This Family Tree Quilt Stitches 2600 Relatives Together

by | Apr 10, 2016 | 01 What's New, Craft & Displays, Family Reunions, Heirloom

A giant family tree quilt documents 9 generations and just over 2600 family names. Here’s how the quilter completed this beautiful family heirloom.

Not long ago, I came across this article from a local news outlet about the White family celebrating its 104th reunion. That’s quite an accomplishment, but what really caught my eye was the heirloom on display: a family tree quilt so large it couldn’t easily fit in a single photograph.

I tracked down the designer and creator of the family tree quilt. She’s a busy young mom named Jennifer Reiter. “Before we had our 100th reunion, I was reading a book with my girls about pioneer days,” she says. “A little girl was traveling. When they arrived at their destination, they made a quilt with all the memories from their favorite dress material. I got a crazy idea to do something like that for our family’s 100th-anniversary reunion: a quilt with everyone’s names on it.”

It wasn’t an easy undertaking. Jennifer took the names from a family history book her mother-in-law had. The founding couple from the 1700s had four children. Jennifer designed the quilt such that each quadrant of the quilt would represent one branch of the family. She sketched out her design across 46 pages from a notebook. Then she copied everyone’s names onto quilt block templates that were sent each out to volunteers in the family to help hand-stitch.

All the descendants’ names are on the quilt, Jennifer reports. “Each family unit appeared on one square. If a child got married and had a family, they got another square of their own. Each generation was a different color thread. My color is orange, so I can easily see who else is from the same generation I am. I tried to keep the colors of the fabric about the same, family-wise, too.”

“It took a year,” Jennifer says. “I didn’t get quite as much help as I thought I would.” The final quilt documents 9 generations with 2601 names in it on a quilt that’s larger than king-sized. There are 256 quilt blocks, each of them 6″ square.

The quilt made its debut appearance at the 100th White family reunion, and a few years since then. It also took an honorable mention in the county fair. But she learned a lesson about letting it out of her sight too often: “There were a few years it was missing after it got left at the reunion. Someone went to the camp and they were looking for it again. The secretary had it. Now I have it my possession permanently.”

What an amazing accomplishment–and what an heirloom for the White family! Thanks for sharing it with us, Jennifer.

More Inspiring Family Quilts from Genealogy Gems

declutter your houseA New Heritage Quilt from Old Family Fabrics (with an entire wedding dress sewn into it!)

A Photo Quilt Stitches Together Childhood Memories

A Quilt that Brought My Family Together (story in free Genealogy Gems podcast)

A New Heritage Quilt From Old Family Fabrics

by | Mar 3, 2015 | 01 What's New, Craft & Displays, Gifts, Heirloom, images, Inspiration, Listeners & Readers

wedding quilt dress“I am a quilter and love doing special pieces that tell our family history at the same time. I think you would enjoy [this] story and the pictures [that go with it].”

This note recently came from Genealogy Gems listener Sheri Lesh. She wrote in about a quilt she created for her father’s 80th birthday celebration. It was a very special quilt, made from pieces of old family clothing and even a wool jacket and wedding dress.

Well, Sheri, I thoroughly enjoyed your story and your unique, beautiful quilt (which you can click to see below). Heritage quilts created from family clothing items are so special!

I especially loved  Sheri’s idea for her grandmother’s wedding dress. Instead of cutting into pieces for the quilt, which would have destroyed a beautiful dress with a fabulously-preserved lace collar, she tacked the entire dress to the back of the quilt! Then she labeled it so cleverly, so future generations will know exactly who this dress belonged to and when it was worn.

Click here to go to Sheri’s blog and learn more about this beautiful, inspiring quilt. If you like old quilts, click here for my own Genealogy Gems story about heritage quilts in my family. You’ll see the shownotes for a free podcast episode along with a short YouTube video to watch. As I say in that post, “Women may not have had a lot of time to use the power of the pen to document history, but they did have some mighty powerful sewing needles!”

Tackle Your Genealogy Brick Walls with These Tips

by | Jan 16, 2014 | 01 What's New, Inspiration

genealogical sourcesThis Saturday I’m giving a class on how to tackle your genealogy brick walls. If you’re anywhere near Santa Rosa, California, USA, I invite you to come! Even if you’re not, I hope you’ll check out several tips for brick-wall research that I share in a news story on the upcoming class. You don’t need to be an expert yourself to try these tips: just willing to talk to relatives and use technology tools to share information.

In that news article, I mention a quilt made by my great-grandmother for my father. It’s now been passed on to me and it’s one of my cherished possessions. In fact, I keep it my office. It inspires me!

Notice that in this picture, the quilt is actually hanging on a brick-patterned wall! It reminds me that when we hit up against “brick walls” in our genealogy research, our family memories and artifacts can inspire us to keep going. It isn’t always easy to find our ancestors, but it’s definitely worth it! Get the full story about this quilt and see more photos! in the Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode 39.

 

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