Photos of Nancy Smith's Block

Hey!  The blog has reached 12,000 hits this week, thank you for your clicks and comments.  How do we ever get our quilting done when blogland is so time consuming!


James and Nancy Smith's home in East Nottingham
is in the lower left hand corner of the Chester County map.


I hope you have enjoyed Nancy's block.  If you have photos of the block on your blog you can add a link below to your post.  If you use Flickr you can add your photos there as well.


1. Write your blog post. Publish it on your blog.
2. Copy the link of the specific blog post. This is not just the link to your blog itself (www.chestercriswellquilt.blogspot.com), but the link to the specific post: (http://chestercriswellquilt.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/hows-it-going.html)
3. Click the blue link up button above and paste your link into the box.

Nancy Smith's Block

This month's block was made by Nancy Carlile Smith.  You can get a pattern for this block at Two Bits Patches. Nancy's mother Mary was a sister of Alice Criswell who made the quilt; so Nancy was a cousin of the bride Mary.  Nancy was married to James Smith and had three children when she made her quilt block.  Nancy had two more children and lived to the age of 68.

When I was drafting this block I was conscious of the irregularities in the applique. The ruffles around the outside aren't evenly spaced.  The reverse applique cutouts had a bit of a jag in the middle.  So, I redrew the outside line so the peaks and troughs were evenly spaced.  I considered doing a cut and paste in Photoshop to get the edge perfect.  The inside cutouts would benefit from a drawing compass, I thought, so that each semicircle was equal distance from the centre and from each other ....

And then it struck me that the pattern I was drawing no longer looked like the original block.  It looked quite nice, but I had somehow lost the character that made this block Nancy's.  I went back to my original tracing and kept the pattern as much like the original as possible.

I'm still in two minds as to whether I should have averaged those peaks and troughs.  Would it look better if it wasn't quite so .... undisciplined?

Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.

Salvador Dali

I wish my stitching was perfect, nothing wrong with that.  However, I usually go for speed rather than perfection.  If I finish a seam and think, I should do that again, but don't; that's fine by me.  If I look at a seam three or four times and think it could be better then I do unpick and sew again. 

How do you approach your sewing?  Is it the journey or the destination that gives you pleasure?  I'm certain there aren't wrong and right answers, just different answers. Are you going to even out Nancy's block?

Family History and Quiltmaking

About fifteen years ago my Australian husband began his family tree.  He started, like we all do, with information from parents and grandparents.  Then off to the library for hours spent in the microfiche index records finding names, dates and places.  Once the right index was found, it was down to the mailbox to post a cheque to the Births, Deaths and Marriages.  A few weeks later a little slip of paper would arrive and, hey presto, a few more bits of information were added to the family tree.
We gave him a software program to transfer all his little bits of paper safely into the computer.  Then we changed computers and everything disappeared.  That was the end of that family history adventure.

Researching the makers of the Criswell quilt is similar to family tree research.  Ancestry.com is certainly my first port of call, especially as I live in Australia and the records are all in the USA.  The big difference is that I already know all the names; I just don't know how they relate to each other and to Mary McClelland Criswell.

I have made an online family tree called the Criswell Quilt Tree.  It not really one tree but more of a grove of saplings.  My starting place is the 1850 Federal Census records for Chester County; the quilt was made in 1852 and farming families didn't move around a lot.  There are about 80 signatures on the quilt and I have recorded about 400 individuals in the Quilt Tree.  I know something about a majority of the people on the quilt although some are reluctant to be verified.

Let me tell you about my latest 'win' in the family history game.  I was looking for that most elusive family name - Smith.  If you have a Smith in your family tree, you know how difficult it is to find your Smith and not everyone else's Smith.

James R and Nancy C Smith

This block is signed by James R Smith and Nancy C Smith, East Nottingham.  From the 1850 census I know that they have two little children.  In the 1860 census there are more people in the family; but when I looked at the original census page the image is too light to read.  I send a note to Ancestry.com that it was illegible and then went on with something else.
That was a few months ago.  I decided to have another look at the Smiths the other evening, went to the census page and ... the original has been rescanned and is now clear as day!  This is what I found:

James R and Nancy Smith still married and farming.  Mary and William are ten years older, and in addition there are Jane, Elizabeth and Alice.  But wait, there's more!  Dorcas Smith aged 60 and Jahn Carlisle aged 73 are also family members.
Many families in these records are multi-generational.  I take a small leap of faith here and assume that Dorcas Smith is James' mother and John Carlisle is Nancy's family. Nancy's middle initial C probably stands for Carlisle.   Dorcas Smith is a new person so I add her to the tree.  Carlisle/Carlile is a common name on the quilt - Mary McClelland Criswell's mother was a Carlile - so I look to see if I have a John Carlile of the right age.  Bingo!  John Carlile is in the tree, in 1850 he was living with his wife Mary and son James Taylor Carlile - who also has a block in the quilt.



James Taylor Carlile, Elk Dale

 That makes Nancy Smith and James Carlile sister and brother, another link is made, and my family quilt tree grows another notch.

(I made some more Smith discoveries, but I'll save them for another time.)