My next big thing

This was a Christmas present from Steve last year. Its a quilt book that walks you through the process of creating a sampler quilt wherein the blocks chosen represent something meaningful from your life. I liked the concept very much and was glad that it made it off my wish list and under the tree. Unfortunately I had other outstanding projects that I needed to get to before I dared start another. Finally the time has come to begin work on my own diary quilt.

At first I thought telling my story through this quilt would involve blocks that spoke about my life and interests but I soon found out the things that are the most meaningful to me are not the day to day components that make up my life in particular but the big elements that make up my life in general. That is to say, my family tree. I have been doing a lot of fruitful family research in recent years and have learned a great deal of my family history. I have pieced together a puzzle that I thought I would never solve and I love the picture it shows. My family is diverse and interesting, tragic and triumphant and has a long long history in America, all the way to the very beginning. But its not the early ancestors I focus on in this quilt, they do get a nod, and I will write about them later, but the bulk of the story in this quilt belongs to my grandparents, my parents, my sister, my husband, my son, and me. I hope it will prove to be a much loved and long lived family legacy, and if ever there should come another one like myself in my family line, I hope this quilt will help them piece together their own family puzzle.