There has been progress on the Sea Otter wall hanging.
The water pieces are all ironed on and the freezer paper template around those has been removed. Most of the water pieces were good sized. Now I'm working on the face, which has a zillion tiny pieces. But it's slowly taking shape. I'm thinking this might be a good project for matchstick quilting. The closely spaced stitching lines would hold down those little pieces instead of trying to outline stitch them.
I also swapped out a wall hanging in the living room. The Haunted Halloween quilt is now hanging from this shelf/rack. It was a free Fat Quarter Shop project this year.
It replaced the smaller Boo Buddies quilt, because Boo Buddies is going to the quilt show this weekend as one of my entries. The larger wall hanging actually fills the space a lot better.
Hopefully today I'll get the last of the face pieces ironed onto the Sea Otter, and can then add the batik borders to it. And I picked up a couple of table toppers from the quilter so those will be ready for binding too.
Family genealogy has been on my mind again lately, as I've tried to track down birth and death records for some ancestors for my DAR membership application. Two weekends ago when my older daughter and family were here (tree branch trimming), she and I got to talking about the grandfathers. Both my dad and my father-in-law served in World War II and the conversation turned to old photos and war "mementoes". So it was inevitable that these 2 boxes came out.
I have the small oak box that my dad used to keep his military ribbons, a few photos and some other odds and ends of wartime memories. He was an 18 year old paratrooper dropped behind enemy lines near the end days of the war. Just a kid, like so many!! He rarely ever would talk about his experiences but I do know the stories behind a few of the items.
My father-in-law was overseas much longer than my dad as he was already in his early 20s at the start of the war. He was an army tank mechanic. The old metal box (top) holds mostly old photos from his military days, and a few other trinkets. My brother-in-law lent me the box so I could scan the photos so the whole family could have them.
So - one of my cold weather tasks will involve scanning pictures - in between sewing projects.
6 comments:
sometimes it is nice to go through the memorabilia and other times downright sad. My dad was a little to young for WWII but his older brother was a prisoner of war in the Philippines the whole war and one time when visiting the state of Georgia we visited a museum there I don't remember the name of it off hand but it is devoted to veterans of wars and my uncle had donated a lot of his items there from when he was in the war, I found display after display with some of his items there, a metal cup with his name scratched into the bottom, a rosary that my grandmother had given him that he managed to keep the whole 4 years in the horrible prison, it was amazing to see these things.
That otter quilt is going to be so cute when it's finished. My FIL served in WWW II, but would never talk about it. Good luck with the family ancestry searches, that info can be so hard to find, though a lot more of it is on line these days.
The otter is charming -- the mosaic applique is a nice technique. It's fun to go through family memorabilia, isn't it? I've long known that my father's mother's line goes back to the Revolution. Only recently did I learn that my mother's father's line does, too--and I *so* wish she had known that because she would surely have joined the DAR. Ancestry.com comes up with more 'hints" every day.
Three of my Mom’s brothers served in WWII in three different branches. None of them talked to family about their experiences, but one of my cousins did some research and shared it with the family. Matchstick quilting will look great on the otter.
I have four totes of photos to go through and decide what to scan, all the photos came here when we moved Moms stuff to storage. I could spend weeks upstairs...I set up a special table, chair and a good light. It is a project.
love the otter so far....good luck with the DAR research...i was fortunate that mine was already documented in an approved book so easy peasy but not everyone is fortunate that way....
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