Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Friday, February 29, 2008
Grandma's UFOs (Wildflowers in Winter 5-6-7)
I'm way late for week 5 of Wildflowers in Winter, but I didn't want to let February slip away without mentioning Grandma Gordon's UFOs. UnFinished Objects. If you are involved in any kind of creative endeavor, I'll bet you have some. My great-grandmother apparently intended to make a friendship quilt and asked her relatives and friends to each stitch a block for it, but then she never quite got around to putting it together. Most of the blocks are a crazy-quilt style, but at least one is appliquéed. I picked out all the ones with any kind of floral design for this photo.
From my family history studies, I recognize some of the names as relatives but others I don't know at all. The Barfuss family is one of those I'm not familiar with, but they had at least one talented embroiderer.
For week 6 of Wildflowers in Winter, I defer to my cousin - a genuine artist. The flowers in his paintings are generally not the main subjects, but they're often present. Celestial Seasonings recently abandoned their long-established look in packaging, but you can see an illustration he did for one of their boxes here. Those daisies look like wildflowers to me.
Week 7. Childrens' art? A tough one. I may possibly have some of my niece and nephew's childhood artworks around here (put away someplace safe for posterity), but then again maybe not. I'm going to take a pass on Week 7.
Head over to Wildflower Morning and see the flowery artworks others have found.
Labels: off-topic, wildflowers
4 Comments:
There is a lot of history in these Unfinished Objects. Maybe one or two of them were made by young people.
Have a good weekend ...
There's a thought - I could combine weeks 5 and 7. Some of the women who made these were quite distant relatives. If I hadn't researched the family history, I wouldn't have realized the significance of these quilt blocks.
Enjoy the rest of the weekend!
Thanks for the Wildlife Morning link. It will be fun to see what comes up for week 8.
It's cool that you've inherited your great grandma's family tree quilt. Will you add the current generation's pieces to it?
Your cousin is a talented illustrator. I don't think I've ever had Panda Chamomile tea but the artwork was better than Sleepytime tea or Mama Bears tea that I've drunk in the past. It's only too bad they cropped the most colorful and interesting things in the full illustration!
Ki: I'm afraid Grandma's UFOs are now my UFOs. I was going to make pillows from each of the blocks, but ...
I hadn't thought of adding new blocks to it - that really would be a family heirloom.
My cousin did another Celestial Seasonings illustration that I like better, but I don't think there are any flowers in it. It was for Vanilla Hazelnut tea and is a Venetian canal scene, except that the buildings are made of teapots, teacups, etc. I'm sorry to see Celestial Seasonings change their packaging - it used to be so distinctive and now it looks like it was done by a branding consultant. They even used to have some info on their website about the illustrations and illustrators, but it seems to have vanished. My cousin's work for them was before the packaging change.
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