Family History

I have scrap booked for a while now. I started in 1995. I know that was a bit late. All three of our children were out of school. I mean clear out, finished with college and one was already married. I took a class with  a group of people interested in chronicling the history of our church. It turns out we moved to Texas shortly after that, but I had been bitten by the scrap booking bug. It's quite a determined bug and once it has you, it won't let go. Up until this point I had taken as many pictures of our children, family, events, occasions, graduations,etc as any one else. But they were all in boxes, or drawers or under the bed or what have you. I had started one album when Sharon was little, I think there were three pages in it, but that's all.
I am pleased to announce that I have completed well over a dozen albums now and have several more that I am working on.

Genealogy has interested me, but I have never gone to any lengths to dig. That is until now. I signed up on Ancestry. com last week and have made some progress in documenting my mother's family tree. My mother was not married when I was born and I have only a sketchy idea of my father. So I was trying to find something on him. It seems, though, that if you don't know anything finding something is pretty impossible.

I did make contact with a cousin from Syracuse, NY, however, and found that she has been digging also. I am anxious to compare notes with her and see if she has names and dates from the German ancestors. I know that all of our grandfather's family was here in this country from the late 1800's. It's interesting and pretty exciting when you find something unexpected.

The best thing that could come out of this search would be if I could re-connect with my living relatives. I haven't had much contact with any of them since I left home in the 60's and joined the USAF.
My family and I moved back to the Buffalo area in the late 80's for only a couple of years, but the contact was brief and since my uncles, and mother have passed away, I never had much contact with my cousins. We weren't really close when I was growing up either, don't really know why, but there it is.

I think family is important, and even if you don't agree politically, or religiously, you do have a common heritage that is part of what makes you you. For better or for worse, it's who we are and should not be disregarded. Therefore, I am going to look into the past for at least a little while and see what I find. Who knows what's out there. A lady I used to go to church with once discovered that her great, great, etc grand father was part of the troops with General George Washington at Valley Forge. How cool is that?
                                                      
                                                            
                                                                               

Final pictures of the quilt.

Here are the final pictures of the queen sized quilt I made.

This is the label I attached to my quilt. I understand this is expected on hand made quilts. I missed the birthday by a couple of weeks, but better late than never. I am still working on the pillow shams.

The only thing I need now is a picture of our girl with her quilt. Hurry up and send it Sharon.

The Quilt story

This is the finished quilt, folded up ready to ship to my darling first born.

I said that I knew I would need a lot of those 9" squares, and I made a lot of them, but I was very surprised when it took them all and in the end I had to scrounge to make a half dozen more squares to finish the quilt and the shams. You have to have shams. I made about 144 9" squares of random scrap fabrics. I guess it's true, I don't throw anything away.
I also found a lot of yardage which I decided right away would be used for the backing. In the photo above you can see it between the blocks as sashing.

As I worked on the quilt I received a lot of advice and ideas. One great idea was to use a technique called quilt as you go. I thought this would work well for me since I didn't want to spend $150- 200. to have it professionally quilted. So I did a simple stitch in the ditch and then double stitched across the block from corner to corner. It looked nice, but not spectacular. Then I found 'stippling paper'. You place this paper, which has adhesive on the edges, on your quilt block. It's sort of like tracing paper, but you sew on the lines and then rip it off when you're done. So I ripped out all of the quilting I had started and then did this. I liked it right away.

Getting close to finishing I saw the *Scallop Ruler*. I loved it right away and knew it had to be the finishing touch for this amazing quilt. It took some extra time, but I love how it turned out.

I learned so much from making this quilt, every step was a new lesson and I think I am ready to move on to new quilts. I like quilting very much. You should know that it isn't without consequences however. There are hazards along the way. Being stuck repeatedly by hidden pins, and the needle pokes are so unpleasant. I have even shed blood. My wrists and fingers ached from the twisting and pulling and just manipulating the huge thing toward the end stretched my shoulders and neck. But I think it was all worth it. I love it, I think it looks great, my friends say it looks great, and even though I know where all the ugly oops are, I still think it's a great first effort. Who knew I could quilt?