Friday, March 15, 2019

Mapping Challenge finished

When the Adhoc quilters came up with "Mapping" as the challenge last July I was at a loss.  I guess I'm just too literal.  I haven't quite got the improv part of the challenge in hand.

After giving it months of thought I came up with the idea to map out the neighborhood I grew up in.  Then I thought about it some more and remembered that my great grandparents had lived in the same neighborhood 50 years before I did.  The challenge turned into a genealogy project.


It is just over 1/2 mile square.


I located my great grandparents (and my great great grandmother) on the 1910 Census for Logan, Cache, Utah.  I had heard that this area was called "Little Berlin" at one time because of all the German speaking residents.  The people were really Swiss not German but their dialect called Swizter/Deutch was very German-like.  My genealogy project became finding just how many households in this area spoke the Swiss/German dialect.

The red background/white cross squares are the Swiss flag.

I was quite surprised to find such a large number in this small area.

So I made a small map quilt 21 1/2" X  25 1/2" using the grid of that area, marking streets using the Swiss flag in the intersections, putting in the canal, and sewing buttons (white for Swiss and red for other languages) where the houses are listed on the census.  I thought it would be fun to make a path from my home in 1960 to my great grandmother's home in 1910 using flying geese.

I machine quilted an easy grid, bound it with the same red as the flags, made a label and it's done.



It's my 5th finish of the year.  I'm on a roll. . .

An interesting side note, after my family moved away from Logan, I came back and lived in the same block my great grandparents had lived in while I was attending Utah State University.  Years later my oldest son lived in an apartment house across the street while he was attending.  So that makes six generations that lived in that same small area.

On to the next challenge (or maybe I should finish up the Scale challenge which was before the mapping one -ah!).
Robin


5 comments:

Janet O. said...

I really like your project, Robin. And knowing the streets of Logan as I do, it is fun to figure out where the arrows lead. Great job! Mapping? I wouldn't have had a clue what to do!

Nancy said...

I can hardly tell you how much I love this quilt, Robin! It is delightful, interesting, and best of all, it involves family history! You've managed to make the simplicity of the quilt interesting with the addition of elements arranged in an unusual and pleasing way. Truly, I think it's a fabulous quilt! I can imagine one large enough to cover a bed!

Karen said...

The story behind the quilt is very interesting. I was wondering if Janet O. would be familiar with the area and got my answer in the comments.

Cathy said...

This is so interesting. I love genealogy and genealogy related research. And it appears you had some fun making this. Great job meeting the map challenge!

Kaja said...

I love it! You came up with a great idea and found a way to express that visually - congratulations.

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