My mother, Lois Frances Langston was born on July 25, 1923!!….
She grew up during the Great Depression, and lived thru World War II, the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War.
She passed away in 2017, at the age of 94.
I have been thinking a lot about her this week because it would have been her 100th birthday!!
Photo by Brooke Lark
She was a worker. She seldom sat unless it was to work on some handwork!!
SHE is the reason that I am a creator!!!
She made her first quilt at age 11…..
…. a basic 9-patch using fabrics from her baby brother’s “layette”.
She continued making quilts but ran out of time when she started working full-time (or when she had me…..the jury is still out on what the actual cause was).
Early in my life, she did Crewel Embroidery, sewed clothes, and upholstered furniture.
Then in 1972, she got re-interested in quilting (thru the Bicentennial) and she never looked back.
She made quilts for many of my female cousins, made countless baby quilts, and left me with a plethora of gorgeous quilts when she closed up her house!!
We had the joy of working on three quilts together after I jumped into the art.
On these first two, she did the applique and I did the piecing and quilting…..
….and for this Christmas Collaboration, she also did the hand quilting…..
In this blog, I post stories about creativity, techniques, tools of the trade, and lots more about the wonderful art of quilting. If you are enjoying these posts, please subscribe to be notified of each new blog as it becomes available.
Today would have been my Dad’s 103rd birthday and I am remembering him with everything that I do!! He was a dyed-in-the-wool Texan and love his state!!
This photo was taken when he and my Mom visited us in Australia, just 6 months after we moved there. They traveled with us around the country and thoroughly enjoyed having Michael and I be in charge of the trip.
However, when he saw the “Texas” road sign, he demanded that we stop and take a photo…..
That grin was EXACTLY who my Dad was!!!
I wrote a memorial about him on his 100th birthday so if you want to read more about this wonderful man……
One of my favorite things about quilting is motivating others and helping them in their quilting journey. As part of this endeavor, I LOVE to present programs and workshops to groups and guilds around the world. All of my programs work well with Zoom meetings, and I would love to speak to your group.
I was giving a talk one time and said “cast your mind back to 1975” and then looked around the room and realized that no one in that room was born in the 1970’s!!! But that is how this post needs to start…..
When I was in 3rd grade (in the 1960s)…..
….I had a teacher named Mrs. Brooke. I remember several things about her… the heeled pumps that she taught in every day, the way she stood with one hip jutted out, and the TALL, TALL beehive hairdo that she sported.
But my biggest memory is when she looked at a drawing that I had done and pointedly told me that “if that was the best I could do, then I would NEVER be an artist”!! Needless to say, that comment stung!!
Now, fast forward to 1979…..I was a Senior at Texas Tech University and needed ONE elective class to graduate. I decided to do a “Survey of Drawing” class….just to prove to myself that I COULD draw !! Because I wasn’t sure of that fact, I took it Pass/Fail. Surely I could at least PASS the class!!
The teacher was wonderful. He helped me to learn perspective and shading and then presented lots of different forms of artistic creation. We dabbled in pencil, ink, pointillism, and more.
For our final project, we had to take a household object and first draw it and then turn it into a 3-dimensional piece of art.
I chose a pot of ivy that had been a cutting from my M-I-L’s massive planter. I still have some of it growing in my home…..
I remember being pleased with the drawing but really struggled with how to make it 3-D. Then I thought about fabric!!
I had done very little sewing in my life but my Mom made sure that I had a sewing machine and I decided to make leaves with wire in them so that I could bend them out.
This is the only photo that I have of the project and it doesn’t really show the 3-D part, but I remember being SUPER proud that I had made something that came from my mind and not from a pattern.
In today’s world, this is nothing fancy, but for me, it represented the first step in a life filled with creativity!!
Normally on Tuesdays, I talk about inspiration and, as can be expected, it is mostly quilting related. However, today I want to talk about a woman who has been an inspiration to me for the past 46 years…..
Her name is Esther Louise Arnold, she was my Mother-In-Law, and on Saturday morning she went to be with the Lord…..the place that she longed to be!!
She was not a crafty person and she was completely unapologetic for that. She told her husband that she could type when he married her and she could still type….why did he think that she needed to do anything else!!
She was fearless, once killing a rattlesnake with her shoe…..her TINY size 6 shoe. When we asked why she didn’t leave it, she said that it was heading for the pile of hay and if it got in there she would never know where it was, so she beat it to death!!
She was a fixture at First National Bank in Abilene, Texas. She treated EVERY customer the same, whether they were oil millionaires or poor migrant workers. We recently learned that they still use her as an example in their new employee training session!!
She was 5 foot, 1/2 inch tall and she was PROUD of that 1/2 inch!! She had short little legs but could walk faster than anyone I knew. I still remember her striding across the bank lobby with her heels doing a clickety-clack across the floor. One of her co-workers called her the “original energizer bunny”!!
She LOVED her grand-kids and never showed partiality to one over the other. Her favorite time to visit us was during the middle of our kid’s busy, busy sports seasons because that meant that she could see them play ball!
Probably my favorite memory of her was when Jenny was a Senior in high school and her Fastpitch Softball team was headed to the State Playoffs. When we called Esther to tell her the good news she called back about 15 minutes later and said that she had booked her flight and would arrive on Monday!! She spent the week cheering on the girls and surreptitiously slipping Jenny cash between games….
Esther had style!!!
She knew how to dress and she could make anything look good, even the shorts that she rocked well into her 90’s!!!
She was always supportive of my quilting and, if I ever told her that a quilt had been accepted into a show, she would ask EVERY time we talked if it had won a ribbon!!
She loved her kids and was always excited when good things happened for them. When Michael started doing leather work, she wanted to see exactly what he was doing…..
She taught me SO many practical things….
how to cut up a whole chicken so that it didn’t look like a scene from the Texas Chainsaw Masacre!!!
that it was okay to serve Stove-Top stuffing!!
that I could return ANYTHING to a store….as long as I had the receipt!!!
I would often call her when I was driving around town running errands and her standard greeting was “Where are you headed?”. After I told her she would always say “I wish I was there to go with you”!!!
Probably the biggest thing that she taught me was how to be a good Mother-In-Law. I know that M-I-L’s have a horrible reputation, but she always treated me with the greatest of respect, just as if I was her daughter. I hope to emulate that!!
She had been ill for almost two years and hadn’t been herself for about eighteen months. The last time that I was able to speak with her was over a year ago and, naturally, we talked about food. I mentioned to her that I was making her Fudge and Peanut Brittle recipes for Christmas. She perked up and answered that it sounded so good. After that, her mind was gone again….
I have missed her for the last 2 years but am happy to know that she is out of pain and is rejoicing with her Lord in heaven.
Today would have been the 100th birthday for a wonderful man named Grover Edward Swinson. He was my father and he passed away almost 21 years ago…..I still miss him!!
I have the cancelled check that was written to pay the Doctor who brought him into the world…..
Yes, he was paid $25 for the privilege of giving my Dad his first spanking!!!
He met my mother (Lois Frances Langston) in 1938. When I was cleaning out the house I found this stone that my Dad had engraved….
They were married for almost 60 years.
He was a sports nut, especially when kids were involved. He coached Pony League Baseball before I was born and had photos of all of his teams. Many of those boys grew up to be men who were leaders in the area. I think that my Dad helped to push each of them forward.
When I was a kid, there weren’t a lot of opportunities for girls to be involved in sports, but he made sure that I knew how to catch and throw a softball and that I understood all of the rules to Football, Baseball and Basketball!!!
He taught me how to drive and I spent many weekends going with him to our farm (30 miles away) just so that I could drive. He laughingly said that he was going to enjoy the time while he could because he knew that I wouldn’t be going with him once I got my driver’s license. I remembered those words and enjoyed that time with my kids as well.
He encouraged me to be involved and active. When I got joined the pep-squad, he was always there in the parents section yelling for the team too. When I played in piano recitals he patiently sat and listened even though he would much rather have been listening to Porter Waggoner and Dolly Parton.
He insisted that we take vacations each summer and, although he said that I slept thru most of the car trips, I still have some wonderful memories of those times….
He ran a gas station on a prominent corner in Abilene, Texas and many of my friends and fellow students would go by and talk to him. Michael has always said that he could be a Crotchity old guy but he made Michael feel comfortable as a part of the family. Michael says that my Dad taught him how to be a good Father-In-Law!!
He was a handy-man deluxe and I spent many, many hours in the garage helping him with his various projects. I think of him every time I need to pry something apart (he had a wonderful lecture on using levers), spackle a hole in the wall, or fix a venetian blind. Most of these projects were performed while listening to the Houston Astro’s on the radio. He used to quiz me about what could happen on the next play and wouldn’t be happy until I worked thru ALL of the possible options.
He loved his farm and especially his cows which were basically just pets……
He loved his Grandkids and was so proud of them. He loved it when they got old enough to start playing baseball and softball. When Brian decided to switch to Soccer, Dad immediately started to watch it on TV and learn the rules to the game. Unfortunately, he never got to see Brian play in person, although he did enjoy a few videos.
His health deteriorated and he was seldom able to play with the kids, but he loved to watch them when they were visiting. He always talked about the day that he told Jenny to “choke up on the bat” and then she went out and hit a home run!!
Jenny continued to play Fastpitch and Dad’s service flag was hung at Warrior field during all of the home games of her Senior Year…..
She said that it felt like he was there too!!
He was affectionately known as “Uncle Buddy” to all of my cousins and I remember the fun that we had at the funeral home remembering all of his antics…..
