Mum - A crafty lady

[{"id":1,"type":"text","position":0,"block_data":{"block_content":"Mum was always a crafty person! Not because she was sneaky, but because she loved to make things – a skill she passed down to both her daughters.\nIn the beginning, she focussed on knitting and sewing; two things very necessary when bringing up a family on a budget. She used to make outfits for my sister and me, usually matching ones, when we were younger. She would also knit, not just for us but for my dolls as well. I still have the little dresses she made for my Tiny Tears. When I started nursing, I found a pattern for a wonderful jumper with a tiger’s face on it. (I adore tigers.) After much begging, she agreed to make it for me, and it was something I cherished until I shrank it in a dryer when I put it in by accident, not realising what it would do to the wool. It had been so difficult and fiddly that she refused to make me another one.\nShe also made tapestries and cross stitch pictures which were hung on the wall with pride. When she moved into Stanwell Care Home, we made sure she was surrounded by her lovely creations. To the end, she could recognise her name in the bottom right corner of each piece.\nFor quite a while, she would also make cakes and decorate them with flowers and other creations. She kept an album of her best work and inspired me to have a go myself. I never did get the hang of the fiddly flowers, though.\nAfter joining the WI her crafting talents exploded and she tried her hand at almost everything. She discovered that she could draw and paint, create paper mache sculptures, make boxes and flowers out of paper, create mosaics and cards of all kinds. Over the years, she tried her hand at calligraphy, crochet, flower arranging, decoupage, quilling, rag rungs and quilting, but the main love of hers in the latter years was Pergamano.\nFor those that don’t know, Parchment craft, also known as Pergamano, is the art of embellishing and decorating parchment paper by using techniques such as embossing, perforating, stippling, cutting and colouring. She had the dining room table covered with her tools and would sit for hours creating the most exquisite things. Most of them ended up on cards. Every year we would be keen to see what she had made for us on birthday’s and Christmas, and I kept every one. Sometimes she would break out from cards and come up with Christmas decorations, boxes and even a Christmas Tree for the table. I still have mine safely stored in the attic.\nThanks to her love of creating things, we have all been able to keep something of hers to cherish and remember her by.\n"}}]