Saturday, November 7, 2009

weaving in my blood?

I received a " my mom loves me " package from my mama in Germany and with all the goodies she send me a stash of cotton kitchen towels.


At closer inspection they did not look store bought so i got on the phone and called my mom to find out where she got them.
And here is the story:
apparently those towels are about 50-55 years old and hand woven by her mom!
I didn't know my grandma was a weaver! I knew she was a seamstress making clothes for the wealthy people during and after the war. Looks like she also wove a lot. My grandma passed away 15 years ago and my mom told me when they cleaned out the house she had a big floor loom with lots of heddles( my mom thinks at least 8-12) and a bigger (she thinks about a at least 40 inch ) table loom.
I was afraid to ask what they did with it but asked anyway:
i shouldn't have :( , i now will forever have the picture of my dad hacking the looms to bits and burning them in the back yard in my head!!
What a crying shame! those looms where at least 50-60 years old.
The towels are woven with sewing thread thin yarn. Some of them have a very tiny waffle weave pattern ,some are plain weave.

I will have nightmares about this for a while.
But at least i got a little more insight of my love for fiber arts.









2 comments:

Lynnette said...

How lovely to have something that your Grandmother wove; and such lovely weaving too!
It's quite wonderful that your Mother was able to save them for all these years.

Mary said...

I had the exact same reaction, when I found out 9 years after I began weaving, that my grandmother's mother and her mother were both weavers in Croatia! I thought I was the only one in my entire family that did anything fibery. It might be DNA... who knows?