Crumbs and Scraps

What do you do with little pieces of fabric?

Some years ago I took my scrap box and played. I did a series of small quilts I called Crumb Quilts. I don't have pics of all that I made, but here are several:

I sewed scraps together and then trimmed them into rectangles or squares. Then I sewed the 'blocks' of scraps together. The deep border creates a frame that contains the crazy scraps, and offers a restful place for the eye. The quilts ranged from 12" to 16" in size.

The center quilt was made of 1 1/2" fabric samples.

The last quilt has a vintage fabric with mice running in a line so I appliquéd a cat and used a cityscape border. I call it Manhattan Melodrama!

 

Scraps have always been used in Patchwork. Like this 1960s era Grandmother's Flower Garden I shared last year.

 



 Or the one-patch quilt I wrote about several years ago.

And the Double Wedding Ring quilt I rescued a few months ago. I use my feedsack and vintage scraps to repair it, appliqueing over the worn patches.

And last year's East Side Detroit quilt I found at the flea market.

My mother-in-law developed 'Arthur-ritis' in her thumb and had to curtail her quilting. She wanted to use up her scraps. A favorite pattern was Aunt Suki's Choice. Each block has a four-patch unit of scraps.

 



A few years ago I started cutting my scraps into squares. I have squares of all sizes, from 1" to 20". I pull out these scraps for use in projects like Love Entwined. The background fabric was newly bought. Every other fabric is from my stash, yardage, fat quarters, and various sized squares.

I also have a small box of scraps with fusible backing, one of vintage fabric scraps, and a box of shirting fabrics. Another box has triangles, and one more applique shapes that were not used.

And they are all moving with me!

What do you do with your scraps?

Michigan 101:Ludington's Historic White Pine Village

I took a last trip to our nearest city, Ludington, MI to visit again the Historic White Pine Village and environs. The Village is a collection of vintage buildings that educate about the late 19th c when Ludington, along with Pentwater, Montague and Whitehall, were part of the lumbering boom. The woods across the state were cleared in short order. The lumber went to build, and after the great fire, rebuild Chicago. When the trees were gone entrepreneurs turned to growing sugar beets and beet sugar became a major industry in the state, farming on the land that had been covered by virgin timber. Some of the farmers were Ukrainian German refugees.

In the recreated period house were several quilts on beds. They are not all period pieces.

 

 There was a sewing and mending room with a nice pincushion.

The church is very picturesque. There is even a small cemetery.

 

There is a whole building commemorating the locally popular Scottville Clown Band. The members dress clownishly. Included is a quilt commemorating the band players over 100 years.

 

I saw a Fourth Order Fresnel Lens! This is the lens that would go with the brass oil lamp I have written about in my article about Girl and the Shipwreck Coast.

 

There was a recreated fur trappers cabin along with several other log houses.

 



It was such a beautiful day. The trees are just in flower.

After our visit we went down the road further to see Ludington from the other side of the lake that leads into Lake Michigan. This lake is fed by the Pere Marquette River, named for the Jesuit missionary who founded the state's first European settlement, and who died in Ludington in 1676. On the horizon you can see the newly built wind mill park that is nestled in the farmland.

A memorial stands where Pere Marquette was said to have died.

And we stopped at a nice park to see the sand dunes. The lake was still iced over in April, and the water temperature is still in the low 50s.

But back home in Pentwater the village is overrun with tourists, and cool weather did not stop them from going to the beach and even from dipping in the water! We saw sunburnt faces. Then, we had a long cold winter in Michigan and people are so happy to see sunshine and feel the warm sun! We had dinner at a restaurant that overlooks the Pentwater Lake.

It was a nice interlude between packing and our 'vacation' to clear out space in our retirement home. At this point it is filled with my folk's stuff and there is no room for anything of ours!



When the Yankees Realized They Had Declared Independence

Nathaniel Philbrick's latest book Bunker Hill:a City, a Siege, a Revolution begins  with an seven-year-old John Quincy Adams standing with his mother Abigail on a hill near their home in Braintree. They were looking down at Boston where the British army and American militia were in battle. Boston was almost an island, with only a slender isthmus connecting to the mainland. The bay around the city was filled with British ships, their cannons bombarding the the hills where the militia had made their stand.

John Adams was in Philadelphia representing Massachusetts a the Continental Congress. His family were unprotected and feared the British would  reach their hamlet. But the worst memory for John Quincy was when he learned that their family friend and physician, John Warren, was killed in that battle.

The battle of Bunker Hill predated General Washington's command of the militia, before he made the local militias into an American army. New England was supported by other colonies,sending food and supplies, but the idea of a United States separate from Britain was not yet formulated. The leaders who opposed the Stamp Act and tea tax still believed that King George III was an okay guy. It was just his governors and bureaucracy that was at fault.

Philbrick does not present British rule as unduly harsh. They had sent armies to defend the colonies during the French and Indian War. They needed to pay off a war debt of over $800,000. Plus they had this little thing going on with Napoleon. They really needed the cash. That tea that was dumped into the big saltwater teapot? They had a surplus and were selling it at a deep discount, and thought, wrongly, that a few pence tax on the tea would not be objectionable seeing it was being sold so cheaply.

Those Yankees were headstrong and independent from the get-go. Philbrick's earlier book Mayflower was about the Puritan settlers in Massachusetts. They wanted religious freedom. The colonists felt they had bought their freedom with their own sweat, toil, and blood. They didn't like anyone telling them what to do.

Almost a comedy of errors, misunderstandings, chance and bad decisions, the outcome of the battle of Bunker Hill changed the world when the British troops, and loyalist citizens, sailed out of Boston harbor.

The hero of Philbrick's story is the almost unknown John Warren. He had saved John Quincy Adam's forefinger when it was badly fractured. At that time the usual practice would have been amputation. John Quincy never forgot how Dr. Warren saved his finger. Warren was as important as Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and other leaders of his time. But Warren could not resist joining the fray, and lost his life at Bunker Hill.

Philbrick ends the book in 1843 with John Quincy Adams refusing to attend celebratory remembrances of Bunker Hill. He was seventy-five years old and serving in congress where he fought for abolition. The Adams family revered Warren so much that when Abigail first saw John Trumbull's painting Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill she wrote "...in looking at it, my whole frame contracted, my blood shivered, and I felt a faintness in my heart." She felt the painting would "transmit to posterity characters and actions which will command the admiration of future ages and prevent the period which gave birth to them from ever passing away into the dark abyss of time..."

John Trumbull's Death of General Warren at Bunker Hill

Previously I have read Phlbrick's Mayflower, In the Heart of the Sea, and have Sea of Glory on my to read shelf. I have enjoyed his books. This book, being about a battle, was not as engrossing for me but his portrayal of the personages involved kept my interest.

Bunker Hill
Nathaniel Philbrick
Penguin

Thank you to Penguin and NetGalley for providing the -ebook for my review.

Neighborhood Sights

We don't have a fenced yard and walk our dogs three times a day. That has allowed us to become very familiar with our part of the village. Here is what we saw tonight.

Just around the corner is a house with a natural yard. This week it is full of wild Trillium.

 The same yard has white violets.

 The village is full of ancient trees, many with hollow holes and dead limbs.

 Across the street is a blasted tree that has a pine growing in it's rotten crotch.

These huge trees have interesting bark landscapes.

The street signs all look like this:

We have Flicker, Red Headed Woodpecker, Pileated Woodpecker, and deer. We have not seen them, but a block away is a woods with fox, and the local cemetery has had black bear visit it.

Next month we will be in  an urban area. But there are raccoon, opossum, roof rates squirrel, chipmunks,hawk, song birds,  and small children at the elementary school across the street. Still plenty of interesting sights to see!

More Magazine Ads From the 1960s

I was packing and found another pile of old magazines. I took some pics to share before the magazines went into the garage sale. You can learn so much about society past from old ads.

My family never thrilled to a Buick, but Dad had a Bell-Air in white and turquoise and later I learned to drive in a red 1962 Chrysler New Yorker with loads of chrome.

There was  a story about a dancing housewife.Apparently it was the only way she could face the drudgery, and her husband disapproved because it made her look pretty crazy.

 This look could be found in homes today, except for the red walls. I'd get that wall unit in a heartbeat.

 Remember when little girls wore pinafores and slips that made the skirts stick out? What were they thinking?

 Oh boy, I hate to admit it but Mom and I had matching cats-eye glasses in pink and blue!

 Mom was totally a Pepsi drinker.

 Our second television looked like this. The first one was a very small screen in a very large box.

 Santa Baby lounging on carpet? Strange ad. Get a move on, Santa!

 When smoking was glamorous. At least it was supposed to be glamorous, but my brother and I coughed and complained about the smoke.

 I had several steel kitchens in parsonages past, and actually loved those cabinets.

 Such great art work for the short stories.

 Ugh. I never liked those TV dinners. They were quite awful. And yet, Mom bought them.

Have a great day!

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.