Photos of James Carlile's Block

How was your Christmas?  We didn't have any visitors at home so I didn't have to get the house ready; but it did mean that we were the ones travelling.  Family commitments can be a juggling act this time of year - I hope you have had quality family time as well as your own space to relax and recharge.

I have completed two versions of James Carlile's block.  Carole sent me a silver gel pen like the one she uses and I found that very handy for the remaining leaves on my second block.


James' block done in one fabric



James' block in two fabrics

If you have blogged about your block you can share your blog entry using Inlinz.  If you use Flickr for your photos you can add them to the Chester Criswell Quilt album. 



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.

Thank you for sharing, it's fun to see how others use the pattern.  Block 6 belongs to Reuben Stubbs and will be available 7th January. Happy New Year!

School Days

Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was chartered in 1793, making it the first college in the newly recognised United States of America.  

James Taylor Carlile was a freshman student at Dickinson College in 1849.  It was run under the banner of the Methodist Church.

The president of the college while James was a student was Jesse Peck.  Peck was not the most successful academic and was the focus of many student pranks, including the most infamous prank in the history of the college. 
Peck was travelling by train to the Staunton, Virginia to make his initial appearance before the Methodist Conference. To seek revenge for a schoolfriend that had been disciplined for drinking and card-playing, a student sent an

urgent letter to the superintendent of the (insane) asylum there; a deranged relative had escaped from his attendants and would arrive by the railway cars at Staunton. Could Dr. Stribling meet him at the station and detain him? A physical description was given, together with the fact that the patient, as soon as approached, would announce himself as "Jesse T. Peck, D.D., President of Dickinson College."

Peck was duly locked up in the asylum until he was rescued.  The members of the conference thought the incident "a very amusing joke", a feeling not shared by Peck.

I hope you are enjoying James Carlile's block.  My sewing space is full of Christmas presents for children and grandchildren, my own sewing is waiting for the dust to clear.

I have been thinking about projects for next year.  I have a wedding invitation for November 2013 which is a good excuse to make a quilt from new fabric, not from the stash.  I have organised Babara Brackman's BlockBase for my own Christmas present.  I plan to use the program to draft the blocks from the Ohio Sampler that I showed you in my last post and make a reproduction for myself. 

What are you looking forward to making in the New Year?

Block 5 - James Carlile

Crazy Nasturtium Leaves

As I've said before, I am a needleturn beginner.  My first two blocks, Jane Wilson's and Elizabeth Cowan's, were confidence building.  Needleturn isn't so hard after all!  I can do this!  My third block was this one.



Those of you who are more experienced than I can guess at the difficulties I had.  There are points and turns and lots of little curves.  But that's OK, if we only did easy things we would never get better.  The leaves reminded me of nasturtium leaves, so I mentally called this block Crazy Nasturtiums.  It also reminded me of pressed flowers, arranged between the pages of a book so all the flowers and leaves are flat.

The original block is not one piece of fabric.  It was pieced from leftovers and includes a seam down the middle of one leaf.  It is all made from the same fabric however.  I thought about making the leaves separately from the stem, and made a second block.

I printed the pattern twice and used one for the stem and the other for the leaves.  Don't forget to number the leaves before they are cut out.  It was still a fussy block to sew.  The corners on the leaves end up padded with the turned-under hem, but that makes the leaf more three dimensional.  I think I like this one better than the original.  

How are you going to make James' 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.)