Thank you!  I've bookmarked the tutorial to give it a try after the holidays.

I love the microwave cozies.  I'm about out and need to make more.  I keep handing them out.  Your fabrics should make nice ones.

I have been dabbling in quilting these days.  I'm procrastinating on the organizing the photos & documentation I have for the next heritage scrapbook album (which would be for Mr. Pirate's maternal grandparents).

I *had* resumed working on my Hawaiian applique Forever Project ™ but I've only started that so there aren't many blocks right now.  My heart just wasn't in it at this time.  So I tucked that project away in its box .. but still keeping it in plain sight so I don't forget about it!

Instead, I was looking for something else and rediscovered a long ago hexi project that had been put on hiatus.  I've been using EPP for this project and had smooshed all the hexi flower units together into one humongous mass.  I know I didn't have a specific plan in mind, which sometimes results in a less than stellar result.  BUT .. this one is still inspiring.  Notes say that I had started this project prior to Sept 2016.

I knew that I had not planned on doing the ENTIRE quilt of smooshed hexies.  I had a photo of an inspiration piece that showed the smooshed hexis surrounded by a large border, which effectively gives the quilt nice straight edges instead of the zig-zags that hexies produce.   I found another inspiration photo that gives me other ideas on what to do with a wide border.

Right now, the smooshed hexies measure 52" wide by 47" long.  I'll increase the length to 60".  At that point, I'll need to think about what kind of background fabric I want for those borders .. something that will look good with all the various colors of the hexie flower units.  I've given some thought to an ombre background .. radiating from light to dark at the outer edge.  One inspiration photo has two different but compatible fabrics for the border and that's another possibility.

I'll put some applique vines & flowers & leaves .. or something .. in the border.  :-)   That's another decision that I can defer at this point.

Below is the smooshed hexies at its current size (52"w x 47"l).  I think I need 3 more rows of hexies, each row needing 12 hexies.  So, potentially only 36 more hexies to bring it up to size.  Then, I've also been playing around with the idea of putting green partial hexies on the edges to make the edge straighter.  This is another decision that I can defer until later.


and this is a pile of prepped hexies, ready to be sewn into flower units.

Hexies look nice. Question on photo and documents, if I remember correctly you are also making an electronic scrapbook, are you using a program or a make by you program?

Jo

Midkid5 said:

if I remember correctly you are also making an electronic scrapbook, are you using a program or a make by you program?

Hiya, Jo.

Yes, I have also dabbled in digital scrapbooking.  I use Photoshop Elements (current version) to make the digital pages.  I belong to one main organization (NAODS - National Association of Digital Scrapbookers) that I take lessons from the founder to learn various different techniques.  She and her instructors are excellent.  I highly recommend this group.   As with any software, there are lots and lots of things you can do .. or elect not to .. and I've barely scratched the surface.   Another excellent instructor is Jessica Sprague.  Although she does have paid courses, I've only been doing her freebie ones (she also has a FB page).

Currently, I am still doing physical scrapbooks because I have physical, heritage photos and newspaper articles.  One purpose of the physical scrapbooks was to have a place to properly store *and* display those photos.  To be sure, I've scanned them, so that I have a digital back-up but the real pictures are put into the scrapbooks.

Once I get to the year 2000, I'll switch to digital scrapbooking, as that's when we got our first digital camera and no longer printed out physical photos.  Of course, i can always *print* digital photos to get a physical print, but digital scrapbooks take up less space on my bookcase. :-)

Thanks for explaining about your scrap booking.  I was wondering if you gave the finished scrap book to the person/family it went with or kept it for yourself or made a copy for yourself.  Are all of your scrap books online and able to be viewed by all members of the family?  Sure hope they all appreciate all of the work you are going through.  How many books have you completed so far?

WARNING!!   this is a LONG post.  Ignore it should you not have the time or inclination.  :-)

The physical scrapbooks are for *me*.  There is only one copy of it.  I don't love ANYONE enough to make more physical copies!   When I finished my mother's line, I had 3 volumes of 12x12 pages.  I have 2 adult cousins who are within a "road trip" distance (I'm in the middle of California (near San Francisco) .. one cousin is in the extreme northern end of California and the other cousin is in Vancouver, WA).  Mr. Pirate & I did a road trip to visit these 2 cousins so they could look at the physical albums.  (I have another cousin in this family line but he lives in Illinois and we're not making a trip there .. he got an online link.)

However, I did specifically buy a wide format scanner so that I can scan the 12x12 pages before I put them in their protective sleeves.  I upload the scanned pages (once the entire album is completed) to Flickr and give the link to that album to the proper family members.  (Such as ... if it's my family line, the nieces/nephews on my husband's side don't get the link because it's not their family and they don't know the people involved.)

There are other photo sharing sites and I've looked at them in the past but for various reasons, Flickr appears to do the job.  The other sites had restrictions that didn't do what I wanted.  I've also looked into the possibility of printing out those scanned 12x12 pages to make a printed book for whoever would like a physical copy of their own, but none of those book-making sites will simply take my scanned image and print it as-is.  They all want me to put my photos into their pre-planned templates and that is NOT what I want nor need.  So, I'm still looking for an online company to do that.  But since no one has ever said that they'd like a copy for themselves, it's not crucial.

As for appreciation ... I'm not sure, honestly.  The cousins that I made the road trip for seemed marginally interested .. and the book was about our common grandparents and the children (who would have been my cousins' parents!).  I will admit was I a bit disappointed in their non-reaction, but then again, I'm not specifically doing this for them .. it's mainly for *me* and to protect the vintage photos.  Even my own girls aren't terribly interested.  Granted two of them live out of state but they certainly got the online links.  However, they didn't comment on the photos.  Sigh.  Maybe when I'm dead and they can look through the albums, they'll have a better appreciation for the information that I've researched.   On the other hand, only my oldest girl is married and she's not having kids.  The middle girl doesn't have a boyfriend, so there's no marriage prospects in the future.  The youngest has a boyfriend but I have no idea if that relationship is "serious" or not.  Again, no wedding bells in the future.  Bottom line: there's no grandchildren to pass these albums along to, which does make me sad.  I did have a passing, despondent thought along the lines of "why am I even doing this?" but the answer has always been "because *I* like doing this and I want to protect these photos".   On the other, other hand, at least one of my nieces has told me that *she* is interested in the physical albums if my girls don't want them and this niece has children ... soooooooo ... the potential to pass them along to the next generation exists.

My M.O has been to start each family line (my grandparents (maternal, paternal) and my husband's grandparents (maternal, paternal) as far back as I can reasonably verify.  Sometimes that's pretty far back, other times, it's within memory.  So, that's four different family lines as the basis.  I continue each line down through the generations, adding every single vintage photo that I have (and I do use the originals, mounted conservatively and non-destructively) and information that I've researched.  Sometimes I have personal information from family stories or newspaper articles of the time.  Sometimes I have just general information about the time & place.  (For example, one of Mr. Pirate's ancestors fought in the Civil War under General William Tecumsah Sherman on his March through Georgia.  I was able to get a list of the campaigns that this ancestor probably fought in, given his dates of enlistment but I don't have any specific information.)    I try to be as complete and accurate as I can be with the direct line ancestors.  I do mention the siblings of direct line ancestors and give a *brief* synopsis of their life and children but that's it for those sidelines.  I could certainly research all those siblings and children of siblings, but I would quickly get far off the track.  And practically speaking, those sidelines have no bearing at all on my or my husband's direct line.

When I get to the grandparent generation, my "rule" has been to start a new physical album when that ancestor gets married and starts their own family.  I do this mainly because I start to have more and more photos as the timeline gets more modern.  I can't physically fit all the photos, newspaper articles & information into one album, so it seemed reasonable to break up the family line into family units.  I've completed 7 albums so far.  My Mom's albums end at the point where she marries my Dad.  My Dad's albums end when *his* Dad marries my grandmother .. because I have a lot of information about my Dad's family and I expect it will generate several albums.  My paternal grandfather's album will end when my Dad marries my Mom ... because now there is a new family unit (my birth family).  I have LOTS of photos and information for this unit. :-)

Same with my husband's lines ... I've stopped the albums at a point where some direct ancestor gets married and starts his/her own family unit.  Typically, it's when I know have a LOT of photos, etc to scrapbook.  So, I break the albums up into manageable units.

To make it less intimidating for me, I've started with the family lines that I (thought) I had the least information about .. figuring I could get my feet wet with this scrapbooking thing with limited photos.  Well, it turned out that even these paltry lines were substantial due the extra research I did on tangential subjects.  :-)    I've now completed all those lines for which I didn't have a lot of information (SO I THOUGHT!).  To my surprise, they turned out to be heftier than I ever thought.  :-)

I am now at the point where I am poised to do my parent's album (that's my 500 lb gorilla album).  That's intimidating, so I'm holding off on that.  I just finished my hu

Thank you very much for all the information.  I have been scanning family photos off n on for the last few years.  My mom has the photos and they are in no order what so ever...old photos early 1900 thru 1990 all thrown together in old plastic bread bags.  I started organizing n scanning then mom decided to put away and undid the organizing.

At some point someone took the old pictures out of the old black page albums, there had been info written under the pictures...lost.

Thanks again for info.

Jo

Midkid5 said:

At some point someone took the old pictures out of the old black page albums, there had been info written under the pictures...lost.

aaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhh!!!!   ::banging head on the wall::

You may have thought it lengthy, but I found it interesting.  What a lot of work, b ut it sounds like something you enjoy.  A labor of love.  

I wouldn't worry about your girls not being interested right now--they are young.  Give them time.  When my folks talked about "the old days" I wasn't all that interested and now that they are gone, I wish I would have paid more attention and documented things.  (like my dad walking around the Enola Gay a few days before she took off on the biggest mission of WWII.)  It saddens me that I missed so much by not showing interest, so years down the road when the girls have matured more--they will appreciate it.  

A while back 2 of my kids and I really got into our ancestry.  I already had a lot of documentation on my dad's side but got even further with Ancestry.com.  Legend carried down on dad's side is that we are descendants of Martin Luther (the reformer of the 1500s --not King!) . Not documented, but would be fun to do more research.  Now you have me interested in getting back in to it.

Where in Illinois does your cousin live?