I’m working more on the individual squares for Grace’s quilt and have pieced a few together. They are sewing together rather nicely, all straightforward geometric pieces. Getting the squares to go together is another thing entirely.

It’s always more difficult to get the squares to fit together, they end up being slightly different sizes and being larger it just gets a bit more difficult the larger the work gets. This time it’s more difficult because I have a set order for them to go together; I want them to be in birth order of Grace’s children. Normally if two squares don’t fit together I can try another; not so this time around Bill has to go with Dunk, has to go with Beulah, no swaps.

If you’re doing this with fabric there is a bit folded under and you have some wiggle room. No wiggle room when you are doing this with encaustic monotypes and dipped book pages. It takes some trimming and squishing (and ok, a little swearing) but it’s doable:

First row of Grace’s memorial quilt, encaustic monotypes, book pages, machine stitching (in progress)

I had to call my mother to confirm the birth order. You would think this would be a known thing but there was a long standing dispute between two of my great-aunts, Gracie and Elsie as to who was the youngest. They took it to the point that I’m not sure they even knew in the end who was actually the youngest. My mother confirmed it was Elsie. She also passed along the sad news that the youngest in the family and the last surviving, Warner, had passed (only Marjie, Frank’s wife is still with us). I remember when I started this quilt, thinking how cool it was that one of Grace’s children was still alive. When I moved out to California for a job in the 90’s for a few years it was very comforting to know that Warner and his wife Margaret were nearby in AZ, that if I needed anything I had family nearby.

I think because I am doing these in birth order I am thinking a lot about what that means as I work on the individual squares. I am a middle child and I fit Adler’s ‘peace-maker’ stereotypes to a tee. Working on Dunk’s (Charles Duncan but everyone knew him as Dunk) square I wonder what it meant to be a second son. Everyone knows the Eldest son tropes but what does it mean to be a second son out of nine? Dunk was a great storyteller and a bit of a character (as is his son, also Dunk). From the stories Dunk would tell Grace not only had the travails of managing a huge household to deal with, she also had a house full of hellions. Does growing up in a large family make for outsized personalities? You have to shout to be heard above the din?

My grandmother was the third child but she was the eldest girl. I always knew she was tasked with some of the housework and child rearing (and helping with delivering) of some of the younger children but working on the squares and placing them side by side in order helped that hit home. Warner in particular thought of my grandmother as a second mother. When my grandmother started to fail late in life he came back to Veazie and spent quite a bit of time with her. This also led my grandmother to want a small family for herself, she had just two children, 12 years apart. The other girls in the family had one each.

I also finished Coke’s (Waldo) square. Of all my great-aunts and uncles I’d have to say I know the least about Coke even though he stayed right in Veazie, within a few blocks of where he grew up. I know he got his nickname because it was his chore growing up to get the coke (coal) for the furnace at home (at least that is the story I heard – I am learning that not all of the stories I have been told are accurate). He and his wife Flora seemed somewhat private, I can respect that. They had 3 sons, one (also Waldo) who died young.

Next to go: Mary, Frank, Gracie, Elsie, Warner then Cecil, then sewing them all together and adding the crocheted medallions.  Cecil technically falls between Mary and Frank but his square will be for my dowry quilt since he only survived a few days (he was what was known in those days as a ‘blue baby’, never ‘pinked up’).  I figured he would make an appropriate 10th square for my sampler quilt.  Given how meaningful my grandmother’s other siblings were in my life I was always haunted by the absence of one of them.