Crafting Together

One of my hobbies is genealogy. Actually, it is family history, there is a difference. Genealogy tells names and dates, and locations lived. Family history is so much more. Family history contains stories; how history influenced the family and the family possibly influenced history. The family history puts everything into perspective, such as why this item or that item is such a family treasure. Crafts are like that, they tell stories. What craft is chosen, the patterns used, the materials used all speak to a time, place, and story. Why was a paint by number chosen, other than color by number, other than doing freehand, quilting, embroidery, or other sewing practice all speak of choices, incomes, and locations? The skills needed to do the various crafts, who taught the skill and was this the first person in the family to do this craft. For instance, quilting. Today, it is considered an art or hobby but, in the past, it was a means to survival. Today, one can go into Facebook Market and find antique quilts being sold for a pittance, yet in the past, they meant warmth on a cold night or a special wedding present from a friend, grandmother, mother, aunt, or a fun quilting bee done by a group making this special quilt. People still seem to like the patterns from the past such as Lonestar, Drunkard’s path, or a simple patchwork but not the actual antique quilt. They buy imitations at Walmart, Kohls, Amazon, etc... They lose the history, the stories, and the love in the stitches.

I have a quilt made by my Aunt Edith. She is my biological father’s full sister. Each patch in the quilt she gave me is denim and came from someone’s jeans. The jeans were from her husband (Delbert Ernest aka Uncle Delly), her sons (Delbert Ernest aka Bert and Teddy), or Bert’s sons (Delbert Ernest aka Ernie, John, and Bug not sure of his real name). It’s a simple patchwork but it represents family. For Ernie’s wedding, she took the Drunkard’s path and altered it some then called it Country Roads. They are in West Virginia so of course, Country Roads means something. My quilt has been patched by me, with my jeans. Aunt Edith would do a crossword puzzle and then use it to work out a quilt pattern. She used a lot of graph paper to design her own quilts. One of her daughters, not sure which one, took Barbie doll clothes apart so she could use them to design dresses for her daughters’ school dances and weddings.

I was raised by my father’s half-sister Virginia aka Jenny. We would return to West Virginia to visit other family members including a pair of my father’s half-sisters (my aunt Jenny’s step-sisters) Mabel and Della. I don’t know what crafts Aunt Della did since she passed when I was very young. I only remember her salt and pepper shaker collection.

Aunt Mabel lived to be 99 years old. She would sew clothes as gifts. I remember the burgundy velour housecoat she made me. I wore it until I outgrew it, unfortunately, that was around not tall. I’d probably still trip over the hem if I still had it. One year she made matching shirts for me and my Uncle Alvin. I have always been a John Denver fan and the shirts looked like what he wore back in the 1970s. They were referred to as our John Denver shirts.

My paternal grandmother was quite old, 76, when I was born, she didn’t craft anymore, that I can remember. I did have her favorite quilt for a long time and a bedspread her mother crocheted out of bedspread cotton. I lost both 20 years ago. Still breaks my heart to think about it. My greatest memory of Grandma was her reading to me.

Aunt Jenny quilted and crocheted. Uncle Delly made a quilting frame for her and one for Aunt Edith. Before I tell you more about Aunt Jenny, let me tell you about Uncle Delly. He was born a preemie in West Virginia, with skin that was translucent and so small they used a roaster as a crib. He never learned to read or write but Aunt Edith taught him to write his name. He played football with a leather helmet and bare-fisted boxed as a young man. He learned primitive woodworking and worked on a dairy farm. He could cut out anything you drew onto the wood. By that I mean, take a picture from a coloring book and transfer it onto a piece of good plywood not pressed wood; look at the picture and see the parts you probably don’t want to color. Say the picture is a horse in the field with fences and trees that is in a frame. You don’t want to color the sky. He could take a jigsaw and cut out all the spots the sky was without cutting anything else. I have that very picture, it’s a solid piece of plywood without the sky in the picture. The horse is there, the fences, the trees are also there and not glued back in. They were not cut off just the sky removed. The blank area between the rails of the split rail fence is removed, with each rail intact. He made us Aggravation boards, too. If Aunt Edith put it on wood, he would cut it out. He would make tables, chairs, and bookshelves for people for extra money.

My biological mother was raised Catholic and attended a Catholic school for part of her education. In her home-economics type classes, they taught among other things, embroidery and knitting. She no longer knits but she still embroiders. I am not sure who taught her to quilt, but she still quilts. One of the quilts she made has the names and dates of all of her children and their birth. I’m not sure if she added in her step-children or not. She did liquid embroidery for a while but decided to quit. Her embroidery work is so good she can take a pre-quilted baby blanket and embroider it, with maybe one stitch showing through on the back and there are no knots. Her maternal grandfather taught her how to make French knots. Makes me wonder why he learned to embroider.

My maternal grandmother did crafts, the little kits you could buy. I don’t remember her sewing or anything. It doesn’t mean she didn’t it just means I don’t recall ever seeing her do that. I wasn’t around her very much since I was raised by my father’s family. My maternal grandfather did the string art pictures.

My biological mother’s maternal grandmother crocheted. After my grandmother died, Mom received a glass cigar tube with crochet hooks and some sewing needles in it. Its plug was a wad of yarn that one of the needles had in it. There were enough hooks to make a full set to give to my sister, Peggy Sue, that crochets, which I gave in a case I made her. I doubt she ever uses them since she does not work in bedspread cotton but I hope she appreciates them. I know she cried when I gave it to her. We joke about one of the needles, it is longer than my pointer finger so we refer to it as a sword or epee. The cigar case was great-grandpa’s and I still have the hooks I kept in it.

Now back to Aunt Jenny. She quilted up until she moved to a house that was too small to hold her quilting frame. She did the liquid embroidery for a while but quit. She started crocheting as a child, her first crochet hook was a bent safety pin. She was born in December 1911 in Huntington, West Virginia, and grew up in the “holler” on the family farm. She later lived in Huntington. She worked in a factory making leather football helmets. One day the needle on her machine broke, the man hired to do repairs on the machines also was in charge of changing the needles and was her boyfriend (not sure of his name). He turned that needle into a crochet hook for her. I still have that hook. Aunt Jenny tried to teach me to crochet but I wanted to be outside. I did learn liquid embroidery and some basic embroidery back then.

Growing up I was around others who crocheted, such as my Uncle Alvin’s (aka Pappa) sister Jessie. Aunt Jessie was legally blind from diabetes, she would have me read her the patterns occasionally. Aunt Jenny had me read her the patterns, too. I remembered the terms and abbreviations and after these ladies passed away and I taught myself to crochet.

Aunt Jenny bought a sewing machine and signed me up for lessons. I went and learned to use the machine but every time I needed something made, she would send it over to Aunt Edith or one of Aunt Edith’s daughters to make. She always told me I didn’t know how to do it and I should let others do it for me. Ironically, while in college I was involved with theater and made props, helped with costumes and so many other backstage things. One professor told me I could claim soft props as my specialty since I sewed, crocheted, and such. One of my first props to make was a table cloth with the names of the fairies in The Sleeping Beauty. I used monk’s cloth for the top and a piece of muslin for the back. It worked but frustrated me because it never laid flat. I wanted to make my dress for one of the award banquets, again was told by Aunt Jenny I didn’t know how and that my cousin should do it. She didn’t do what I wanted. Anyway, how can I get better at it if I’m not allowed to do it? She was right that I do stink at using the machine. I do pretty fairly well working by hand.

I personally think my specialty in props is making things using whatever I could find. I frequently went into the trash to see what was there to use. I used scraps of cloth, scraps of wood, paper, even cotton balls, and poly-fil. One prop was a cattail for on a pond made from a mirror. The cattail was made of a misshapen piece of brown velveteen glued onto a dowel rod it was so misshapen that it could only be “closed” on the very bottom where it was glued to the stick and up to about an inch. The rest was open that I stuffed with the poly-fil then put a few cotton balls on top so “Eve” could dab her makeup. The play was Diary of Adam and Eve which is the first act of the Apple Tree by Mark Twain. Took a piece of the green polyester that we made the edges of the pond from, stitched it to look sort of like a shoulder pad put a piece of the Upson board that I took out of the trash, and finished by stuffing poly-fil in it. I found a piece of a red plastic flower on the floor which was also added to it. Voila, lily pad. I didn’t have a pattern on paper just in my head. People thought it was great. Fun times making things like that. I seem happiest when I’m creating something. Because I could hand sew, I found myself hemming pants, skirts, and dresses in the ticket booth the week of production. In one play, we had to build a costume for a lady that was over 300 pounds. On top of that, it required a bustle. It zipped up the back, but the time period portrayed required buttons up the front. We added buttons for decoration, but they looked too modern; so, I decorated them with hot glue and a “pearl” bead. Looked good, unfortunately, it did not wash well, and the buttons no longer exist with the decorations on them.

Because I learn things fairly quickly, I tend to get bored easily hence my jumping around with crafts. I sew, crochet, paint by number, color, cross-stitch, embroider, and other things as they come into what I can afford to do. When I first started crocheting, I made a doily and decided it was too easy so my next doily was made from using two strands of cotton at the same time. I took a class in costume design which proved I can’t draw worth diddly but the professor looked at my hand sewing and was impressed. She saw the case I was making for the paintbrushes I used for the costume design class. I had her for art history for theater majors, too. I’ve continued making cases like that for paintbrushes, make-up brushes, crochet hooks, and knitting needles. I have a case I make using placemats that I give as a gift. I give it to be used as the recipient wants but my idea is as a scripture study organizer. It is large enough to hold a workbook, a notebook, a tablet or small laptop, stencils and pens, and pencils. I have several more to make and a lack of funds to get the supplies but someday I will. Covid made a good excuse as to why they have not been done since I could not go shopping for supplies.

I am back into crochet right now. I’m making a baby afghan for Justin and his wife Julie. Their daughter is due in October. I am to make mom an afghan because she gets cold easily. Granted she will find something wrong with it but she will use it. She wants a ripple stitch afghan, which I’ve never made before. I’m using two colors at the same time so it will be a bit different. I only bought four skeins, two of each color, to begin with. I will buy more in a few months so I can get it done by December’s cold weather. The previous yarn I had purchased she did not like but this she does. It worked out because the one color I had bought before is now being used for Justin and Julie’s baby.

My DNA and family lore (both sides) has American Indian in it. It makes me wonder what crafts were done by that line or lines. Were there ancestors that did quilling, where the quills from a porcupine were softened, dyed, and used to decorate things? Did someone decorate tipis, shields, and clothing for tribal members? Were there members that made blankets, baskets, pottery, or tanned hides? My great-nephew, Justin, learned to tan hides so he could make extra money out of the pelts he collected from trapping. He trapped for people to help protect their livestock from predators. He and his brother used the meat to eat frequently, as many of our ancestors did. One of the things I’ve received fairly recently was the sewing box his mother’s paternal grandmother had. Justin and Brandon’s father is my nephew. I did get to know their mother’s paternal grandmother. Anastacia, Bobby to everyone, came to America after WWII. Her story is amazing. She learned some English and became a seamstress. I wish I could have had her teach me.

Another person that influenced me is my closest childhood friend’s mother, Betty. Becky and I have been friends for 50-years. Her mother, Betty, crochets, knits, sews, paints, and decorates cakes. She did the liquid embroidery too, but like everyone else has stopped. She used to do the cakes as a business; Becky and I were to help by doing the not-so-technical smooth frosting when she had a large order. I never got really good with the cakes, but I’m pretty good with cupcakes. Becky and Betty make prayer shawls for their church. I keep saying I’m going to make some too, but alas have not, yet.

Betty just recently returned to painting. Her pieces are beautiful. She tried to teach me to knit, did not compute for me. One year, as a child, I went with them to Pa’s {John} company picnic. We three girls (Betty, Becky and I) were dressed identical, Pa was similar. We had green shirts with tiny yellow flowers on them, Ma had made the shirts. She might have made our pants, too. Pa got by with just a green shirt. Pa had started painting ceramics with Ma. There are two sitting on the dining room table. They may be the last ones they were doing together. Pa passed away from Covid pneumonia just before Christmas.

I hope that the shutdown caused by Covid led to people doing family things together such as games or crafts. While doing either, memories are made and family stories can be shared but while crafting you are making something that the memories are tied to.

I’m supposed to tell you about my favorite craft, the craft I’m passionate about, especially one that uses scissors. I’m passionate about family history. I hope to one day scan all the family pictures in so I can share them with family members. I want to make scrapbooks but lack space and supplies including the proper scissors and punches. I did photography as a teen and have recently returned to that. I enjoy sewing and crochet. I find various things getting in the way of doing crafts. I live at another person’s home so lack of storage space, plus money and health issues are negatives in doing crafts right now. I have multiple autoimmune disorders including plaque psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. Psoriasis plaques can snag my yarn, and arthritis in my hands can make using them painful. I try to adjust what I’m doing to the flares. I can’t just stop because if I do then the diseases win. I’m not one to let others dictate or win. I was told I was not college material; I have a master’s degree. I was told I couldn’t sew; I took costume design. I know my drawings are very primitive but I still draw. In the poem The Summer Day, Mary Oliver ends with “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

I dream of the day when I have my own home and a craft room to have a sewing machine, maybe a loom, and an area full of crochet thread and yarn. I will have several places that are comfortable to sit and craft. I will have a place in the living room to crochet as I watch TV; I figure I will then have times of arguing with my cats over the yarn and thread, which makes me smile to think of that. I want to create things that people find interesting. I want to try new things. I can’t draw well but that doesn’t stop me from coloring. I have multiple autoimmune disorders that cause pain but I continue to sew or crochet as therapy and pleasure. I want to have space for a quilting frame so I can try to quilt like several of my ancestors did. I write. I have two stories I’m writing now, in hopes of being published. As I typed this story, I had a commercial running in my head for various products tied to crafts. It could be done as a single ad or multiple but either way, it focused on how crafts and family go together. To me, that is the most important part of crafting, not the art associated with it but the family and history. Look at some of the things we have from history to tell us about history things such as the Bayeux Tapestry and the mural Guernica. How crafts have tied into history such as the making of flags. Makes me wonder what crafts of today will be around telling people of the history of today.