My memories of the first indications of the coming Christmas was created by our neighbor Lillian Merrifield. Every year she would have me over to create Christmas decorations. She would save scraps of colored and foiled paper and small milk cartons of different sizes and the two of us would spend hours turning those milk cartons into little houses for a Christmas village. She would keep half and I would get the other half to put under our tree. We would also make tree ornaments with paint and the scraps of colored paper. I would also help her hang all those decorations in her living room which by the time we were done would look to a small boy as beautiful as the Sistine Chapel.
—Fred McPeek
I hope you enjoyed Fred’s memories. They reminds me of Granny and her love of crafting.
Granny is always keeping this or that to use in her creative endeavors. While I only see a plastic lid she sees a snowman’s hat 🙂
Last night’s video: A People and Their Quilts.
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I like Fred’s story. What a sweet memory for him and his family. I am a “saver” like that too about looking at items and thinking something could be done with that. I have to limit my “collection of odds and ends” because storage space is limited in my house. My husband will usually toss things in the trash if he can before I try to keep something : )
How creative is that?!? I should try that for next year!
That was sweet of Fred’s neighbor. 🙂
I haven’t crafted in years. My joy is needlepoint embroidery. My grandmother taught arts and crafts and her forte was ceramics. She even made beaded curtains out of recycled magazines that she would wind up to make her “beads”. That must have taken an inordinate amount of time. She even made jewelry out of old jade, it was a bird. I still have it in my possession. I used to make crafts with my daughter when she was younger. Like a scene of cotton balls for the clouds and there were so many possibilities with things on hand. Quilting is something I have never done. Locally we have Hawaiian quilting but that is very arduous. Thanks for sharing, and good luck on granny’s diagnosis and tests.
Time, attention and participation are importance components of what a child remembers as love. And they are right. Somehow it soaks in that the unspoken message is, “I like to spend time with you.” And behind that is the meaning, “I like you for yourself.” In a way even we who have lived it don’t understand it gives us firm ground to walk on all our lives. And all of us, and it, is by Design. That loving neighbor lady gave Fred a priceless gift, perhaps very intentionally but much more likely, I think, as the natural expression of a loving heart.
I love crafts too and my Mother told me my Daddy’s Mother was very creative; tatting (google the word to see how they did it), painting, and making quilts. Quilting Bee’s back in the 1920’s and 1930’s in NE MS were being held and my Grandmother would have one when a young lady was getting married and all her friends would come and make a friendship quilt to give her at her wedding or for a family that was in need in the community. I actually have an old well-worn quilt that was quilted at my Grandmother’s home and created for a girl that turned out later to be my Aunt. What I really treasure is that each friend embroidered their name in the corner of a block. It is priceless to me. My Mother made many quilts too and some are made out of polyester with all different tiny blocks of bright colors. I love them all.
We have a group of Sewing Servants at our church and among other items we make lap-top quilts and give them to nursing homes or where ever there is a need. For those that sit in a wheelchair or recliner they are perfect. The blocks are 8 inches long by 4 inches wide and are beautiful.
Now that was a special neighbor and a wonderful memory for a young boy to have!
I’m so glad you picked A People and Their Quilts for the next read as I love quilts! I also love the quilts that are made with just scraps of material. I remember mama always saving scraps along with others in the family and we would take them to my grandmama. She never made many patterned quilts, but they were beautiful also. Lots of the scrap quilts have material that you will always remember when you look at it. I have some of my grandmama’s and my husband was blessed to be gifted several of his grandmama’s quilts when she passed away. They truly are a treasure.
Tell Paul I really enjoyed the video he posted from Martin’s Creek CC. The music was wonderful!! I do thank him for sharing it.
What a sweet story! In elementary school, we covered those little milk cartons to make houses and other buildings. I love to sew and craft, and I’m always saving a bit of ribbon or trim for another use.
Fred shared such a great memory of making Christmas decorations. I think most all your readers can relate to making Christmas decorations in their youth or throughout their years. I know I have lots of sweet memories of making decorations for Christmas and really just about every holiday or season growing up. My mom, like Granny was a crafter. She loved any reason to decorate and celebrate. She taught us to use what was available to us around our home. We learned how to make garlands out of popcorn, pine cones, cranberries, flowers, leaves and any type of colored paper we had. We learned to make flowers out of tissues, ornaments out of flour and paste, cardboard, tin cans, milk cartons, and any plastic jugs or lids. I think my mom saved anything she thought she could repurpose. We didn’t have a lot of money, but my mom made us feel like we did by just making every holiday, birthday, and changing of the seasons feel special with the things we had.
Tipper, I just saw the old post about Matt’s spark plug ornament. I have read this post in the past and made some for my mechanic friends. They all liked them and I know of one one that hangs it on his tree each year. Tell him not to sue me! I also make ornaments by stacking 3 sizes of red and white plastic fishing bobbers/floats together and give them to my fishing friends. I use a snap swivel for the hanger.
Gingerbread houses and quilts • two very interesting Appalachian crafts. Although gingerbread was fairly common in our part of Eastern Kentucky, not many local folks made gingerbread houses in my family surroundings. Now quilting was something everybody had at least one or two family members that were quilters. And the variety of patterns and materials made each and everyone a treasure. I am fortunate enough to have several 40’s and 50’s quilts in my possession; I really enjoy them because I have many, many great memories of the makers. Even today, I sleep under a quilt, some modern and some vintage. Thanks for keeping our Appalachian memories and traditions alive, Tipper. Our best to Granny and all your family ……
Richard
My Daddy was creative. He made many things out of of scrap pieces of lumber or just sticks from he picked up. He dearly loved making small nativity scenes and bird houses out sticks or other thing he had picked up in the yard. One of his great joys was making small rocking chairs for children. He made many of these chairs and gave to children at our church. As soon as he found out a young lady was pregnant, he would begin to look for scrap lumber to make a rocking chair to give to her for her child. He would often stop where someone was building a home and ask to look through the scrap pieces of lumber. He only had the most basic of tools to work with, I wonder what he would have been capable of doing if he could have been able to buy good woodworking tools. Now a grandmother at our church, someone he made a rocking chair for when she was born, will tell me a story of her chair and of her standing in it after she had gotten older. She broke a couple of the slats in the seat and ask Daddy if he could fix it for her, he fixed it and included a poem when he gave it back to her. The poem had these lines in it, “ you can tell by looking, the seat was intended for your butt and not for your feet”. She will cry when she tells this and say the chair along with his poem are kept in a special place in her home. He would never take any money for these chairs.
What a great memory! I would never have thought of using milk cartons to make houses. A whole village could be created! Such a loving and generous neighbor is certainly a shining light.
Those are some beautiful memories.
I loved stringing cranberries and popcorn and making construction paper chains for our tree. These were events I shared with my mother and grandmother, and we also made sequin ornaments with pins on styrofoam balls. They were gorgeous, but my favorite decoration was the strung cranberries. They were so pretty on the tree!
God bless Granny with healing and health and a blessed new year,
Fred was so lucky to have a neighbor who gave him such fun memories. I try to do crafts with my grandchildren when they are here. I save pieces of cardboard that comes in packages for painting canvases, things like oat and salt containers for drums, and big cardboard boxes for forts. They have fun painting and creating. We don’t always save these things—the fun is in the making. Every holiday brings new opportunities to create things from scraps.
What a sweet memory.
How wonderful for a child to have a neighbor who was so talented and even better loved him enough to share her joy in creating
I love the new book about Southern Appalachian quilts! I am a quilter and also embroidery gal. The history is fascinating to me and I shared it on Facebook for all my quilting friends.
My prayer for you and your entire family is that you will be blessed in this coming New Year! I am praying that the coming year brings health to Granny and safe deliveries for Katie and Corie. God bless you and yours❤❤
Thank you for sharing! I love to craft too!
That makes me think of so many happy times with my momma puttin things together. We made so many perdy things. I miss her so.
God bless all y’all!