August 1865 - The Civil War is Finally Over for Eli

The last letter I have from Eli to Calvin was dated July 22nd, datelined Union Springs, Alabama.  Calvin received it in Indiana on August 2nd, so I saved this last soldier's letter for this last monthly post.

Eli wrote:  "Dear Cousin, I seat myself once more at the pleasant task of answering your most welcome letter of July 1^st and 2^nd which made its appearance yesterday afternoon finding me enjoying very good health, was very glad to hear that you were all getting a long so well. We have just found the place where I like soldiering, Co K is doing provost duty here we have a house right in town very good shade around it, but still I would like to be at home, harvest wages were very good this season $2,00 is much better than 50 or 60 cts per day and then the grub is so much better.  That is what I look at -- you did not live on strong Coffee, spoilt bacon and hard tacks..."

Calvin must have commented on Eli's last letter's story of falling in love with "the best looking girl that I have seen since I have been in rebeldom" because he says, "Well you see the reason that I did not do with that young lady as you propose was this. You know that I am very bashful and should not like to approach one of the fair sex (in her standing especially,) so abrupt as to cause her and me both to faint on the spot. I'll just tell you what it is some very gay girls here in and around this little place.  If we should stay here a month or two I intend to have a chat with some of them sure. I was at Sunday School today and saw one that just smiled my taste she had such pretty curls and such ruby lips. Oh My but I wanted to go for her."

Eli returns to the 52nd's service "... There is a great deal of talk about our going to Mexico what do you think of that, I tell the boys that I shall have to go home to see pap before I can go to Mexico because I had to coax a long time before I could get his consent to go to fight the rebs and I think that I would have to coax some time longer before he would let me go to Mex.  It does not alarm me a bit to have them talk about going to Mexico because they know well enough that the whole command would rebel a great deal stronger than the south ever did."

"...I do not pity you for this reason because you have been there at home all the time and had all the chance in the world, and I have been away down here in Egypt a fighting the rebels but never mind the war is over with me now and I shall look around some for a wife.  Never you mind about going to see that widow for me I think that I can better myself right in this country I think I shall try at any rate. I wish you were here to eat water melons with me there is plenty of them and they are cheap too. I have just nearly lived on melons, apples and peaches since we have been here."

Eli then describes the provost duty -- yesterday they arrested a black man for stealing a lot of clothes. There are already two more in the jail, one for murder, and the other "for threatening to kill his master and burn his house down. The jail is about 10 feet square, a frame building cealed with two inch plank with one little hole cut in the back side about 12 inches square and bars put across one way."

Eli finishes the letter saying "The church bells are pealing forth their musical strains but it is too warm for me to go to church this after noon. We have very hot weather here now days." He also says they have plenty of fleas in the sandy soil.

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Eli Hause would officially muster out with the 52nd on the 10th of September.  A year later, he was again corresponding with his cousin Calvin as he left their home town and went to work in construction, first in other cities in Indiana, and then in Fairbury, Illinois-- a booming place with a new railroad just coming to town.  There he was attracted to the daughter of a neighbor, one Myra Jan (Jennie) Marciller, and obviously overcame the shyness he wrote about, because he described their first date as a walk from one end of town to the other, and got married to her two weeks later.  They moved to Missouri, just as Eli told Calvin he would do after marching through the state with the 52nd in 1864.

Jennie was remarkably small of stature, but a strong pioneer woman. While they moved around in western Missouri, she gave birth to the first three of the four children she and Eli would have, and made a log cabin quilt.  His brothers Elmer and William also tried to make a life in Missouri, but they both gave up and returned to Indiana. In the fall of 1874, Eli took his family back to Hardenburg as well.  Eli died of typhoid pneumonia on February 13th, 1877 when he was just 30 years old.

The Hause family has amassed a remarkable record of their genealogy, but until I contacted them, they were unaware of Eli's Civil War Service.  He had a very simple marker in the family plot in the local cemetery, which broke between my visits last summer and this spring.

Eli died almost exactly two years prior to Congressional authorization to provide official markers for veterans in private cemeteries.  A few months ago, I started the process of applying for one for him.  First I had to obtain his complete service record from the National Archives. I had been sorry that the family have no photos of Eli - though here's one of the two brothers that went to Missouri with him and Jennie - the younger Elmer (left) and his older brother, fellow veteran William:

With the Complete Service Record, I got this description of Eli, which at least partially answers one question the photo above raises - 

You can get a government-supplied stone marker for a veteran only if the grave is not currently marked. My application for the marker was answered with a request for proof that Eli is buried in the cemetery I named on the form.  Because of all the history between then and now, I couldn't provide the types of documents they asked for, but just yesterday, I spoke with a VA Memorials official and emailed the above photo of his grave marked with the small brass plaque (placed by the townspeople in about 1980), a photo of the family monument, and the local newspaper notification of Eli's death the county librarian found as my evidence.  Not long after our conversation, the VA official sent me an email saying she had approved  my request, adding that Eli's marker should be delivered to the monuments company in nearby N. Vernon, Indiana in four to six weeks.

When I started on the Civil War quilt series back in 2012, I had no idea I would end up rejoicing at the official approval notification I received from the VA this morning.  I did not make a block for Eli this month because I have not yet decided all of the blocks will go together and how many more I may need, but for August 2015, I'm satisfied to have a obtained different kind of memorial to Eli's service.

A new version

Dorry suggested posing the TV stand propped up to give more of the idea of the scale for some new photos.  It was far easier to turn it sideways - for the purpose, since there are no features to this cabinet like drawers and handles, one way is as good as another.  And the height is very close to that of the mattress this way.

After I took that picture, it went back to the garage for a new paint job.  I made a 50-50 mix of the wall paint to the tint I worked with earlier so that the color is closer to that of the wall. I included some of the stained window frame in this shot.

Norris is off doing the Search and Rescue exercise in the woods, so he has only seen the new color under artificial light.  He's not going to see it in sunlight until late Saturday at the earliest, so these photos are for him.  But anyone should feel free to chime in with ideas. We're still considering other options up to and including floor to ceiling built-ins.  Meanwhile, I have started haunting Craigslist and the local resale shops on-line announcements of new items.

Results of My Painted Furniture Experiment

After two coats of primer, I spent more time on the internet and learned I should have bought an "adhesive" primer for the shiny laminate on the estate-sale TV stand and my light sanding was not going to give me a finish that would not chip off.  No matter  -- instead of an improved piece going to a thrift shop, I now had a total throwaway and didn't have to try to fix the misaligned screws and other flaws.  Here's what the too-short TV stand looks like trying to play the role of Bedside Table in my bedroom.  It is painted in the lightest version of the wall color on the paint-chip strip.

To give it a fair chance, I covered my quilt with an old comforter, plain off-white side up, and added colored pillows and a small wall quilt folded at the bottom of the bed -- that one is too small, but it helps my vignette look more "decorated."  With the off-white comforter and nearly-white TV stand, we felt we had to take the linen shades off the sconces.  We thought the results were not bad, but started to think about other finish colors - a somewhat more intense version of what's on the wall? Or perhaps gray??  So I grabbed our Marcus Thomas goldfinches print with its gray frame and placed it in the scene.  We did like how the frame color echos the metal finish of the sconce. 

There's still a lot of white in that framed print. What do you think?  Maybe we need a pale green or white piece with some gray highlights?

The Last Season

I've just finished the last of the little quilts out of "orphan" vintage blocks that made up the Four Seasons Challenge series led by my friend Dorry. The starting block for Winter was a stained and not-quite-square blue and white Churn Dash. I decided I would just soak it to try to remove the stains (they were stubborn) and then work with the block as it was.  Like all the Season Challenges, the quilt was to finish at 24" square and we were required to use green on the face of the quilt.  I have some beautiful  wintery green and gray fabrics that I set out to use in the setting.  To make this one different from any of my others, I had the Churn Dash block be the main element without being in the center of the quilt.  I planned to use the wintery green prints as  cornerstones and setting triangles, or sashing.

I picked a starry block to go with the Churn Dash because my design wall was looking like a night sky when I started pulling my navy blue fabrics out.  Notice that my collaborator of years gone by had two different blue and white prints in her churn dash block (it's the large scale one lower right.)

Obviously, the green setting fabrics didn't make it into the quilt.  A deep blue that has streaks of green that I didn't use in any of the stars has to play the part of the green. I had already chosen a very pale green fabric for the nine patch of the star blocks figuring it would tie my blocks in with the intended setting.  So I managed to follow the guidelines in spite of my change of heart.

When I was making my label, I looked up the name of the star block I had chosen.  I was surprised to discover that one of the historical names for it is Churn Dasher! Maybe you can see the green in the closeups.

Some of my deep blue prints were starry skies -

 - so I chose to call this quilt Moonlit Midnight.  I really enjoyed quilting such a small quilt right after finishing the more involved World War I project.

Green fabrics are entirely responsible for the pieced backing.

The trees fabric was the original leading candidate for the setting triangles. I took this photo while my computer-printed label dried, and shipped my Winter Challenge off to Dorry this afternoon.


Now that those two quilt deadlines are met, I have a new project to start.  If you read our "main blog" you know we have been working with Interior Designers to get some repairs done and finish decorating our retirement house.  While I thought we had Too Much Wood in our Master Bedroom, the professions didn't care for much of anything we have going on there. I'm embarking on an experiment with an idea to add a painted nightstand.  At a nearby estate sale, I found this TV stand with a $15 price tag on it.

Norris doesn't like it because it's veneered MDF, so he paid $10 and stipulated it's not to stay. But I figured I could try painting it, put it in the room and see if something like it will be a simple solution to the Too Much Wood question, while I look for another piece that will no doubt cost a little more.  I have calculated I could invest in a couple of dozen experiments twice the price of this piece and the paint, and still have plenty of money left over to buy a few brand new pieces of furniture for the price of one of the designers' solution nightstands.

All Kinds of Cards

A week ago, my friend Judi hosted a small gathering to teach us to make collage cards. Judi provided all the supplies and an amazing variety of materials we could use to make the cards.  I have found I don't enjoy working with sticky or wet media as much as I do nice dry fiber, but I had a good time.  I took lousy photos of the results with my cell phone.

 There were five of us and we all had different ways of approaching the work.

Judi planned to keep just one card from each of us to use as samples for a class she has been asked to teach.  I think she was very smart to do it this way, letting us experiment and ask questions, and then winding up with a larger variety of cards than she might have come up with on her own.  I think she should keep them all until the class takes place.

One more photo shows the same cards, but I climbed up on a chair to get a better angle so I can point my three completed cards out.

Mine are the dark blue/green one top row center (I started with a magazine photo of peacock feathers), the Chinese horse in the second row toward the right (another magazine photo I'd saved for years) and the strange one with feathers just below the horse.  Do I have a feather theme going here?  Well, after our first two collages, Judi suggested it was time to try some paint techniques.  I was not happy with what I had done, then I decided the s-hook shapes could be swans.  Sadly, the only feathers I found to help with the suggestion I accidentally created were green.... well, it was my first try! 

I think my cards reflect my quilting background.  I also tried leaf-printing, but I was not successful with that. Clearly it takes some practice to get the paint the right consistency and apply the right amount of pressure on the leaf.  After rejecting what I'd done, I started painting over the fabric I had printed on and had fun mixing colors and creating new effects.

But I'm no painter, so I didn't save that with a photo - however, I do think I might try some more work with the water color pencils after doing this, perhaps I can use it for a future challenge quilt.  And I just might collage a card. Time to start saving more magazine ads.

And Judi's cloak? Here's a photo I took of the back before the quilting and lining so you get a better idea of the finished garment - this shows the hand-woven panel of silk prints Judi created.

Judi sent me a couple of photos of the completed garment - this view shows a little of  her delicious low-immersion dyed lining on the sides of the hood.  This last photo is "original size" so clicking on it won't give you any more detail.

Process photos of Judi's Healing Cloak

Many of my friends and family have heard me talk about this collaborative project between fiber artist Judi Jetson and me. Judi has had a long recovery from a serious illness. Early in her recovery process she contemplated the cards she had received from friends and family while in the hospital and thought of making a cloak so she could literally wrap herself in the comforting images and thoughts.

She asked me about printing on fabric and with little more than a few words of guidance from me, was experimenting with the techniques, repeating the images, combining them with prints and upholstery and plain fabrics. She overdyed some of the results, washed them, compared the outcomes and finally decided to mute the disparate colors by lightly tea dying them.  Some of her experiments took the shape of pillow covers but not being a quilter or garment maker, Judi's plan to turn the cards into a cloak stalled at that point.  Recently, she asked me to get involved in the construction, so she found a pattern that we altered considerably.  I then made a "muslin" out of a delightful peach fabric Judi had so that we had a foundation for creating the design.  As much garment sewing as I have done, I hardly ever have made a muslin-- but if all muslin were as pretty as that fabric which had a nice texture and didn't ravel a bit, I might always make one just for the fun of it.

I dismantled the muslin and Judi took the pieces home to arrange the fabric "cards" on.

Judi planned to hand-dye the background fabric and had worked on some shades of taupe, but was having a difficult time envisioning the various images and shapes not being too chaotic. Since I have some fabrics in many colors around, we tried putting the muted cards on a variety of them, none of which spoke to Judi. Inexplicably, I suggested she think about a graphic black and white dotted print for the connecting fabric.  I say "inexplicably" because I've never used a black and white print in that way.  But we dug out some of my black and white prints and we both felt it would work - so last Saturday we visited several local fabric stores and found a spatter-printed batik.  This is the above front piece of the cloak, sewn together and ready for the next phase.

It was an interesting process for me to figure out how to cut out the wedges to fill for the flair of the cloak shape. I changed the placement a little so that the cards are perpendicular to the hem and the corners stayed out of the seam allowances  I told Judi it was a good thing she had a piecer who never liked working from a pattern, because there certainly is not one for what I was doing!

Judi made all the decisions about which images went where on the garment and in relation to each other. I figured out a practical way to piece them together, trying to balance the spacing.  In the shot above, I am being mindful of the placement of the column of cards next to this unique center panel Judi created using some of the images that she really identified with. She used a newly acquired technique of printing the image on silk, slicing it into 1/4 inch pieces, then weaving it into a new textile.

This weaving of sliced up images is something I predict Judi will do more with - she's already been experimenting with black and white family photos.

The cloak still requires a lot of work before it's completed.  The trickiest part for me will be behind me in a day or two though - just a couple more of those wedges to figure out and the rest will be straight piecing of rectangles. Judi plans a shibori dye on the lining fabric. She showed me some beautiful examples - any of them will be gorgeous peaking out as a model walks down a runway in this cloak, which is among the plans Judi has for it.

Dyed eggs and other creations

I spent a couple of very pleasant hours at friend Judi's house with a group of creative women who came up from Florida for a week at one member's cabin in nearby Maggie Valley.  Judi hosted a lovely brunch for all eight of us, then we headed to her studio to tie-dye Easter eggs.  We actually tied them up with men's silk ties that had been purchased at thrift stores and deconstructed.

 

It was really amazing to unwrap the egg and see the tie printed on the eggshell.  All we did was tie them up with rubber bands then wrap again in other fabric and secured that with more rubber bands. The eggs were pre-washed with vinegar, then boiled as you would for hard-boiled eggs.

I tried to be a little more creative and put a smaller piece of one tie on an egg then wrapped it all in a second tie before finishing up with the mummy wrapping.  A careful selection of prints and placement could result in a patchwork effect.

 

I had seen onion-skin dying on a blog yesterday, so we tried that, too.  We used both red and yellow onions - here's a close up of one where I tried a resist technique with a flower cut out of plastic. My design is lost, but the effect is still interesting -

 

 

Here's my little carton of eggs all together- it shows the foulard print of the two-fabric egg you couldn't see much of in the first photo.

Aren't those fun?  And the technique couldn't be easier since there was no mixing of dye solutions. You don't know which colors will transfer from the silk ties. 

Back home after a walk, I made up my Austen Family Album block of the week, a Cross within a Cross block.

I seem to have a periwinkle and golden yellow theme going on today.

A different kind of project

Since our weather turned so wintry overnight, it was a good day to start on a project I've had in mind for a couple of years.

This box was one that my grandmother Faye had and gave to my mother. It now belongs to my oldest brother, but I took it from my father's house for the time being. (The stencil reads C.M. Dunn & Co. Booksellers, Stationers & Jewelers, Cincinnati, O.)

The box contains letters and papers of Faye's father's - my great-grandfather Calvin.  The box was one of three or four my grandmother moved from Indiana to Illinois in 1928. She had them stored in the attic of the Elburn bungalow when I was a child - no special climate control or preservation, so some of the letters are very faint and difficult to read.

This photo shows the lower tier of letters - I had already taken out the top level and started to sort them.

Calvin lived from 1845 to 1923. What I'm doing so far is organizing the materials by date - when I can determine it - except for letters from Calvin's first cousin on his mother's side, Eli W. Hause.

So far I have found mostly letters from the 1860's to the 1880's, with a few from the 1890's and one letter that I believe was sent to Calvin's grandmother, dated 1806.  The paper is all still good - they didn't use acid in paper-making in those days, so I can still take the letters out of the sometimes very tiny envelopes to unfold the pages without the paper tearing. I don't have to remove all the letters from their envelopes: Although the early postmarks do not include the year, Calvin often wrote the dates he received and answered letters on the envelopes, sometimes including the year. In cases where Calvin had not made his usual notation, sometimes my father, who examined and cataloged the stamps on the envelopes, wrote in pencil what the date of the letter was.  These notations are a huge help with this initial sorting.  The strings and rubber bands you see in the above photo grouped the letters by the stamp and its condition, rather than by subject or year. But that stamp information occasionally helps me to make out the often obscure handwritten two-digit year on the letter inside.

This picture shows the fist level sorting job about two-thirds completed as of this evening.

The 1860's letters from Cousin Eli are being culled out because he served with the 52nd Indiana Regiment (the same unit Shepherd Whitcomb served with), having joined up in early 1864 at the age of 18.  I learned that Eli joined up against his father's wishes - and like many of his fellow Civil War soldiers, he's very interested in the cause of preserving the Union but would rather the slavery question not be part of it. Eli enjoys winning at cards with his fellow soldiers and seems to tell Calvin about any of the young women that catch his eye - though it appears he is too bashful to speak to them.  I'm very interested in young Eli's first hand experiences, and plan to use his letters to continue the family history I'm telling along with the Civil War Block of the Month quilt.

Declaring my identity as a quilter

For my birthday, Norris got me a tablet computer that I can read books on or send email from while on the road. Although I have always liked computers, I knew I was not adapting easily to the mobile devices' technology,  I had to concede they have benefits, and thought I could deal with one as long as it had a real keyboard.  We got an Asus Transformer TF700.

I yelled at it a lot the first two days, but Sister Joyce got me to play a couple of games with her (remotely - she's in the Chicago area).  This was not merely an entertaining pasttime, but served to force me to become accustomed to the Android interface.  (I have lost every game, but maybe I'll beat her in the next Scrabble-type game finally!)

What's this got to do with quilting and knitting you ask? I made a clever little carrying case for it this week using quilting fabrics.  The case has a large pocket on both sides.  This side's pocket, under the flap closure, is subdivided into three compartments.

 

I used a free pattern that I would not necessarily recommend.  Because I have the keyboard which makes the tablet twice as thick, I enlarged the dimensions and that made figuring out what went where a little confusing. The pattern might be great, but it was published as a PDF with a lot instructions to "sew X to Y as in figure Z" type references.  The resolution of the photos in the PDF was far too low, so an instruction that had little explanation other than "as in figure Z" was not helpful.  It didn't say whether you were doing the side seams, the bottom, or what, and the illustration just showed a blurry object.  Well, sometimes the photo was a very close up view so then the problem was, "uhm, that's a clearer photo but just where is that in the grand scheme of the case?"

But I like my little case, which has yet another pretty quilting fabric as the lining, a muslin layer below that, and has both batting and a stiffener so it will hold its shape. When this one wears out, I'll design my own with what I learned making it.

And maybe I'll buy a knitting row-counter app now.