"My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth."

-Abraham Lincoln

"On April 9th 1865 The Civil War ended" …

 I have been watching Ken Burn's classic documentary The Civil War, so it's been at the center of my thoughts for a week now. PBS is re-running the series in its entirety, so if you haven't seen it you can catch it HERE. I couldn't wait, so I downloaded it on Netflix and have been watching it on my iPad (What a surreal experience! Can you imagine what our ancestors would have thought about an iPad?).

It is a fascinating program. Very sad, but thought provoking. When they spoke about the role of women in the war it brought something to mind. Years ago I bought a wonderful book called "Civil War Women" by Barbara Brackman.

Mrs. Brackman tells the story of several women and the quilts they might have made during The Civil War. There are patterns and instructions for these beautiful quilts, as well as letters and stories of these "Civil War Women". If you are a quilter or interested in the lives of the women of the era, you must have this book.  

Click HERE to visit Barbara Brackman's website, where you can learn more about antique quilts and reproduction fabrics, plus she even has some free patterns. Thank you Barbara for sharing these wonderful stories and keeping their memory, plus their BEAUTIFUL artwork, alive. 

*quilt from "Quilts from the Civil War"

I wanted to share one more thing.

One of the oldest books in our collection at the studio is a copy of Godey's Lady's Book from 1851. For those not familiar, Godey's was the Ladies Home Journal, Readers Digest and Where Women Create of its time. It contained poetry, short stories, lovely artwork and even projects for the creative women of the day. 

 It is one of my favorite books in our library … It even has a pressed flower nestled between its worn pages! Who put the flower there and why is something that I always ponder. Was it in memory of a love long lost? A special keepsake? A mystery for the ages in the pages of our lovely book. I would love to show it off to all of our readers, but scanning each page would be a large project, and travel to our studio might not work for everyone, plus I don't think we could fit everyone in! I was happy to find this compromise: 

Thanks to Project Gutenberg you can click HERE to read this BEAUTIFUL copy of Godey's lady's book from January, 1851. Ours contains the whole year, but you can get a good idea of what these books were like. So what do you think?

Are you inspired by the stories and images of the past? 

And now, the winner of the Fabrique from Making Memories is ….

Congratulations!

~Thanks to Making Memories for this great prize~
 

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