A few years ago an older friend of ours passed away. She left behind a house full of memories. I inherited a few of her sewing things, including this old pincushion with the heart shaped stickpin and the pearl headed corsage pins. Nothing special about it, you’ve seen them everywhere right? I decided to use it because Anne wouldn’t want anything of hers to go to waste. So the last few years I’ve used it with the increasing realization that it was just falling apart and there was nothing I could do about it. I had some idea of taking it apart to see how it was made so that maybe I could make my own out of a cheery print.
As I opened it up and made an incredible mess, all of these old needles spilled out with the dusty sawdust filling. I was struck with the thought of how Anne had used every one of these needles on some project, for herself or her children. Maybe for the house or for a neighbor, for a grandchild or a friend.
A lifetime of projects sewn with love. Sewn with these needles. A lifetime of needles.
Tags: tools
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Cool, I’d love to see pictures! Does she have a blog?
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She finished a huge custom project before Christmas – it was a full size quilt that was a very detailed map of the Sylvania wilderness area in northern Wisconsin crossing over into the upper peninsula of Michigan. A woman commissioned her to do it after seeing a show, it was for her daughter to hang in her cabin up in that area. She supplied some old maps that showed old landmarks and points of interest to their family and mom worked off those and some topo maps she got from the forestry service. It was an amazing feat and the family loved it.
She is learning though that she needs to charge more for some of her work, especially a huge project like that!
I need to post some pictures still, but she made a really cute wall hanging for Maya’s room and is in process with some matching curtains.
I’m going there this weekend and hope to get to a couple area galleries that are showing some of her work right now. I don’t know if it’s all older stuff or if she made new things special for these shows.And yes, I like to feed the fish too :)
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That’s neat about your mom’s pin cushion. I think it’s been a while since I’ve seen your mom’s amazing quilts. What is she working on now?
I’m glad she likes the fish! My kids do too. Ha! Who am I kidding, I like to feed the fish. ;)
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How cool. My mom has one just like that, I believe it was my great grandmother’s actually. I wonder what it holds?
Maya loves to watch me “feed” your little fish by the way. She gets all excited and points “wish, wish, look mama, wish!”
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