Quilts - The World of the Wild Goose
As I said I have been quilting. Here is one that I have been working on. I am going to post more in a day or so. So if you want to see the latest do come back.
The World of the Wild Goose
This quilt has a long story. I started this at a retreat a few years ago. Each block has 27 pieces. It takes a lot of time to make one block. I didn't make very many at that retreat. I took the blocks home and put them in a box, marked the box, put them on the shelf. Next year, retreat, take the box down, go to retreat, make a few blocks, take them home, put them in the box, and put them on the shelf. I was quilting with some girls at night and I decided this would be a good project. The problem was, I only met with them usually one time a week. It was for 2 hours. I was lucky to make one block. I decided I was not going to get this quilt done. I took it home, put it on the design wall and made a few blocks and decided I was bored. So I put another quilt on top of it, made it, then made a few blocks for this quilt, got bored, made another quilt and it was vicious circle. Maybe three months ago, I decided I needed to finish this quilt.
I looked at the quilt, I still had about 50 blocks to go. I thought - there is no way on this earth that I am going to finish it. So I looked at and thought - I will redesign it. So off to the computer, I took it from 144 block quilt to a 100 block quilt. That cut down the blocks a bit that I still had to make. I had nearly all of them done, when the thought came to me - what are you going to do about the border? The border really needed something, but not too busy because the middle is busy, really busy. I was standing in front of the quilt looking at an outside block and thought - what would it look like if I expanded this lavender piece into the border. I got some fabric, folded it, slapped it on the design wall, stuck a pin in it and did the same to the gold. I stood back and looked at it and thought - that will work.
Now, what am I going to name it? I had thought of it many times over the period of time that I have been making it. I knew I had to name it something with geese or goose because of all the flying geese in the pattern. Lots of times I will get an idea from doing searches on line with just a word. Well, I tried that, but I could not get anything to fit. I really wanted to bring in the color of the quilt so it would have meaning. In the end, I came up with "The World of the Wild Goose." And it is the world of the wild goose, the gold fields, the blue water, the red sunsets, the purple mountains and the white snow. Now, wasn't I lucky, I picked those colors :-) You might want to enlarge this picture so you can see the pattern better.
When I made the border blocks, my quilt went from 100 blocks back to a 144 block quilt.
Genealogy
I am trying to solve the mystery of the "M's." In my Crago/Craigo line beginning with Nathan born 1783 his name is Nathan M. Crago. What is "M?" Nathan named nearly all of his children with an "M" for a middle name. It tracks through the generations. I find that the Crago's named all of their children for somebody. Continental Congress, Revolutionary War, VA governors, anybody who was anybody, the Crago's borrowed their name. We do have Marion used for a middle name, but I would like to see it in the earlier generations. Francis Marion, most of the towns, and counties that are named Marion, are named for Francis Marion. It is hard to find any documentation that lists a full name. Anyone doing Crago/Craigo/Cragow genealogy if you have an answer, I sure would like to hear it. Contact me by my email address.
Hope you all have a great day..................
