Mom’s Work
My love of textiles and stitching most definitely comes from my mother. She was always stitching…embroidery, cross stitch and the like. Her love of antiques and all things with a story came to a perfect culmination in the mid nineties. She discovered the history of American alphabet samplers and put her own know-how to work at creating reproduction samplers.
Her work was sold in fine stores across America as well as in the Henry Ford Museum gift shop. (I know, cool, huh?) Every now and then, as I flip through the pages of County Living magazine, I swear I can spot some of her samplers on the walls of the houses that grace those pages.
My sister and I helped my mother when the orders became too many for her to handle, and it is from these years of stitching Adam and Eve and Noah’s Ark themed samplers that my love for stitched lines upon linen was born.
My mother continued to evolve in her textile creations as she moved on to making penny rugs, felted wool pictures and other primitive “stitchies”. She never stopped learning. She never ever stopped creating.
Mom’s Red Bird: One of My Favorites!
My own stitchery has taken a twist, it seems, as I move to integrate fabrics, felt, thread, buttons, and even paper into my work. But I still find peace in the tug and pull of those strands of floss though the muslin as I work.
Mixed Textile Hearts
And, perhaps, it is in the gentle push and pull of that needle, that I can feel my mother’s smile and encouragement as I continue her legacy and work to make my own mark in this world.
Mixed Textiles Pieces
Wood Spirit Sister 
Lovely post. It is amazing to think of all those samplers we shipped out during those years. I often find myself squinting at the pages of country magazines trying to make out the sampler on someone’s wall swearing that it is one of Mom’s. I too,feel her presence, as I stitch together a project. It IS a wonderful legacy to pass on….though, none of my daughters have yet to show an interest in a needle and thread. Maybe someday?? If not my girls, then maybe Anna will carry on the tradition of handmade lovelies.
But your girls have carried on the legacy…just in a different way. Beth-who drooled over the jewelry at Victor’s show, but, instead of buying any, she marched herself to the craft store the next day to get materials to make her own (now,whether or not she has begun this project…or even finished it….well, that’s a legacy too, I’m afraid) and Chloe who made customs shot glasses for her boyfriend over Christmas. That’s Mom’s legacy through and through…looking at something and saying, “I can make that”. Your girls never actually worked in textiles like you or I…but, the legacy of creating something out of nothing lives on in them.
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