Bama Research Reveals Famous Folks

Research on Miss Bama is done....traced her Family back to Scotland....it was like an FBI hunt...you find one family member, check that one out...gain a few hints and then using them move on to the next family member....I think that later on this summer will try doing a trace on my own family. What has been so great about Bama...is that she lived in my area and so places mentioned I am familiar with (I can actually get in my car and be there in less than five minutes)....have also met a lot of her "relatives" on line as we seem to be hanging out in the same search forums.

I decided to paint her face...but was unable to enlarge the fuzzy photo I had to really get a good close up...so I went searching for an older face that I could alter a little in Photoshop to be my Bama face....found what I was looking for and now my great great Auntie is looking back at me from my quilt. I really now am tied to Miss Bama. I was even able to use one of the hands of my Aunt to emphasize the age and hard work that Bama had experienced in her life. I remember that my Auntie never went out into the sun without a hat...she always said a lady didn't let her skin turn brown from the sun as it would turn to leather. (she might have been right...maybe all those suntans I had made my skin old and wrinkled and crusty, who knows?) Bama lived in the sun, so sorry Auntie I did turn your face into a rich brown tan.

I am at the point now of designing the backkground so that I can do at least five generations of her family "hidden" into the trees and the other background. Instead of trying to stitch them free motion...am going to letter them in with a stick pen so that they will look kind of old...picked up the walnut ink the other day. My problem is I have to ink in before sewing the piece in...that way if I make a mistake can redo it, plus I need a hard surface to write on and if I tried to do the writing on the quilted surface think my lettering would just squish out....that's my construction challenge at this point.

Another interesting thing happened in the searching of Miss Bama...after you go back so far the search engine is able to use the names and able to generate famous people that your person is related too...usually they are 7th cousins once removed type stuff. Miss Bama, who lived in the woods, worked with her hands, and did without for most of her life has some pretty famous folks in her closet...

Here are a few:

James A Garfield (6th Cousin 2 times removed)
Isaac Newton (2nd cousin 11 times removed)
Jimmy Hoffa (8th cousin)
Hillary Rodham Clinton (8th cousin 1 time removed)

Am hoping to maybe in the border write in some of her famous relatives...those I will do in free motion. Stay tune for more Miss Bama updates.