For my birthday my Grandma Bergen (Dad’s mom) sent me these heirlooms made by her mother, my great-grandmother, Aleatha Mae Tyner Clark. She was a very talented lady. She went to college in the 19-teens, and graduated in Chemistry and Home Ec, I believe. My grandma sent me three tabletop cloths she had made during college. I only took pictures of the table runner, for now.
Check out the amazing details:
Apparently you make these designs by cutting out tiny bits of thread and wrapping some of them together. I can understand why no one does this anymore. Good grief! Cut one tiny thread wrong and it would fall apart.
The other two things were similar: a square cloth like the one above, and a rectangle with white-on-white daisies embroidered on it, and a scalloped edge. These things are nearing 100 years old! I was really happy to get them from my grandma and I will take good care of them.
Here are some pictures of my great-grandma, Aleatha:
Wasn’t she pretty?
She’s in the middle, with the long hair and the hat.
Here she’s at college, in the middle again.
so THATS where Clark came from
I love heirlooms! I don’t own hardly any, but everything I have (whether new heirlooms or old) I treasure. I love to have minimal belongings, well, in moderation, so I guess I love to have moderate belongings, but I will never get rid of heirlooms. I love to have them in my home.
That table runner is amazing; I can’t imagine having the talent to be able to do that.
Hope you had a happy birthday yesterday!
Seeing handcrafts like that doesn’t usually make me think about Sailors, but it shouldn’t be as odd an association as it sounds, if the accounts I’ve read are to be believed. Necessity, boredom, and plain old vanity are to be blamed, I think.
In any way, that runner reminds me of a certain sort of nautical art called ‘drawn work’ – where they would draw out bits of the warp and weft in sections of cloth, and tie the remaining yarns together into patterns. Gets pretty neat looking sometimes.
Just one of those things that you can do, if you have lots of time on your hands!
happy birthday… and nice gifts