Flowers for Friday, Embroidery Style

In 1976, when the United States was celebrating our bicentennial, my family went on a once-in-a-lifetime cross-country trip. I was 18 years old. My parents wanted to show us how varied our country was. They wanted to show us their hometowns. They wanted us to meet their relatives. 

My mom was born in Chicago, IL. Her parents were shopkeepers. Throughout her childhood and through the Great Depression, they owned businesses in various towns in Illinois and Iowa. At one point, they had a Ben Franklin five-and-dime franchise. Growing up in southern California, I'd never heard of that store before. So we stopped at a Ben Franklin in the Midwest to look around.

As a souvenir, I bought some floss and a set of pillowcases that had a pre-printed design for surface embroidery. Over the next year, I embroidered both pillowcases and learned to do some thread crochet around the edge. Though my work was uneven -- especially the crochet -- I was proud of my accomplishment. Those pillowcases always helped me feel close to the grandparents I'd never known. 

I used the them for years. I took the pillowcases to college in Idaho. They survived a house fire in 1987. I thought I'd lost them in the divorce, but as luck would have it, I was able to retrieve them from where my ex locked them up in a storage unit. Now they are thin and damaged and stained. But I keep them because they hold a place in my heart, and in my personal history of learning needlework.

It's sad to see my precious pillowcases languishing in a box, though. So I'm considering the idea of cutting around the embroidered parts that are intact, and transforming them, along with other damaged vintage linens from my elders, into something new. It will take some courage to cut into them. I dislike the idea of "destroying" the work of women's hands. So much time, talent, and history lie in each piece. The women and their handiwork deserve respect.

But life encompasses birth, lived experience, death, and transformation. In this new retirement stage of my life, I'm ready to give transformation a chance.