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.

My grandmother could not go anywhere without a bag of partially finished projects to occupy her time. Even during vacations, she brought her work with her. One Thanksgiving, my parents, sisters, and I went to Disney World. My grandmother came with us, crafts in tow. On one evening during that trip, I came out of the hotel bathroom after my shower to that familiar pop and dragging sound that indicated my grandmother was cross-stitching. I sat down on the bed next to her and asked her about cross-stitching. She told me a few tricks of the trade and invited me to try my hand at it. I cross-stitched a couple stitches and she told me my work was good. I returned her project to her, satisfied with this introduction to the craft, and put the thoughts of cross-stitching to the back of my mind. I did not touch cross-stitching for the next few years, as I was leading the busy life of a high school student athlete preparing for college.

I went off to university, moved to Singapore for my MBA, and started my professional career in Asia. Eventually, I returned home. At this point, my grandmother was older, slower, and more creased, but her crafting spirit was still alive and well. I went to visit her shortly after returning home and she was working on a dishtowel with a cardinal design. Cardinals were always her absolute favorite bird. She called them pretty birds and had cardinal trinkets all over her house and garden. I asked her to show me her work. She handed me the towel. I could tell she was struggling a bit with it because I saw she had taken some stitches out. She lamented that there were so many different shades of red in the design, and her eyes could not tell them apart anymore. Saddened by this realization that she was indeed getting very old, but inspired to help in any way I could, I offered to attempt to finish the towel. She welcomed my help, so I took the materials home that evening and started stitching.

It was not a basic design even though it was not very big; there were nearly a dozen shades of red and French knots all over the pattern. I had to research how to do some of the stitches and ask my mom (a proficient crafter in her own right) for some tips. But a few weeks later, I finished the towel, and it was beautiful! I took it to my grandmother. She was ecstatic. She promptly put it in her bag to take to bingo that evening to show it off to all her bingo friends.

After that, I had the bug for cross-stitching. I went shopping with my grandmother and stocked up on different supplies and pattern books for cross-stitch. I started small – bookmarks and dish towels – and solicited advice and feedback on my work from my mother and my grandmother. After a few of these smaller projects, I wanted to challenge myself a bit more. I found a striking and vibrant design for a wall hanging. It was a cardinal on a snow-covered tree limb, set on black fabric backdrop. I bought all the supplies to get started, fully intending to gift this to my grandmother for the upcoming Christmas a few months in the future.

Well, the project took me longer than expected, but over a year after starting this cardinal, I finished it and had it professionally framed. I gave it to my grandmother for her 85th birthday. She unwrapped the frame and just sat there in awe for a few seconds, then started crying. After 85 years of making quilts and towels and pillow shams for everyone, she was speechless and emotional when on the receiving end of such a labor of love. She took her present home and hung it prominently in her dining room for every visitor to see, so she could brag to them that her granddaughter made that cardinal just for her.

A few years later, my grandmother passed away. My final gift to her was a small bookmark with a cross-stitched pair of cardinals. I put it in her coffin with her.

After the funeral, my mother, aunts, sisters, cousin, and I started cleaning out the lifetime of crafting from my grandmother’s home. We discovered sewing machines we did not know she had owned, enough yarn to crochet afghans for everyone in the town, scissors and crochet hooks, dozens of finished quilts and pillows. My aunt took my grandmother’s cardinal off the dining room wall and handed to me. This cardinal was now mine. I went home and hung it in my bedroom, where it is now an omnipresent reminder of the matriarch of my family.

A couple months after my grandmother’s death, I met the love of my life, Tom. My pain over losing my grandmother was still very raw, so I shared every detail about her with him. They would have loved each other. Tom is kind, giving, and friendly, just like my grandmother was, and he has a love of birds that she too had. I showed Tom my cross-stitch projects, giving special emphasis to my cardinal that once hung in my grandmother’s dining room, and told him how she had inspired my love of cross-stitch. After seeing my work, Tom decided to try his own hand at cross-stitch. He created the design he wanted to stitch and then we went to my mother’s house to sift through the embroidery floss collection that had once belonged to my grandmother, hoping to find some of the colors he needed.

My mother was excited to help Tom get started on his project. She pulled out all the boxes of floss tucked away in her living room. She also extracted a different box from a drawer. This box was full of dozens of scissors that my grandmother had once owned. “Look,” she said, “my mom was never without a pair of scissors. She had multiple pairs in every room, to make sure she could always snip a thread or some yarn on whatever project she was working on at that moment. Here, Tom, pick out a few pairs to help you get started with your cross-stitching.”

Tom picked out two pairs of scissors and found the floss colors he needed for his project. Tom and I went home to get started on his design. He asked me what he needed to know about this craft, and I began telling him everything my grandmother had told me about cross-stitching during our countless crafting sessions together.

Now, every time I see Tom cross-stitching and using the scissors that once belonged to my grandmother, I smile a sad, little smile, and my heart hurts a little bit thinking about my grandmother. But I know her spirit has lived on in me and in the crafting Tom and I continue to do today.