953) probably never guessed that he would be such a brilliant guy who could have done anything, or that he would choose the law so he could serve his electorate's interests in DuPage county where he was born and raised.

Future engineer Jeff, Faye, and Baby Lawyer Roger

In any case, she certainly took care of us on occasion while we were growing up, helping our parents ensure we would be productive citizens when we entered our adult lives.  Baby Roger grew up to toil tirelessly with his mind and body to preserve green spaces and to create park and recreational facilities as the suburban sprawl paved over the former farmlands of the area. 

Week 45 - Aunt Mary's Favorite

The name "Aunt Mary's Favorite" went with the story of Civil War diarist Mary Boykin Chestnut, who was a childless aunt many times over - a little like me.

This was a fun block. I wanted to reuse that striking dark print and the circles I bought specifically for this green and yellow quilt. The center fabric will look right when the block is set on point in the quilt.


But let's visit my Grandmother Mary at Jeff and Joanna's wedding again, and this photo of her with 14 of her 16 grandchildren.

Missing are cousins Amy and Roy, but it's obvious that Mary was happy to be photographed with the rest of us at her oldest grandchild's wedding.  Mary was an aunt many times over - my Dad had 28 first cousins.


I don't have any later pictures of Grandmother Faye with all her grandchildren - but here's a family photo with a lot of us in about 1971 I guess, by the glasses I was wearing.  The photo is from Aunt Alice's collection. Uncle Ed must be behind the camera.

Dana's Dad is in the foreground on the right, with Jeff , Dad, Mom and Roger behind him. Joyce and I are flanking our grandparents.

A more recent photo is this one of Faye with her four daughters probably taken in the late 1970's at Aunt Alice's house during one of Aunt Loris' visits from Texas.

May, Alice, Myra and Loris with Faye about 90 years old

Faye was clearly a devoted mother, and in case we might have forgotten, we are lucky that Mom saved the weekly letters she wrote to my mother while she was a freshman in college that illustrate it over and over.  Faye wrote to Loris and May every week as well, since they were both in distant places.  Oldest daughter Alice lived nearby, but frequent visits with her and son Buddy are also documented in the letters.
 
This week, I decided to show a few pictures of my mother, Dana's grandmother, since this coming Tuesday would have been her 86th birthday.

This is the earliest photo of her I know of  - Aunt Alice has noted on the back that it is from 1930. Alice is in the back row on the left. May is in front of her and three-year-old Myra is in the middle of the front row. (the other girls are friends)

This one of Myra and her father, Fielding standing on the hay wagon against the light sky reminds me of the  iconic images of farmers from the era.

Looking at her arms, I'm guessing she was 13-15, so this was around 1940.  Mom documented her hours helping her Dad on the farm in her 4-H project books.  Later, she would brag she could throw a baseball farther than anyone in her high school - that included the boys.  Her strength came from hand milking cows and doing the same labor as the hired men in the fields.

Joyce just scanned this one  to go with the story of building the house in Glen Ellyn.  Mom and Dad are standing on the porch at the back door, where by the time I was born a few years later, there would be a breezeway and garage addition.

The notation on the bottom of this photo indicates March, 1954, a couple of months after Mom, Dad, Jeff, and baby Roger moved in.  Dana's Dad Carl was born a little over a year later.

And here are some more recent photos - Here she is in probably the late 1970's with my little shelter dog, Scamp.  Mom was always good with dogs.

This photo is from the family gathering in 1981 before I moved to Germany- so she was just 54.

Mom always watched her weight - it was not easy for her to stay slim. She didn't believe in exercise for fitness, she believed in hard work like she did with her father when she was a teenager.  That didn't quite fit into her suburban-Mom lifestyle, but she did work hard!

This last image is a family favorite.  It was taken at Mom's 70th birthday party.

All her grandchildren were there - including Dana resting her chin on her hands in the front row.
   

Week 44 - Star of Hope

This is a classic block - I did mine in not-so-classic fabrics. I always have a difficult time with the areas where the triangles meet at the corners of the center square. I paper pieced this for accuracy. I'm happy with the yellow stripe with black dots.  Unfortunately, I didn't foresee how little of the white flowers would be left after the seam allowance was removed.

I really wanted to use that dramatic dark green background fabric again, and it just combines so well with that stripe I used in the parasol block months ago, I had to do it again.

This coming week marks Jeff and Joanna's 35th anniversary - July 1st, 1978. Since wedding ceremonies were among the few times we saw both our grandmothers at the same time, I have several Jeff sent me to use for this post:

Faye, Jeff and Mary

Mary had just turned 77 at this time - her snowy white hair got that way naturally. Faye was 86 and didn't dye hers either.

Dad and Mom are sitting on Faye's left. Joanna's parents are opposite the Grandmothers

What a special moment - Dana's father Carl with two grandmothers on his arms

 Two years later, on July 5th, Roger and Donna were married.  Mom made Faye's dress for this occasion and reworked the fitting on Donna's vintage gown, so this is an important photo.

Week 43 Gentleman's Fancy

The subject that goes with this week's block is an extremely unpleasant one, so I'll skip it and go to my block and family photos.

This is one of those blocks that seems deceptively simple.  It's not. But if you concentrate on my nice sharp points, it doesn't look bad.

This week is the 76th anniversary of my Aunt Alice's wedding to Edward Yarnal.  I posted a few pictures of Aunt Alice as a baby and young child back in December, but l thought it would be fun to see her as an adult.

Alice and Ed met in High School and graduated in 1931 - Alice would have been only 16 at that time - Ed was two years older. But the country was in the Great Depression, so Alice went on to more school at the teacher's college in DeKalb. 

Engagement Photo

 They finally got married on June 26th, 1937 in Elburn.

The newspaper announcement describes their church wedding with Alice wearing a street length dress of white lace with a white hat and an arm bouquet of white carnations and sweet peas.  The attendants were Alice's Maid of Honor, her sister May, in a blue dress with white hat, and Best Man Clyde, Ed's brother.  Alice's brother "Buddy" sang "At Dawning" and "Because." The reception was at Faye and Fielding's home. 


On the back of this next photo, in my mother's handwriting I read "Honeymoon" but I think this photo was taken on their wedding day.

For their honeymoon, Ed and Alice went to Yellowstone. 

On their Honeymoon trip to Yellowstone

Here they are, 25 years later.

25 Years

And finally, two years before Ed died in November, 1983.

1981

A local newspaper reporter wrote an article about Alice in 1999.  In the interview, Alice described Ed as a calm man. The reporter wrote more of Alice's story of her marriage to Ed, "When something was over, it was over. [Alice] remembers seeing him angry only about five times in their 46-year marriage, and it was always at inanimate objects. This came in handy, like the time Alice was discing a field and distracted by a bread wrapper on the ground, ran right into the brand new fence."

Both of them had great senses of humor.