Never too early ....

.... to start planning for summer. The Mountain Jam Circle quilters met several weeks ago and purchased the fabrics for this year's Shindig on the Green quilt. We are following an Eleanor Burns pattern that requires some assembly before the cutting is completed, but Alice got the first part of the cutting done.  We met for a yummy lunch at her house last week so that I could get some of the remnants to make a block for the center.

This block includes all the fabrics that will appear in the quilt.  I used the basic idea of the block Eleanor Burns used, but made it slightly more complex to incorporate all the shades of blue in what I hope looks like a transparent overlay of a light blue frame on point set over a Missouri Star.  I have found two related blocks "Noon and Light" and a version of "Royal Star"  - but surprisingly, no traditional pattern that is exactly this combination of squares and triangles.

This is a 12 inch block. Alice and Ann will be piecing the rest of a lap sized-quilt around it.  Should be a beauty!

A hat for Marvin

When Marvin saw the hat I knit for Norris, he said he wanted one just like it.  "Just like it," I wondered, "the same shape, the same texture, the same color?"  NO!  Not the same color!

Marvin needed a KU Blue hat. This blue was the closest I found in an easy-care worsted weight. Marvin's hat is a slight improvement on the earlier model, for which I was short of yarn. There's more room in the crown.

I mailed the hat off last week - it arrived on Friday when Marla and Marvin were getting ready to leave on vacation. They went to the beach in Florida. I don't think Marvin needs the hat there - and this winter is probably over in Chattanooga. But he'll have it for any chilly weather next year.  Rock-Chalk-Jayhawk!

Threads of Memory - Civil War 2014 Block Two - Mercer Star

February's block is a combination of two traditional blocks, a large Ohio Star with a small North Star for the center.The Ohio Star is a reminder that the 82nd Indiana was the only one from that state in a brigade of Ohio regiments by the time of the Chattanooga campaign. 

I'm still trying make sure I put a stripe or a plaid - or both - in each block. The reverse toile print I used in the background of this block was purchased to back a wall quilt a few years ago. but I really like it here. The two red fabrics were recently purchased at a tiny quilt shop in Chickamauga.

I don't have any news from Shep with the 52nd in Tennessee, but Billy wrote to his brother Hiram from the camp at Chattanooga on February 9th, telling him he is well and cooking dinner of beans and "corn dodger." They are living fine with plenty of dried fruit, potatoes and onions. (Onions were prized by Civil War armies both for their flavor and the vitamins.) Billy reports that a depot full of quartermaster stores burned that morning, having caught fire from a cook shanty. His unit was ordered to carry out the goods. "We didn't get more than half of if carried out, the balance was burned. The fire broke out about 4 o'clock in the morning."

from the Library of Congress collection, a Federal Camp by the Tennessee River, Chattanooga

Billy continues, "I think that the Rebel Army is about used up. They have to keep 3 and 4 picket lines between their Army and ours, to keep their men from coming over in squads of hundreds, and they break through sometimes anyhow. The pickets are formed of those that are most hostile to the U.S." Billy has also just seen one of the largest bears of his life. The bear and his keeper were captured at Knoxville and are performing for the troops. Six mules pull the bear's cage on a wagon. Billy expects to get paid soon.  Since he has enough money to last until next pay day, he's going to send his earnings home.

WWI Block of the Month - Block Two - Love Entangled

.... or is it "The War at Home" - the newspaper article about the block gave the latter name, while the pattern instructions call it Love Entangled.

I looked it up in the authoritative Brackman catalog of pieced blocks - she has it as Love Entangled from a source that would have provided that name in either the 1960's or 1970's.

I really love Vicki's hand-dyed shibori that I used for the larger pieces in the pieced block.  The pattern called for a large red square and blue triangles. My pieces all came from the same fat eighth I got as part of a group of multi-colored fat shibori fabrics I bought from her a while back. The little corner squares are also from Vicki, while the twelve little red triangles are from a hand-dyed fabric purchased at a quilt show years ago.

It is rather interesting to take so much time making all those little pointy triangles only to place appliqued leaves so that some of the points get covered up. I did make the stem and leaves a little more distant from the block so as to minimize that effect this time.  It took longer than usual to put this block together because I got my all the leaves, stems, circles, and stars prepared for the remaining blocks.  Let's see, twelve blocks, 34 leaves per block....  I don't really want to know how many leaves that is.

WWI Block of the Month from Kansas City Star Quilts

The Kansas City Star is publishing a new Block of the Month series that started in January called "Where Poppies Grow" that commemorates the service of one of the designers' grandfathers. The quilt can be seen on the publisher's quilting blog here - Pickle Dish blog

Dorry and I exhanged an email or two about this project - did we really need to make another quilt from a series of blocks? But my WWI education is lacking, and this block series is very different from those I've done recently.  The combination of piecing and appliqué was appealing so, I have taken the plunge.

I decided to stick with the original patriotic color scheme, but went in a new direction from my other historial-reference block series quilts.  I featured hand-dyed fabrics with a few commercial prints for supporting roles.  My friend Diane dyed the bright blues - the circle under the star is a darker version of the one in the pieced area. (Both are more of a Cadet blue, not turquoise as they appear in my photo.) I'm not certain of the origin of the red. The three shades of green leaves and the gold star were my custom William and Mary fabrics from Vicki Welsh for the Grandmother's Choice" quilt.

I did the 34 leaves, circle and star with raw edge appliqué finished with a tiny machine buttonhole stitch in matching silk thread.  Hand-appliqué takes a toll on my hands and wrists and I'm very comfortable and happier doing it by machine

I don't have a direct ancestor who served in WWI, but there are at least three great-uncles who did. After I do just a little more research, I'll post information about their service.

Threads of Memory - Civil War Block of the Month 2014 - Portsmouth Star

Barbara Brackman is posting her 2014 Civil War Block of the month on the third Saturday, but I was out of town. I just made my block today -

It is a modified version of the Ohio Star - the new part being the little split squares in the corners. Mine are made of the red and gold floral and the aqua triangles. I liked the way this block looked with the framing effect of a large stripe and used all I had of this one to do it. These blocks are 12 inches.

Shep with the 52nd wrote to his sisters Joanna and Carrie on the 17th of January and tells them "we have just received orders to be in readiness to start day after tomorrow. We are going down the river sure enough." He speculated they would be seeing more of the "sunny south" - though not by choice. 

Billy wrote to his brother Henry from Chattanooga on January 23rd, 1864. He is happy to report "The cars coming to town caused great excitement and of course, I, like any other little boy, have been looking at, and riding on them every day since they commenced running here." He is living in a little house near the big depot as he has been all winter. He jokes, "I heard that the Rebs were advancing on Chattanooga again, and sure enough, they are, for they are daily and hourly coming in and taking the oath." He reports 4-12 and sometimes 25 of them. He talked to some that day and wonders "if our men were deserting and going to the Reb lines as fast as they are to ours, I should think that we were played out."  They finally have plenty to eat and he is very glad that they stayed there and held what they gained, "... instead of falling back on our supplies, we held our gain and let the supplies come to us."

Billy jokes about having had his photo taken, thinking he would send it to some girl next month for a Valentine, but "I don't know who there is that I would wish to boar so dam bad as that. If I had an enemy that I wanted to spite, I would do as above stated."  He concludes asking Henry to speak a good word for me to the girls back home. "We very frequently see young ladies when we are outside the lines, but there is not half of them that know putty. They still say Pemberton can still hold Vicksburg as long as he wants and that Bragg is coming back here to whip us before long. We ask them why he didn't whip us while he was in his fortifications at Talahoma, "Wal you'uns ware a gitt in behaind him."

Federal Encampment at Chattanooga, 1864, from the Library of Congress collection

Two days later, in a letter to Joanna, Billy says, "... as for slavery, I didn't come out to fight for nor against it, I came out to fight Rebels and traitors to there country. It is the Rebels themselves that are destroying slavery and a great many of the deserters from their army say that slavery is dead anyhow and it will not make the war any longer one way or another. Well, I have seen enough of this cursed institution with my own eyes."

In a letter to his brother Charlie on the 31st of January, talking about reenlisting (the men of the 82nd are not yet eligible as they are still serving their original commitment) Billy says "I will finish my term and go home and let somebody else fight awhile. If I can't get a furlough without paying for it, I will not have one at all. You spoke of men all going to the gold territory. Well, I hope, by jing, that the Indians will surround every one of them and about two-thrids starve them. Then, I guess, they would know how soldering goes."

Coral Belle

This sweater was originally called "Silver Belle," from the 25th anniversary issue of Vogue Knitting where it was one of a celebratory feature of designs in silver/gray. The designer's yarn is still available. I wound up finding a discontinued color and buying it because I wasn't getting gauge in yarns of the same weight.  I never did get the right gauge according to the directions, so I didn't actually expect I'd get a sweater that would fit me.

It's made of 17 balls of yarn - at 50g each - that's nearly two pounds of yarn!  The textures make for a  bulky sort of fabric and I really didn't expect I'd enjoy wearing it, thinking it would be unflattering.

But it's not a bad fit.

I doubt I'd pack it to go on any trips, but I may enjoy wearing it anyway. I had put it on my list of project to make it mainly because I was attracted to the fun combination of cables and interesting construction.

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.

First Hat - knitted

I have made a hat before, but it was for a Halloween costume for a Princess and was not knitted. So this is the first hat I've knitted.

It was strange for me, after knitting so many sweaters, to have a project come off the needles in less than a week. 

I bought the yarn in Georgia on that recent trip and had only one skein - and ran a little short - the hat should have been a little longer, more ribbing turned up. But in this dark color it's hard to even see the design and it will probably work o.k. for Norris.

He wouldn't let me use any bright colors, but maybe with the next one, I can find a lighter shade of  blue or gray so my work will show up without needing brilliant sunshine.

My Mother Always Said

Dorry is always coming up with creative new ideas for quilters, and now, in the middle of organizing Something Blue,  a show of quilts at the ArtSpace Herdon gallery starting in mid-January, she has another. (A click on the show title will take you to the ArtSpace Event page.) With just over a month before the show's opening, she issued a challenge on the theme of something your mother would say. The quilt was to be 12 inches square and was to include the color blue.

My mother, like all mothers, had her favorite sayings, but hers weren't the typical ones at all.  She would say, "Decisions, decisions!" when you were trying to make up your mind. She would say, "First mistake I ever made" whenever she made one.  She would say, "I'm in the garbage!" when you came home and called out, "Mom, where are you?" I asked a couple of my siblings for help to get a saying I could make a quilt from.

Brother Roger came up with "Learn something new every day" which he remembers both my mother and her mother saying.  Mom would say "You learn something new every day" whenever something she hadn't heard of before came in front of her, but I chose to use it as my brother quoted it - more as a piece of motherly advice.  In this age of lists of recommendations for how to age better, learning new skills - both physical and mental - is always at the top.

Norris and I are constantly looking for ways to expand our brains and physical skills. So I set out to make a quilt using techniques I have never tried before, and came up with painting with water color dyes on silk.  I had recently purchased both the Derwent Inktense pencils and some mix-with-water fabric dyes.

I knew enough not to try to make my first piece be the final one. I thought the blue part of the quilt would be the Blue Ridge mountains and started experimenting on a 6 inch square piece of silk ironed to freezer paper. This is a cropped view of that effort - the other edges have color experiments on them.

I started with that purple which got away from me right away, and I didn't like the pencil lines in the sky, but the blue and black mountains and the foliage part are not too bad.

My next effort was 6 x 12 inches and I already had much better control of the flow of color for the mountains.

But then I was unhappy with the limit of the colors I could get with my 6 Inktense pencils and borrowed Derwent Watercolour pencils and Graphitint pencils from my friend Ellen. I experimented a bit more and I thought I was ready to try my hand at the real deal.  Here's a crop of the upper half of that effort.

I was really happy with my sky technique by this time. I was working slowly, only on dry areas, so I also did some on the lower part of the scene, with the foliage. I know that watercolors bleed, but this time, I created such a sharp line of green where I didn't want it and it couldn't be fixed. I also only at this stage realized that the new pencil colors reacted and spread differently than the ink ones I started with.

 

I considered cutting this piece apart and appliqueing other fabric on top of my water color mountains for the foliage, but by this time I concluded this scene was too complicated for a beginning fabric painter like me, and went to Plan B.

The bluebird was Mom's favorite. With this simpler image using fewer colored layers, I could outline the original bird with black thread and make something recognizable.  I liked the butterflies print for the binding as it has the blue and the touch of purple I used for tinting the sky.

I quilted my bluebird on a floral backing that also included blue and purple and a hint of the pink-red.

Now I'm curious to see what the other quilters' mothers always said and how they interpreted those words into a quilt.