My Mother's Pan - Christmas 2011 . . . the saga continues.

Okay, so the title of this blog post looks like it has been floating around in cyberspace for the last month when, in reality, this was another item on my "to do" list that has been languishing until today.

This is the latest reincarnation of THE PAN than belonged to my mother, and that I wrote about first in my post "Holiday Fun for Genealogists".  This holiday tradition has been going on since my mother's death many years ago, however we had started to run out of ideas and loose enthusiasm a bit as the years went by.  But then I became a family historian fascinated by cemeteries and headstones.  I was inspired and my blogging about it was taken as a challenge by my brother. Last Christmas, when THE PAN came back to me, it was a desktop organizer decorated with "family photos".  Read about his creation here.  For the past year, I have thought and thought about what I could do.  Then, last summer, I had an inspiration and very smugly sat on my idea until December.  Suddenly the time was flying by and, in true Scarlett O'Hara fashion, I vowed to work on it "tomorrow".  But as my daughter use to ask when she was little, "When is tomorrow, today?".


It seems that, in this case "tomorrow" is one month after Christmas.

So here is the 2012 version of THE PAN.

 As I have mentioned before, I come from a line of strong women - all of whom could work magic with a needle and thread. The photo of the quilt section that is the background for the title of this blog is scanned from a quilt done by my gr. grandmother, Mae Allen Moldt.   It would seem that my passion for sewing and quilting is inherited. So, it is only fitting that I should gather them together at a quilting bee.  Here are a few photos.  My brother will not get the actual pan for another two weeks but I couldn't wait to post after finishing it today.

The infamous pan handle can be seen at the back.

From left to right, Mae Allen Moldt holding baby Harold Moldt, Mary McDonnell Kennelly, Elanor Gilshannon Allen, and Elizabeth Burnett Allen McDonnell (Nettie) holding baby Florence McDonnell.  Now for the relationships.  Mae and Nettie are the daughters of Elanor.  Mary is the sister-in-law of Nettie and the mother-in-law of Mae's daughter, Berenice, who is my grandmother.

The quilt is poorly done (by anyone's standards). Nonetheless it is a true quilt with the fabric cut into pieces, stitched back together, and layered with a back and batting.  The layers are stitched together and the edges are all bound. The photograph people are simply taped to the pan, but I have still spent quite a bit of time pulling it all together.  Each photo was fiddled with in my photo program, printed, reversed, printed again, cut out, and glued back to back.  It didn't go together as easily as I envisioned so don't look closely. The oversize scissors that are laying on the top of the quilt were used in the construction and were scanned and then cut out.  Their actual length is 12 inches so they are oversize in real life as well.  According to my mother, these were sewing scissors that belonged to DaDa Mae (Mae Moldt) so it seemed fitting that they should be included in this vignette. 

When I saw him a few weeks ago, my brother mentioned that I had not posted anything on my blog for quite a while.  He checked.  Since he has not seen this yet, we'll see how long it takes for him to notice it.

The saga continues . . . and I have two years before I have to come up with another idea.