This month, we’re dedicating our blog to paying homage to the wonderful women who’ve guided us as we learned to thread our needles and tuck in our crochet tails. We’d like to pay tribute to our wonderful Mothers. Got a Crafty Mama you’d love to tell the world about? Send an email over to yelle[at]craftmnl.com with your answers to the questions below, together with photos of you and your Crafty Mama, as well as photos some of the awesome projects you’d like to share. At the end of the month, we’ll be randomly selecting three entries to win special prizes from DMC! Winners will be notified via blog post and email. Show some #craftymamapride!
Tell us about yo’ crafting mama (sorry, always wanted to try saying that).
Meet my Mama Jo. This weekend at the Maker Holiday, I found myself introducing my Mom by her first name. It felt a little weird, but felt nice, feeling more like we were peers. As daughters we all to some extent hold our mothers in a bit of awe (in one way or another), but as we grow up, I guess some of that motherly awe melts away into peer-pride, as we get to understand the skill, the love and the circumstances around some of our mothers’ creations–from lovingly baked cakes on our birthdays, to our brilliantly conceptualised school and Halloween costumes.
Mom tries her hand at wheel throwing pottery at last weeken’s Maker Holiday.
My Mom is especially handy with her needle and thread. Just to give a bit more history, my grandmother was quite the crafter. She had balikbayan boxes full of yarn. We would have latch hook tapestries adorn our walls instead of paintings. We would have sewn pillow-dolls as toys as children, and today are the recipients of vintage crochet pattern books and embroidery kits. My Mom told me stories of my Lola having a knitting machine, and consigning sweaters to a department store in the sixties. My Mom when she was younger, had access to craft materials, and would enterprisingly sell threads to her classmates for their Home Economics projects.
Check out my Lola’s half-cross stitch skills (or would that be mad skillz).
My Mom inherited my Lola’s craftiness, and in doing so, our house has framed cross stitch and half cross stitch projects hanging on our walls, and in my Dad’s clinic. We have felt ornaments on a miniature Christmas tree, and for a while had embroidered clothespin angels on our tree. I think my Mom has a natural eye for pleasing aesthetics, and she took some units in interior design to design our home.
Mom also used to bake, and she used to make us our birthday cakes. 🙂
Paintings? Nah, we’ve got embroidery up in our home.
What’s your favorite memory of your Mom (or with your Mom)?
Gosh. When I think of my Mom playing with our dog, or chasing him while popping bubble wrap (she’ll kill me for saying that), or when I think of Mom and one of her witty comebacks, it always makes me smile.
Mom made this lovely Mother and Child.
What’s one thing not everyone knows about your Mom (that you’re dying to share)?
Mom won a national sewing contest! I think it was sponsored by Singer sewing machine then. She won a black and white TV set for a sewing sampler she made. 🙂
What are your Mom’s crafty projects?
She’s got a number of cross stitch samplers, half cross stitch “paintings”, we used to have quilted throw pillows at home, she designs and sometimes beads some of her own dresses, and she scrapbooks–just a handful of her crafty endeavours.
Mom actually made two of these. One hangs at home, and the other in my Dad’s clinic.
What’s a mother-daughter/offspring collaboration we can expect in the future?
Hmmmm. There’s a little embroidery “painting” we did together (more like me starting, and her finishing), but since then, we haven’t worked on anything together. She’s usually my project critic though, so perhaps that’s kind of collaborative in nature (when I listen, haha).
What are you grateful to your Mother for?
Well, everything they do for us as mothers is a given, so I’m thankful to my Mother for continually supporting everything that I and my siblings do, for making me feel like what I do matters. For having the patience and taking the time out to drive me to the bus (yes, I don’t have a license–or a car, for that matter), or for being there to pack up my sewing machine for minor workshop emergencies. My Mom was also the one who finished making my sister’s entourage bouquets when I kinda broke down in exhaustion a few days before the wedding. Haha. That’s love.
An embroidery project I think I started, and Mom finished. 🙂