In my post about the challenge quilt Snow Goose, I mentioned paper piecing. There are plenty of tutorials about it out there, but I thought I would show you how I do it.
Author: Michelle Page 31 of 35
When you are researching family history, you often find that names have changed over the years. It can make the search for your family’s history challenging.
There are a number of reasons a name might change – immigration, transcription errors, translation, marriage, a desire to fit in the local community or a desire to hide from something in the past.
In our family history, we have a few names that have changed over time – most notably Hoel. Several of Walt’s ancestors spelled it Hole. It seems to have changed back and forth a couple of times, and it also depends on which document you are looking at for a few family members. Walt’s great-grandfather was listed as John Swisher Hole. His son, Walt’s grandfather, was William Henry Hoel.
In my discussion of color in this post, I showed a quilt that used two blocks to create the design. This quilt also uses two blocks, and creates an interesting secondary design.
This was from one of the earliest classes I took after I joined my local quilt guild. It was before I started putting labels on my quilt, but I am pretty sure it was made in 2003.
The two blocks used in the quilt are commonly called a square-in-a-square and an eight-pointed star. Blocks often have more than one name, depending on when an where they were published. This square-in-a-square has also been called an economy patch.
The eight-pointed star in this quilt has two different color layouts.
The one on the left is the center block. The one on the right is the four corners.
The instructor was encouraging us to use our color placement to make secondary designs. I was so new to quilting that I didn’t understand what that meant until I took this class.
By this time, I had started to understand that the quilting design added to the overall appearance, so I spent some time deciding how to quilt this one. The arc shape is the same size in the pale green circles as it is in the diagonal line going across the quilt from corner to corner. You can see it much better in this photo of the back of the quilt.
Quilts offer a lot of opportunity to play with color and color placement. When you change the color placement on a design, you can get very different looking results.
I have taken a fair number of quilting classes over the years. My favorite classes are those that stretch my skills and teach me new things.
In 2008, my guild had a teacher in named Sharyn Craig. Her class was teaching a couple of piecing skills – curved seams and y-seams. Piecing is the term for how you put the fabric together to make the quilts.
Delores was born on June 7, 1934 and died on January 25, 2005.
I remember sitting on the porch at my aunt and uncle’s farmhouse, listening to my Aunt Dee playing the guitar and telling stories. When I was very little, I thought she made up all the songs she sang for us. I remember being very surprised to learn that she didn’t write “You Are My Sunshine”
I was looking through some pictures the other day and I noticed how many of them showed people fishing. It was a popular way to pass the time for Carl and Georgie and other members of their family.
For the quilt show that was taking place during the 25th anniversary of my local quilt group, we were given some white fabric with a silvery sheen and told that the block had to be divisible into 25 squares. There was also a maximum size limit for the quilt.
Carl took a lot of photographs. And he clearly had one favorite subject for his pictures. It’s easy to see why….
It took me a lot of practice to get a really good pie crust. It is easy to mix too much and get a tough crust. I found that it is really important to use a large bowl for best results. At first, I mixed in a smaller bowl and my crusts were tougher and not very flaky. When I moved to a larger, wide bottomed bowl I got much better results.
I love the outdoors. I enjoy fishing, hiking, camping, gardening, hanging out enjoying a book in the shade with a cold drink….but I don’t like to mow the grass. We have over ¾ of an acre, and I spend two to three hours a week or more mowing and trimming, about 8 months a year.