Monday, February 27, 2012
Welcome To Long Lost Relatives
David’s kin, Cherie Compotaro, recently found us through a link on the Find-a-Grave website and we’ve been swapping photos and stories and an invitation to the next Family Reunion to which we hope she’ll come to along with her mother. She’s likes genealogy as much as we do and I have added links to her family research website to my side menu. She has several family related blogs, lots of pictures and family recipes. Go say your howdys!
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Family Crafting
Once upon a time, many young ladies were taught practical skills necessary to run households and provide clothing and meals for their future families. Mothers were the primary teachers, but grandmothers and aunts, if they lived nearby, assisted in the lessons. Boys learned from the men in the family to furnish their families' meat for the table by hunting and fishing. Woodworking skills helped build log cabins and furniture, but today we mostly craft, not out of necessity, but as fun hobbies.
Deliah (BAILEY) LARUE was a milliner (ladies hat-maker) and seamstress by trade. Mom said she can remember Grandma Deliah "Della" coming to visit and making several dresses for her out of matching feed-sacks when a schoolteacher sent a note home from school saying mom’s dresses was immodestly too short.
One of her daughters, Maurine ULLOM, crocheted lovely afghans and doilies for all her children and grandchildren and taught me how to crochet too. I have a quilt she made me for high school graduation. 
Later, my mother sewed clothing for my siblings and I. To earn a badge, I learned some simple embroidery skills and knitting from a Girl Scout leader. My sister, joining the home sales team of Creative Moments, taught us how to photo-scrapbook. I took that a step further and taught myself how to rubber stamp, thinking to use it in my scrapbooks later.
Later, my mother sewed clothing for my siblings and I. To earn a badge, I learned some simple embroidery skills and knitting from a Girl Scout leader. My sister, joining the home sales team of Creative Moments, taught us how to photo-scrapbook. I took that a step further and taught myself how to rubber stamp, thinking to use it in my scrapbooks later.
Gladys (WHITE) O’NEAL made wedding cakes for years and to decorate them, she made ceramic figures. She taught my mother how to make and paint molded ceramics and my mother, in turn, taught ceramic classes for many years at Janet’s Ceramics. Mom crafted a lacy background arch with a light on a white ceramic base for our Precious Moments wedding figurine that decorated our wedding cake. Sadly the whole thing broke during one of our moves. She also made porcelain dolls and now paints realistic watercolors.
Bertha (GOLDEN) CARRENDER, crocheted also. She made us a lovely white crocheted tablecloth for a wedding gift. David's mother also crochets and makes tied patchwork quilts.
Nanny Marie RUSH, sewed quilts out of feedbag fabric and crocheted. She was a member of a homemaker’s craft club near where she lived. Both she and my mother-in-law showed me how to make several small crocheted gift items and I have written out the directions to several on my craft blog. Click on links to articles.
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