I’ve been getting the itch to make more quilts. It’s the fault of two books.

This one my parents sent to me a couple of weeks ago. The Farmer’s Wife Sampler Quilt: Letters from 1920s Farm Wives and the 111 Blocks They Inspired It’s a collection of excerpts from essays written by farm wives in 1922. They were responding to the question by the Farmer’s Wife magazine “In light of your experiences on the farm would you want your daughter to marry a farmer?” I loved all the wonderful bits of wisdom found in their honest heartfelt replies. I’ll share them later. The book is currently making the rounds of my sisters-in-law. The book also has instructions for 111 different quilt blocks.

I checked out Quilts and Women of the Mormon Migrations from the bookmobile. What a delightful treasure! It chronicles, through quilts, the lives of early Mormon pioneer women. It’s amazing to me how even in the trials and hardships of pioneer life, helping to settle new areas, women still have the desire to create a “heaven on earth” for their families. The quilts in the book are described in detail, even down to how the fabric was dyed (some with sagebrush!). The photos of the quilts are beautiful. And I complain when it takes me more than a week to sew a quilt top…on a sewing machine.

Yay! I’m so excited the General Conference issue of the Ensign finally came today. It’s a good thing two issues came, a his and hers, thing if you will. I don’t like to share, especially when there are so many good quotes to mark! I’ve been printing off some talks from the web but it’s so much nicer to have them all printed and bound together. There were so many excellent talks I don’t know if I have a favorite this time. So many were focused on the family and the duty parents have to teach their children in the home.Some of the ones I’ll be reading right away are Mother Told Me by Elder Bradley Foster (my college roommates dad), Mothers Teaching Children in the Home by Elder L. Tom Perry, and one of my daughters’ favorites Your Happily Ever After by Pres. Dieter F. Uchtdorf. After hearing the talk my parents went and bought journals for my older girls and had their names engraved on them along with the words “Once Upon a Time.” My girls LOVE them! What are some of the talks you can’t wait to read?

Oh, and it seems I’ve magically appeared, again, in two other places today. ☺ I’ve got an article at Latter-day Homeschooling AND at Heart of the Matter. Hop on over!

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