Philadelphia Block

My last block for the Jane Austen Family Album until after our move and I have a quilt room again. I will have a lot of catching up to do as this is a block a week project!

The Philadelphia pattern was chosen to represent Jane's Aunt Philadelphia Austen Hancock.

Last Things

As we prepare to retire at the end of June we are facing the 'last things'. Today I was liturgist for the last time in a church pastored by my husband. I read from 1 Corinthians, Chapter 3. A lady told me it was the best Corinthians reading she'd ever heard. I hear Paul's voice in my mind. I am merely a conduit for his words.

The prelude today was a wonderful rendition of Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, one of the first hymns I learned after I joined my husband's denomination. I could hardly stem the tears when I stood to offer announcements and lead the call to worship.

We will spend this next week packing. It is the last time I will pack to move from a church parsonage, and God willing, we will not need to pack to move again for twenty or thirty years. We have lived in four states, eleven cities, ten parsonages. And we both moved once in childhood.

The sound of the tape ripping off the tape dispenser upsets our Kamikaze. She hates loud or unpredictable noises. But our Suki, who we adopted five and a half years ago, has already lived in three houses and she takes it in stride. They love our retirement home, and soon will forget they ever lived anywhere but there.

My husband has a vacation due and we are going across state to prepare our retirement home for moving in. Things that belonged to my folks, or that Dad bought after Mom's passing, will have to go to make room for our stuff. We carefully consider what we need and what we can give away, what goes into storage and what is sold. Heirlooms I have owned for twenty or thirty years are passed on to other family members. Antiques we collected but can't keep need new homes. We imagine a new environment for our new, permanent home. Furniture that fits, new things, permanent things.

Next month will be my husband's last worship service, his last communion served to his assigned church, and the last good-bye celebration as we leave a church. There will be a farewell dinner for all the retiring pastors in the conference, some of whom served in neighboring communities or who served churches we were also at.

1971 the year we met at college

Service in ministry is hard, and the itinerant ministry is even harder. I married  young, full of idealism and with a great faith in humanity. I did not believe then in evil. I had to encounter its many forms before I capitulated and accepted that evil does take residence in human hearts and contort relationships and corrupt institutions.

I have seen faith in action, how people can become the hands of a higher power and bring health and healing, wholeness and grace into lives. And both of these, evil and good, reside in each person waiting for our weakness or strength to loose them into the world.

Nearly forty-two years my husband and I have traveled this rocky road. Next month we reinvent the world. There are a lot of decisions to be made. The one thing I know is that I will, first thing, join that quilt guild in town and continue to explore the creative possibilities that quilting has offered me for twenty-three years. The creative process has grounded me when I needed it, invigorated me when I was down in heart, and offered me a therapeutic dose of happiness when around me was chaos.


We face many last things, but other things are 'forever'. And I thank God for those forever things in my life, especially for my best friend and partner, my husband and the father of my child.

Houses

I have been thinking about houses a lot lately. The house we are moving into and the houses I have lived in.

About the time of my birth a whole neighborhood of Levittown-type houses were built in the farm fields surrounding the 1830s house we lived in. Because of Facebook, several years ago I reconnected with friends who grew up on Rosemont Avenue. 

Rosemont Avenue houses behind me

My dad and his family had moved into the house in 1935. Grandpa was an insurance salesman, and the Depression destroyed his business and livelihood. He had to sell the new 1920s bungalow in town to rent half of a worn out old farmhouse.

Dad and Grandfather in the old house

After a few years he bought the house and fixed it up. Indoor plumbing was installed and three apartments carved out.  My cousins lived in one apartment, my grandparents in another, and my family in the third.

The house after my grandfather bought it and fixed it up

Before Rosemont Avenue and the housing project

In the 1940s grandfather built a gas station on the property in front of the house. Dad and my uncles and all their friends worked there at some time or another.

The house while grandfather was building a gas station along the main road

The Station

I was ten when my family moved to Michigan. We moved into a 1920s house on a (then) elm-lined street. I missed the old house and my friends and family. I dreamt about going back and buying the house. Then it was torn down and replaced by an apartment building. The lilacs and willows were torn up too.

The listing for the house my folks bought in Michigan

I went to college, married, and moved to twelve more towns; plus a move to a newly built parsonage during one four-year appointment. We have lived in the inner city, small towns, rural areas, and the suburbs. One parsonage was literally attached to the church, with a cement walkway between them. We could sit at the dining-room table and people would lean on the window sill and talk to us as we breakfasted.

city house

the new parsonage

small town house

village house

The neighborhood in inner city Philadelphia

When I was in college my family moved into the house I inherited and will move into next month. it is a mid-century modern ranch in the 'burbs.

My inherited house in the 'burbs

My nostalgia about houses started with that first move. When I was first quilting I made A House for All Seasons, twelve houses blocks to represent each month of the year.

Madison House quilt block

And when I designed my personal Album quilt I included a house block that was based on my first home, with a willow branch and lilacs. There were huge lilac bushes and willow trees surrounding the house.

My childhood home Album quilt block

I always wanted to make a quilt to represent the houses I have lived in. Now we are retiring to our last house I can start that project. I can also travel and see my paternal ancestral home in the Shenandoah Valley, and perhaps even the houses my mom lived in growing up in Kane and Milroy PA.

The Gochenour homestead in Virginia

Grandpa's birthplace in Milroy, PA

Almost forty-two years ago we married and moved into student housing at the seminary in Delaware, Ohio where we made our first home for three years. Oh, the places we've been and the houses we've been in!

The Methodist Theological School in Ohio dorm where we first lived

Empire Star Block

This week's block for Barbara Brackman's block of the week Jane Austen Family Album is for Napoleon  Bonaparte. Although Jane does not mention the war with France, her brothers and other family members were in the service.

We are packing, sorting things to sell, giving away stuff in preparation for moving next month. My husband is retiring. As we have lived in a church owned parsonage since 1989 we have to move at retirement, and because the parsonages have been huge we have to significantly downsize to fit into our modest, Mid-Century ranch I inherited. I will need to convert Dad's work room into a quilt room.

My fabric and supplies are mostly packed up. I will continue with the sampler as much as I can, but Love Entwined will languish until I have a new work space set up later.

But I can still read! I am working on Nathaniel Philbrick's Bunker Hill right now. Then I have a biography of the first American Saint, Elizabeth Seton and also a novel about German immigrants during WWI called Bohemian Flats.

Michigan 101: Springtime in Michigan

After a long, hard Michigan winter we look forward to the beauty of spring flowers. Last week Holland, Michigan held its annual Tulip Festival. But in yards everywhere the tulips and daffodils are blooming. Yesterday we were taken on a little auto tour of local gardens full of daffodils and tulips. Here are some photos from gardens past.

Fawn follow their mothers to the edge of the woods. Sometimes the doe and fawn go running right through the village here.

Here in Oceana County on our tour yesterday we saw the asparagus growing up from the bare ground of the fields. They say the late winter will delay the crop but not harm it. This is important as the county is the largest producer of asparagus in the country, and is home to the National Asparagus Festival. 

Soon the tress will be in flower, like the crabapple. Forsythia are in bloom now.

 I love when the lilacs bloom. I grew up in a house with thirty year old lilacs bushes. Their fragrance fills me with joyous nostalgia.

Winter is over.

Jane Austen Family Album :James Austen

Barbara Brackman chose Village Green to represent Jane's eldest brother, who served as a minister.

We have had illness in the family all week, so I was glad this was a simple block!

The Forgotten Seamstress by Liz Trent, A Mystery About A Quilt With An Unusual Provenance.

Liz Trent's novel pivots on an inherited quilt made with a special fabric, the May Silks created expressly for Princess 'May' (Mary) of Teck's wedding gown for her marriage to The Duke of York, George the son of Queen Victoria, in 1893.

"You can see the rose, the thistle, and chain of shamrocks--symbols for the nations of the United Kingdom...These flowers in the center look like daffodils...but more important, can you see those silver threads?" 

Caroline's life is in disorder. She split with her long time boyfriend then lost her lucrative, if dull, job. She has discovered she is pregnant, and her mother has dementia and must be moved into senior care, and the family cottage sold.

Caroline's mother has given her an old quilt. Upon examination by her friend it appears to incorporate fabrics made exclusively for the royal family. Having nothing better to do (start a new business, undergo a miscarriage, and fall for a new guy) Caroline goes on a quest to discover the mystery behind the quilt, who made it, and why her Granny Jean wanted her mother to be sure to hand it down to her.

Plot-driven novels and mysteries are not my usual purview; but there is a time for for them, and being down with a bad case of the stomach flu this past week, The Forgotten Seamstress was perfect.

The novel is written in three time periods; the back story of the quiltmaker Maria Romano, who in 1910 is brought from an orphanage to work as a seamstress in the royal household; transcriptions of interviews with Maria in 1970 when she was in a hospital for the insane; and the contemporary story of Caroline who inherits the quilt. Maria is the more successful and interesting character, the tape transcriptions beautifully rendered.

Through Maria's character we take a tour of  the treatment of the mentally ill over thirty years. When when the quilt goes missing Caroline has to confront the plight of the homeless and life on the street.

As typical of a mystery, the unraveling is complicated and and has a surprise ending.

"As I lifted the quilt out and unfolded it right side out...light from the window illuminated its beautiful, shimmering patterns and dazzling colors."

Now...the quilt.

The mystery quilt is a Medallion style, central square on point, with the center square embroidered with a Lover's Knot, and bordered with lozenges pieced from silks. The next border includes appliquéd figures that become an important clue to the validity of Maria's story. There are hand woven velvets a century old. As the borders move outwards, the fabrics change to lilac and gray cottons, including WWI era uniform fabrics, in a zig zag pattern. The last border of Grandmother's Fans, dating to the 1970s, includes Liberty Cottons.

The quilt was layered with a sheet for the backing and a thin wool blanket as batting, or wadding as it is called in the novel. The quilting stitches followed the seams.

A pattern to replicate the (fictional) quilt has been developed by Judy Baker-Rogers and can be found here.

Liz Trent grew up living next to and working at the family silk mill in Britain.

I thank the publisher and NetGalley for access to the e-book for my review.

The Forgotten Seamstress
Sourcebooks Landmark
ISBN: 9781402282485