Project Quilting Season 9 - The First Challenge!

The 9th Season of Project Quilting started this week & I was so excited to find out that the first Challenge was going to be Hometown Proud. We were to create a quilt that was inspired by the best of our community, or something that makes our town special.

I thought about doing something that had Tigers which is our School Mascot, and then I scratched that idea, mainly because I didn't have any orange fabric in my stash! LOL

After thinking about it for a couple of days I changed direction and decided to do something that incorporated the history of where our community got it's name & the Native American culture that has lived here since before the beginning of time.

I live in Dupree, SD which is a small town on the prairies of western South Dakota located on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. We are the county seat of Ziebach County & the town was incorporated in 1910 when the Milwaukee Railroad was built through the territory.

Dupree was named after the family of Fredrick Dupuis a French Canadian Fur Trader who came from Lonqueil, Quebec and settled in the Cheyenne River area in what was then Dakota Territory. He was an employee of the American Fur Company. Fred married a Minneconjou Tetuwan, Good Elk Woman, who was from the Cherry Creek area, after her marriage to Fred she became Mary Ann Dupuis. They raised 10 children in their home along the Cheyenne River about 35 miles west of where it empties into the Missouri River.

Fred and some of his sons were instrumental in saving the Buffalo from extinction. In 1883 or possibly earlier, they hunted and captured 5 young buffalo calves (some reports say 9) and these were loaded into wagons and brought back to the Cheyenne River where at the time of Fred's death in 1898 the herd had grown considerably, and was purchased by James (Scotty) Phillips of Fort Pierre.

The name Dupuis was changed to Dupris, and in some cases to Dupree. The descendants of Fred and Mary Dupuis still live on the Cheyenne River Reservation and throughout the United States.

I decided to use their story as the inspiration for my quilt. After drawing out an initial idea on paper, I went through my stash and thought about what fabrics I would use to tell the story. I used a reconstructed screen print as my background to represent the prairie, I chose to put Thunder Butte in the background of my quilt because it is a well known landmark that is northwest of Dupree.

I used a piece of batik fabric that I cut up to make a strip of "beadwork" along the bottom of the quilt, I attempted to quilt it to look like beads and after I was done wished I had used a darker thread.

I added a strip of red fabric with a floral fabric over the top of it, to represent the French Canadian Fur Trade and the red sash that was used to tie their jackets on.

I put an eagle feather and medicine wheel to represent the Native American culture.

I then decided to add a star quilt because the star quilt is so much a part of the culture here. It is given as a gift at honoring ceremonies, give aways, as baby gifts, graduations, weddings, and as a draping on the coffin at funerals. Everyone I know has made a star quilt at some time in their life, or received one as a gift! The star quilt on my quilt was painted on and then I quilted around the diamonds.

I added the teepees along the top of the beadwork to represent the Dupuis family home place along the Cheyenne River. After each child was married a log house was built for them in a row beside the main house, these houses were called tipi's by the family.  In addition to these homes other relatives lived in actual tipis which were pitched nearby. I just think that had to have been an amazing sight in the cottonwood trees along the river! I used a piece of muslin to make the tipis and then painted them and did some outline quilting to

I used batik and dyed fabrics to create the 5 buffalo from the original herd. I quilted texture to them and added "beady" eyes to them to help make them look at least like animals and define their faces!

I added a shell button and a piece of leather to the medicine wheel and because I had nothing but red Christmas beads I made a couple of beads from red felt to give the medicine wheel some depth. I love quilting feathers  so I really had fun with this part of the quilt.

All of the information I found about Fred Dupris, his family and the history around the saving of the buffalo I found in the Blue Ziebach County History Book which is pretty much the bible here in Ziebach County. The book was written in 1982 from oral histories of the families who call this part of the prairie home.  You can see the piece of horse fabric I used for the backing in the background of the photo.

A brighter picture of the finished quilt. The quilt (wall hanging)  is 15 X 24 for whatever reason I could not get these pictures to rotate.

Thunder Butte in the background taken from my sewing room window! 

I had nothing but computer issues when I was typing this blog post so some of my photos won't rotate, I lost whole paragraphs of typing and can't remember what I typed, it has just been a mess! 

But it is done and I am happy with the finished piece :)