Katarina Kurtz

For the Love of Cardinals

Two of my earliest auditory memories are the gentle pop and dragging noise that my grandmother’s cross-stitching needle and thread made as she worked on her projects, and the accompanying snip snip sound when she finished a block of color and cut the floss from the frame. My grandmother was a skilled crafter, a product of a childhood spent in Depression-era Appalachia. She could turn anything, even nothing but a few scraps, into a beautiful decoration or a useful tool. She quilted, crocheted, sewed, and more, but the talent that stood out the most to me as a child was the cross-stitching. My aunts and mother all had framed cross-stitch wall hangings and dishtowels that my grandmother had covered with intricate designs. A common theme of her projects was Americana, but birds and flowers made frequent appearances too. These beautiful works of art flood my early memories, even though I was a child surrounded by handmade crafts of all varieties.