Flashback Friday.
Here’s this week’s Flashback Friday:
If the last Flashback Friday was my favorite, today’s is definitely my second favorite, thanks to Natalie from Old Georgia House.
Here’s what she wrote in her post about the pincushion above:
My great-grandmother’s name was Linnie. She was born in 1890 and died when I was seven. I remember going to visit her when I was little at the family’s old homeplace about five miles from my house. She wore house dresses and put snuff in her bottom lip and I loved playing with all the cats that lived outside.
When I was a teenager my mom would tell me about her. Her mother had died when she was a child. She and her two sisters were lately sexually abused by their father so her grandfather took them and raised them. When she married she became a wealthy woman, but her husband was killed in a buggy accident. Her next husband was a kind, but poor, farmer–my great-grandfather. She had six children later in life and five survived infancy. She worked hard in the fields like a man since her husband had lost one of his arms while helping to build the railroad in Georgia. She made everything her family needed, including sewing their clothing from feed sacks. As her children grew up and moved away (but all within 30 miles) she retired to her chair. She sewed, embroidered, crocheted, and tatted.
She made this pincushion for my mother when she was in high school, around 1965. She tore up one of her old dresses for the fabric and because she didn’t have a sewing machine (and hadn’t in years), she sewed it all by hand. In some places you can see those beautiful little stitches.
Every time I sew I use this pin cushion. It makes me wonder if Granny knew when she made this that her great-granddaughter would use it almost fifty years later. And maybe that’s why I love to sew so much. I know that not everything I make will last for four generations like this little pincushion, but I do have hope that some of the things I make for MM she will keep. And that maybe, just maybe, in fifty years my great-granddaughter will wear a dress, or a pair of pants, or a pinafore I made for her grandmother when she was a baby a long, long time ago in 2010.
Thanks so much Natalie! That is just so sweet that you still use the pincushion. And what an amazing woman.
Oh! What a wonderful story…I have fond memories of my grand -mother and great grand-mother too! Stories of great hardships but even more great memories! Thanks for sharing!
Ginger
SSB
http://superstinkyboys.blogspot.com
I have several things like that that have been passed down. It’s so fun to have memories like that. That pincushion is just like the fabric balls my mom makes for all her grandchildren. She just posted a tutorial for them a couple weeks ago if anyone is interested at http://kathyhaynie.blogspot.com/2010/03/fabric-balls-craft-tutorial.html.
Hi, I’m Polly’s mom (from the comment above). I agree – what wonderful family stories! My tutorial (listed in Polly’s comment) includes a pattern and instructions for making the fabric balls. I hope you will have fun continuing this beautiful family tradition, and make some new ones…even with a sewing machine!
That is really special. Makes me want to sew something I can pass along.