On The Road Home

This summer I headed to Edison, NE for a family reunion.  A long drive through Kansas from Kansas City to a disappearing town that my family has lived in for over 130 years.  The White family arrived in the 1870's and the Martin family in 1892.  

The thing that I had always remembered about the trip up there was the beauty of the plains and the abandonment of them.  This abandonment, and what it left behind, has always interested me...it is one of my favorite subjects to photograph.  There is something about those deserted farms that draws me to them.

When the White family moved to Edison in the 1870's they took over a homestead from a man who had been there two years and couldn't handle it.  On the land they built, first a sod house and second a two story wooden structure.  Three generations of White and Martin children were raised in that house.

In the mid-1990's, after my Great Grandmother passed, the house, which had been empty for twenty years, decayed and lonely, was torn down.  It is an incredible feeling to stand in what is now a prosperous crop, where the dooryard of the house once was, and look over the land, the creek, the railroad tracks, as generations before me have done.  To see some semblance of what John White saw when the family rolled up to that spot in their covered wagon.  But that missing house, the history of the lives lived there, are what sparked the need to photograph other farms that have fallen into disrepair, that have been abandoned, like ours.

These are those farms...

Why do I sew?

Why do I sew?  Is it because I love to do it?  Yes.  Is it because I love to give my creations to friends and their children?  Yes.  But there is a far more deep reason. My Grandmother.  I lost her years before I began to sew, before I found this talent that she had passed down to me.

This week I received a box of quilting scraps and needlepoint patterns that had belonged to her.  The patterns were all pre-1940.  It was amazing to realize my grandmother had been sewing in one way or another since she was young.  The box made me miss her.  I sew because of her.  Because I'd seen her sew for as long as I can remember.  Sewing on her machine, making us dolls, doll clothes, 99% of the clothing for our Barbie Dolls were made by her.  She embroidered and cross-stitched, needlepoint all by hand.  When I was 10 or 11 she taught me how to cross-stitch.  I'd sit next to her on the "divan" as she called it and would watch her work on her piece as I would work on mine.  She got into felt work when we were little, hand made us stockings and every Christmas she would hand sew us felt ornaments, made from kits, a different collection every year.  She would let my sister and I choose our ornaments, and then would sew our names and the year that she made them on the back. When we moved out, my mom gave us our ornaments, so special.

Then, about 4 years ago, I had been laid off and didn't have the money to buy everyone Christmas gifts.  I bought some of the same brand kits my Grandmother had and began making ornaments.  It came so easily to me, seemed so natural.  My family loved them. The next year, I bought those same brand kits for stockings that my Grandma had.  My sister had gotten married that year and was expecting her first child.  So I made stockings for my new nephew and my brother-in-law, to go with the original that Grandma had sewn my sister nearly 30 years before.  Then I thought, why can't I make my own designs, my own patterns and sew those.  So that's what I began doing.  Everything is sewn by hand and all of my pieces are felt and embroidery floss only...well, with a little poly-fill.  I created a Dr. Seuss character mobile for my nephew, pillows for a friend's daughter and more.  When that third Christmas rolled around I decided to carry on her tradition.  I created a pattern for Frosty the Snowman, just for my nephew, and sewed his name and the year on it.  I do it for those special kids in my life, and will continue to do it as long as I can.  Maybe one day for their children.  It's one thing that makes me feel close to my Grandmother.  Like she is sitting there next to me again, on the "divan" only this time, she's watching me sew and create.

This is why I sew.

Frosty the Snowman, 2011

Charlie Brown's Tree, 2012

Charlie Brown, 2012

Santa from Rudolph, 2012