"Crafting" - a functional crafting, not crafting because it's "hip" - has always been part of my life. My mother is a seamstress, and so was her mother. My Mom taught me how to knit when I was five years old. At the time my parents were building a house out in the country. Money was tight & no fancy clothing was needed to roam the woods. I remember wearing warm sweaters my Mom knit. For 'Fasching' I usually wanted to be a princess, and she would always sew me fancy, unique costumes. My first sewing attempts on a sewing machine were made on a sturdy Singer machine in my grandmother's "crafting room." She worked from home, and when she would have her coffee break, I loved to sew little dresses and pillows for my dolls using her fabric scraps. I think I also got my love for coffee from those experiences. I associate very good things with the smell of coffee - our extended family gathering in my grandmother's wee lil' kitchen around the woodstove to have afternoon coffee & cake. Ahhh. So wonderful.
I don't have many heirloom treasures from my childhood. You know, lil' things you keep or the like. Since I was about ten I have never lived anywhere for longer than two years. When I moved back to the U.S. with Noah & Nathan a bit over 2 years ago, I sold most of our belongings. We had 6 suitcases. That's all the airlines allowed. Some treasures I boxed up and a friend was keeping them for me to be mailed at some point in the future, but everything - except for one box with a few Ostheimer treasures from the boys' early childhood - was destroyed when her basement flooded.
So, one of the few family heirloom treasures I do have is the needle-book my Mom made when she was in elementary school (sometime in the late 1950s...). I use it often as "crafting" is such a big part of my life.
The outside is decorated with embroidery.
For the inside she actually knit the lining. The yarn used is very thin. I would guess the needle size used was no larger than a US 2. I can't imagine how many hours of work went into creating this needle-book.
When I was in 4th grade, I made a needle-book, too. The outside is embroidered as well, but the inside was left plain. Nathan just told me the other day that he is working on a cross-stitch pincushion in handwork class that he wants to give me for Mother's Day.
It may seem insignificant to some, but to me these are family heirlooms I truly treasure.
