Finding Graves in Puerto Rico

As part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint's program for Young Women called Personal Progress, Laura and I decided to embark upon grave finding for one of her required projects.  (Having a blog for at least six months is one of my projects). She committed to spending ten hours taking picture of graves, writing down all available information and then uploading them to findagrave.com 


The reason Laura decided to do this project was to help people with their genealogy.  Many people have relatives in Puerto Rico, but the government records aren't always well kept.  This will give those people some data to have as a starting point, at least.


We have gone out the past three Saturdays and have taken pictures and written for about an hour at a time.  

Then we come home and upload the information.  It is a very peaceful time.  We have taken pictures of over 300 graves so far.  

Something interesting about Puerto Rican graves is that very few have birth dates on them.  

(Rec. de esposa y familia means "Remembered by wife and family")

Another interesting thing is that many of the graves are just marked with an aluminum name plate and death date like the one below. 

You can also see how close the graves are together. Many people are buried in the same plot. 

The part of the cemetery that I am working in seems older, although most people appeared to be buried in the late 60's.  Many of the graves have sunk with the shifting earth and some are buried altogether.  The one below, I had to dig away the dirt just to see a little of the name.

The picture below demonstrates the shifting ground as well.

Brown Bear Quilt - So Precious! - Part II

So, all of my fabric finally arrived and I cut up the Brown Bear panel and here's my step-by-step:
1. This pattern and all of the fabric was found at fatquartershop.com 
2. I like to cut all of my pieces first and then sew.  It keeps me better organized and I can clean up (a little!) in between.

3. I organized all of the blocks and put all of the ones that were supposed to be grouped, together. (I did mine according to the actual flow of the book.  The pattern doesn't show it that way though. I thought it would be more fun to read the book aloud while sitting on your cool blanket.)

4. I sewed the blocks together using a 1/4" seam

5. I laid out the entire quilt in the order I wanted to sew them

6. Then I connected them all.

7. Here's my completed top

8. I used fusible batting because I hate to baste and am currently working on quilting the whole thing.  I really don't like quilting it myself because I am far too critical of my work, but I figure for this one I could practice some free motion.  I will post some examples when I finish.  At this point, I have to MAKE myself work on it for 15 minutes at a time and then am allowed to work on another project. (Right now the Roses of Remembrance Block of the Month is taking up my time and I LOVE IT!) I'll blog about it later. :)

Tie Dying with the Girls

The girls all had the day off from school the other day, so we decided to break out one of their tie dye kits from Christmas.  It was far easier than I thought it would be (thus the grand delay in starting the project in the first place)!

1. Buy white t-shirts from Sam's (or wherever) and pre-soak them in the powder included in the kit for about 30 minutes.
2. Pick the colors that you want to make.  You are given red, blue and green and then recipes for making other colors.  We picked green, blue, pink and purple.
3. Prepare the area (outside).  We put garbage bags down and then put a plastic grocery sack at each position too. Rubber gloves are recommended for everyone because it does stain your skin. You will also need paper towels.

4. Use rubber bands to make different patterns on your shirt.
    
Laura: She picked up her shirt from the middle and then rubber banded about six times in succession.
    

Marie: She did the classic swirl.  You start from the middle of the shirt and twist it while it is flat until you have a kind of ball.  Then you put three or four rubber bands on it so it looks like a hockey puck with different sections.

     Jenny: She wasn't having any of that instruction stuff.  She just made rubber bands wherever she wanted to, all over her shirt.









5. You make up the dye (VERY messy, use gloves)
6. Then you take the dye and, using squirt bottles, you place the dye where you want it on your shirt.  I recommend coloring each section separately.  Saturate, but don't oversaturate.  (It will bleed from one area to another if there is more color than the shirt can absorb.
7. Put shirt inside plastic grocery bag and leave it for at least an hour.
8. Rinse out all of the dye until it runs clear.
9. Dry on the line (from left to right: Jenny's, Laura's and Marie's)

10. Wear with pride! I also used a Shout Color Catcher the first real washing, and they don't seem to bleed at all now.  Here's a link for a free sample.