Women of Faith and Courage

With only one block left after this one, we wanted to take a minute to thank you for your participation in "Women of Faith and Courage.  We have recognized women who have exhibited faith and courage in their lives as they have served and cared for others and been wonderful examples for us all.  We realize the ones we chose to highlight are just a few of the many we could have.  As you have worked on the blocks, we hope you have considered some of the characteristics of these individuals that have made them such examples.

Block 12 - Emma Hale Smith

 

 

The following information is taken from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day-Saints website.

 

 

 Emma Smith, wife of Joseph Smith, played a prominent role in the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. Her mother-in-law, Lucy Mack Smith, praised Emma’s character: “I have never seen a woman in my life, who would endure every species of fatigue and hardship, from month to month, and from year to year, with that unflinching courage, zeal, and patience, which she has always done. ... She has been tossed upon the ocean of uncertainty; ... She has breasted the storms of persecution, and buffeted the rage of men and devils, ... which have borne down almost any other woman.”

 

 Born on July 10, 1804, in Willingsborough (later Harmony), Pennsylvania, Emma Hale was the seventh of nine children of Isaac and Elizabeth Lewis Hale. The wealthy family lived on a 90-acre farm in the Susquehanna River Valley, where Isaac shipped meat and other merchandise downriver to Philadelphia and Baltimore.

As a child, Emma developed a deep sense of religious conviction and devotion to God. Methodism became popular in the Susquehanna region in the early 1800s, and Emma began attending with her mother at the age of seven. A family tradition suggests that Isaac Hale overheard his young daughter Emma praying for him in the woods near their home and that this contributed to his spiritual conversion. Emma most likely attended the female seminary in Great Bend Township, and she later taught school.

Emma was 21 years old when she met 19-year-old Joseph Smith at the end of October 1825. Joseph had come southwest from New York seeking employment in the Susquehanna Valley. His lack of education and resources contrasted with Emma’s respectable situation, but she was immediately impressed with his character and morals. They courted for several months while Joseph worked to improve his financial situation. Isaac and Elizabeth Hale were opposed to the relationship, disapproving of Joseph’s religious pursuits and his work for Josiah Stowell, who had hired Joseph to help him dig for purported lost Spanish silver in the area. Emma and Joseph eloped on January 18, 1827, in South Bainbridge, New York, and then went to live with the Smith family. They returned to Pennsylvania in December 1827 to live near her family and work on the translation of the Book of Mormon.

Emma delivered a baby son who died soon after birth on June 15, 1828, when she nearly died herself. In September 1830, she and Joseph moved to Fayette, New York, to live with the Whitmer family. Emma left the Susquehanna Valley and the Hale family for the last time, never to see her parents and many other relatives again. She would eventually bear nine children and adopt two others, four of whom died at birth or shortly after, and two who died as toddlers.

 Emma was baptized into the Church of Christ by Oliver Cowdery in Colesville, New York, on June 28, 1830, shortly after the Church was organized. An unruly crowd gathered, delaying Emma’s confirmation, and Joseph was arrested and imprisoned on charges of disorderly conduct. When Joseph returned to Harmony, he received a revelation for Emma, now known as Doctrine and Covenants 25, calling her “an elect lady” and encouraging her to comfort and support Joseph in his afflictions. She was also charged to act as a scribe to Joseph, to expound the scriptures, to exhort the Church, and to coordinate the publication of sacred music in a hymnbook.

Emma had already assisted Joseph as a scribe during the early stages of the Book of Mormon translation. She soon began selecting the hymns to be sung in church meetings, working with W. W. Phelps to print some of them in 1832 in Church newspapers at a time when male clergy typically assumed responsibility for hymn selection. The first Latter-day Saint hymnbook was printed in Kirtland in 1835 under Emma Smith’s name.

Emma served the needy: in Kirtland, she and Elizabeth Ann Whitney coordinated feasts for the poor, and in Nauvoo, she opened her home to the sick, orphaned, and homeless. As the “elect lady,” she presided over the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo from its founding in 1842 until 1844, providing relief to new immigrants and destitute families. Her service in the Relief Society, however, achieved much more than benevolent work. As president, Emma taught the women doctrine, managed membership, and publicly defended principles of moral purity. Emma was the first woman to receive temple ordinances; she then initiated other women in these sacred rituals. As the first lady of Nauvoo, she hosted diplomats in her home, made public appearances with Joseph at civic and community events, and presented political petitions in support of the Church and her husband.

 Despite the difficulties of poverty, displacement, and persecution, Emma and Joseph maintained a deep love for and bond with each other. Their marriage faced unusual challenges due to the hardships of founding and leading the Church. Together they weathered the financial collapse and threats against Joseph’s life in Kirtland, Ohio; the persecution of Church members in Missouri; and the separation imposed by Joseph’s imprisonment in Liberty Jail. Their correspondence reveals not only their difficult circumstances but their commitment to each other. “My heart is entwined around yours forever and ever,” Joseph wrote to Emma in 1838.³ Emma wrote to him in Liberty Jail in 1839: “I still live and am yet willing to suffer more if it is the will of kind Heaven, that I should for your sake.”

 For this block you will need:

 Red:

    1) 4 1/2" square

    8) 3" squares

Blue:

    8) 3" squares

Background:

   12) 3" squares

    4) 2 1/2" squares

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To create the block, you will need to draw a diagonal line on the back of each of the 3" background squares and two of the red 3" squares.

 

Place each of the red squares with the drawn lines with a blue square making sure the right sides are together and the outside edges are aligned.  Sew 1/4 inch on both sides of the line.  Cut on the line.  Trim to 2 1/2" and press open.

 

Match the remaining blue and red squares with the rest of the 3" background squares making sure the outside edges are aligned and the right sides are together.  Create 12 red with background and 12 blue with background 1/2 square triangles.  Trim to 2 1/2" and press open.  

 

Use the photo below to arrange and assemble the block.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy sewing!

 

April mystery fabric

We will be using Lori Holt's Bee Plaids line with a vintage blue/green background for the April Mystery quilt.

Give us a call at 801-465-9133 to reserve your kit.

March Mystery Quilt

This month's mystery quilt was inspired by a quilt top Becky inherited from her grandmother (shown below).

We decided it was just way too many appliqued tulips and leaves to reproduce the quilt so here is our version that pays homage to the original with a little twist (and not quite so much applique).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We used a fusible interfacing method for most of the applique.  Becky wanted to include a short tutorial of the process so read on if you are interested.

Trace the applique design onto the non fusible side of the interfacing. Cut out the shape leaving between 1/4 and 1/2 inch of interfacing from the drawn line. Place the fusible (bumpy) side of the interfacing against the right side of chosen fabric. Sew on the line.  Trim about 1/8" from the line.

Cut a small slit in the interfacing.

Turn right side out.

Position and sew the applique in place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To create the stems, cut a 1 x 6 inch piece of fabric.

 

Spray generously with Best Press or your favorite spray starch.

Fold the edges (lengthwise) toward the center of the strip (wrong sides together) and press.

Position in place with the raw edges underneath the stem and the ends tucked under the tulip blossoms.  Stitch to secure.

Have fun!

Women of Faith and Courage

Block 11 - Helen Keller

 

 The following information is quoted from "Helen Keller-Ivy Green" website.

Helen Adams Keller was born a healthy child on June 27, 1880, to Captain Arthur H. and Kate Adams Keller of Tuscumbia. Her father, Arthur H. Keller, was a retired Confederate Army captain and editor of the local newspaper. Her mother, Kate Keller, was an educated young woman from Memphis.

When Helen Keller was 19 months old, she was afflicted by an unknown illness, possibly scarlet fever or meningitis, which left her deaf and blind.

Helen was quite intelligent and tried to learn in her own way with taste, feel and smell. She developed a rudimentary sign language with which to communicate, but soon she realized that her family members could communicate with their mouths instead of signing. This left her isolated, unruly and prone to wild tantrums. Some members of her family considered institutionalizing her. 

Keller would later write in her autobiography, “the need of some means of communication became so urgent that these outbursts occurred daily, sometimes hourly.”

Seeking to improve her condition, in 1886 Helen and her parents traveled from their Alabama home to Baltimore, Maryland, to see an oculist who had had some success in dealing with conditions of the eye. After examining Keller, he told her parents that he could not restore her sight, but suggested that she could still be educated, referring them to Alexander Graham Bell, who despite having achieved worldwide fame with the invention of the telephone, was working with deaf children in Washington, D.C.

After the visit Bell connected the Kellers to The Perkins Institute and by March 3, 1887 Anne Sullivan came to Ivy Green to be Helen’s teacher.  The strong willed Sullivan, a recent graduate of the Perkins school, met her match in Helen. The two worked together even though Helen pinched, hit, kicked and even knocked out one of Anne’s teeth. Once she had gained Helen’s trust, the real work could begin.

Anne began teaching Helen using finger spelling into the child’s hand. Although Helen enjoyed this, she didn’t understand it truly until Sullivan was steadily pumping cool water into one of the girl’s hands while repeatedly tapping out the five letters in W-A-T-E-R. She continued finger spelling while pumping the water again and again as young Helen painstakingly struggled to break her world of silence.

Suddenly the signals crossed Helen’s consciousness with a meaning. By nightfall, Helen had learned 30 words using this process.

After Helen’s miraculous break-through at the simple well-pump, she proved so gifted that she soon learned the fingertip alphabet and shortly afterward to write. By the end of August, in six short months, she knew 625 words.

By age 10, Helen had mastered Braille as well as the manual alphabet and even learned to use the typewriter. By the time she was 16, Helen could speak well enough to go to preparatory school and to college. Sullivan interpreted lectures and class discussions to Helen. In 1904 she became the first deaf-blind person to graduate cum laude from Radcliffe College.

Helen became one of history’s most remarkable women. She dedicated her life to improving the conditions of the visually impaired and the hearing impaired around the world, lecturing in more than 25 countries. She helped to create the American Civil Liberties Union advocating for the rights of women and of those with disabilities.

During her life she performed on the Vaudeville circuit, earned an Oscar, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, traveled to 25 countries and met every President from Grover Cleveland to John F. Kennedy, 12 to be exact.

Keller stopped her public appearances in 1961 after she suffered a series of strokes. She was unable to attend the ceremony when President Lyndon B.  Johnson awarded her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Keller’s 1968 funeral was held at the National Cathedral, and more than 1,200 people were in attendance. Alabama Senator Lister Hill gave the eulogy. He said, “She will live on, one of the few, the immortal names not born to die. Her spirit will endure as long as man can read and stories can be told of the woman who showed the world there are no boundaries to courage and faith.”

 

For this block you will need:

Background:

    4) 2 1/2" x 4 1/2"

    1) 4 1/2" square

    4) 3 3/8" squares

Red:

    4) 2 1/2" x 4 1/2"

Brown:

    1) 2 7/8" x 24"

 

   

Sewing:

Cut 8) 2 7/8" squares from the brown strip.  Cut each of these in half diagonally.  Sew two triangles to opposite sides of a 3 3/8" background square.  Press.  Sew triangles to the remaining sides of the background square. (Same method as used in block 10.)

Sew a 2 1/2" x 4 1/2" red strip with a 2 1/2" x 4 1/2" background strip along the length of the strips.  Create 4 units.

Use the photo below to assemble the components and complete the block.

Happy Quilting! 

Construction update:

The last of the sidewalk in front of our building was removed yesterday.  Please feel free to enter through the back door during the construction.  Thanks so much for your patience. 

March Mystery Fabric

 We just returned from an amazing retreat at Ruby's Inn near Bryce Canyon.  Becky taught a couple of classes and we had a great time vending and renewing friendships.

Thanks for your patience while the shop was closed.  We will be working to get caught up and the shop in order for the next day or so.  We did bring back some fun new projects that we prepared before the retreat. Come and check them out.

 

 

 

We will be using fabric from the Spring Gardens collection for the March mystery quilt. We can all use a little Spring and sunshine in our lives - right?

Call us at 801-465-9133 to reserve your spot.

Thanks so much for your support.

February mystery quilt

 The February mystery quilt is revealed!

A simple, but striking patchwork.

We added a first border which can be purchased separately if desired.  The patches are strip-pieced so they work up pretty easily.

The kits are cut - come and get 'em!

We are so grateful that so many of you have found your way in during the construction on Main Street.  The construction is moving right along.  We are so excited to see the finished product. You are welcome to use the back door during the construction.

Note: We will be vending and teaching at the Spring Retreat at Ruby's Inn next week (March 4 - 9) so the shop will be closed that week.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

February mystery fabric

Sorry this info is so late in the month but we will be using fabric from the Heartfelt collection from Riley Blake for the February mystery quilt.

Beginning this month the price of the mystery quilts will be $39.00 as long as you sign up before the reveal.  If there are kits available after the reveal they will be offered at regular retail price. 

It is our goal to provide a quality product at an affordable price.  We are grateful for your participation and support.

 Call us at 801-465-9133 to reserve your mystery quilt kit.