Sister Star Quilt Block

     In my quilt, I wanted to include a block about sisters, since my grandmother was the fifth daughter out of six in a family of nine children.  I found this 10" rotary-pieced block at http://www.ideas-for-quilting.com/sisterstarquiltblock.html. 
     My grandmother describes her birth family this way: 

from A Kansas Yankee by Harriet Woodbury George -
"Our family consisted of nine children in this order: five daughters, two sons, and finally the twins – a girl and a boy!  Namely:

Minerva Augusta                  August 23, 1886
Mary Leona                         January 24, 1889
Eva Alberta                         January 25, 1891
Ruth                                   April 15, 1893
Harriet Edith                       October 2, 1895
Howard Kingsbury                September 2, 1897
Philip Redding (Ted)             August 13, 1901
Anna Louise                        March 22, 1904
George Marshall                  March 22, 1904



A postcard with slightly altered wording!

Mary had a little Sister,
Hattie was her name,
Every time she had a caller
Hattie also came.

 "We attended Alpine School until the Fall of 1905.  Our Father had been County Treasurer from 1900-'05 and drove a team and buggy to his office there.  Minerva went to Lyndon (Kansas) to take a business course, which enabled her to work in the Treasurer's office.  When the twins were born in March 1904, our Mother was very ill for a long time, and Mary had stayed home to care for her and the twins until we had a Practical Nurse to come.  Then the older girls were finishing the District school so our parents thought it best to go to Olivet School, which had a graded school with two rooms and teachers.  We now used the top buggy and a gentle team of horses to go to Olivet to school.  Eva or Mary drove.  I was in fourth grade, promoted to fifth, and Howard in second and third."   
      
You might enjoy reading my previous blog entry:
http://starwoodquilter.blogspot.com/2011/08/farmers-daughter-quilt-block-two-tall.html                                                  

Tall Pine Tree Quilt Block

     I love this little 6" block!  I found the pattern in The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt by Laurie Aaron Hird and changed it slightly.  I did use the templates on this one after some frustration with trying to figure out the math. 
     This block represents the home my grandmother first lived in as a child - as well as the surrounding yard.  She describes it this way:

from A Kansas Yankee by Harriet Woodbury George -"I think perhaps the kitchen of the farm house of six rooms, which they had when I was added to the family, was probably the first house.  It was a rather long room on the east side of the house.  The roof of the kitchen was low and had no rooms above it.  The addition had three bedrooms upstairs with a hallway and two closets.  Downstairs was a good sized living room, a bedroom for our parents, and a pantry and stairway next to the kitchen.  The pantry was well equipped with shelves, a south window, a space under the stairway for baking pans and large utensils.  Mamma's brother Will was a carpenter and cabinet maker.  He made a flat chest for her, which was equipped with a doughboard under which was a bin for flour and one for sugar, with hinged lids to cover when closed.  It was very neat and well made.  My Mother baked many loaves of bread, numerous pies and cakes for her big family and the hired men for farm work, which we always had at our table.

Home of Fred H. Woodbury Family, Olivet, Kansas
Probably in summer of 1898
Note shelf outside north kitchen window where pies were set to cool.

  "A porch outside the kitchen extended around the southeast corner.  A pump on the porch supplied water from a good well of water below the porch.  A cistern was on the northeast corner, which gave us rain water well filtered by a brick filter below the roof spouting.  A cave cellar was a brief step or two from the south side of the porch.  These were our 'modern conveniences' of the early years of 1900.

"We had a big yard of about one acre with lots of trees, three rows of grapes, two pear trees, an apple tree or two, several cherry trees, garden, grassy front yard, wood house and wood piles, chicken houses and pen, a flower garden fenced from chickens, roses, hollyhocks, blue flags, flowering shrubbery, lilacs, a few box-elders which held swings, a big silver maple which I loved to climb, cedar trees, and the big pine tree which Papa had brought home from New England – plus a walnut grove on the south side of the yard, which made a beautiful place for playhouses."
  
You might enjoy reading my previous blog post:
http://starwoodquilter.blogspot.com/2011/08/farmers-daughter-quilt-block-one.html