Looking at the Bigger Picture Family members were cleaning out a seldom used closet and came across an old, much used quilt. Much of the fabric of the colored pieces had been worn away and I was asked if I saw any reason to keep it. As I was thinking whether we might want to "promote it to rags," as my mother-in-law would say, I unfolded it to look for unworn areas. It was then that I realized the overall effect was quite beautiful. So now this quilt has a new life, hanging over a balcony railing. I think there's more than one lesson here. One applies to standing back and taking a broad look at an old quilt's overall effect. The other applies to family history in general. We may have shreds of evidence that seem too sparse to be of any use. But sometimes, when we stand back and look at the bigger picture, patterns and relationships emerge from scattered details. For me, this has meant poking around for records of the siblings of ancestors, and finding time to read histories about some of the places where ancestral families lived.