Celebration of Pioneer Women at This Is The Place Park

On March 13, 2014 a few ladies from the Levan 2nd Ward 

attended an annual presentation at "This Is The Place Park" 

honoring pioneer women and the birthday of Relief Society.

We checked in at the visitor's center.

 Jackie Messersmith, Beth Hone, Magdeline Cummings, Stephanie Ballow

 Brigham Young and Joseph Smith share the vision that 

they were never able to view together in mortality.

 The "This Is The Place" Monument.

 Detail of one of the panels that touches my heart. 

The actual presentation was in the Smoot 

Hall Brigham Young Academy Building. 

 This is the little stage where the four performers spoke. 

Each was in era costume and told the story of an early pioneer.

 This one was my favorite.  She represented Sarah Granger Kimball 

who was responsible for the grass-roots beginning of Relief Society.  

I was surprised the she was married to a wealthy non-member at the time.

She was concerned about the condition of the temple workers clothes and 

offered to provide the fabric if her seamstress, Margaret A. Cook, would

 do the sewing. The group expanded and soon a constitution and by-laws 

were written by Eliza R. Snow and presented to Joseph Smith.  That is 

when he announced that the Lord had something better in mind for the 

women of the church: The Relief Society was born!

 Then we moved to the replica of the old Desert Hospital 

and the lace and quilt display housed on the second floor.

 This is the old Deseret Hospital. (No private rooms in that day!) 

 This is an old wooden wheel chair. 

 This big painting captures the social and practical part quilting bees once played. 

 If you think that looks like Brenda looking at the History of Quilt panels, 

you're right.  We had four extra tickets so I offered them to Brenda and 

some friends.  I was surprised when all the friends she brought were over 60. :)

 All of these beautiful lace in-lays were done by hand.  Some 

were tatted, some crocheted and some used wooden spools and pins .

 

 This is how the lace was made using spools and straight pins! 

 The tatting shuttle is also shown.

Examples of more pioneer hand work. 

 This quilt was lined with wool and when it was laundered it shrunk.  It's 

title was "Honey, I shrunk the quilt."  It was still one of my favorites.

 This was the squirrel quilt, made by a 13 year old girl.  These are actual squirrel skins!

 The "past envisions the future" quilt. 

 The "Star of David" quilt. I loved the little porcelain pioneer quilter in the left corner.

Many pioneer quilts were done on hand looms like this one. 

It exotic piece was a table covering that was never finished, but has been preserved. 

 The sewing machine changed the pioneer art of quilting. 

 There were several famous quilt block patterns that had been made into 

puzzles to keep children entertained while the adults enjoyed the show.

 The Visitor's Center houses an original 45 star U.S. flag. 

This is the sight that greeted us as we left for home!  Can you tell I have a new camera?