Family traditions come in many shapes, sizes and forms.
Many of our beloved traditions center around the holidays – such as baking Christmas cookies, having an Easter egg hunt or watching fireworks together on the Fourth of July. However, some traditions need no special holiday – they make magic happen all year long and can span many generations.
Recently, I was invited to take a look at a very unique hand-stitched quilt. It was started in 1936 by a woman named Ina Thompson from Greeley, Colorado. Thompson had a dream of creating a quilt depicting the official state birds and flowers of the first 48 states. (Alaska and Hawaii didn’t become states until 1959.)
She collected 48 ink transfers, one by one, from her local newspaper. She also intended to embroider each image onto – what else? – “washed, ironed and neatly folded chicken feed bags – the Depression/Dust Bowl-era muslin,” according to her daughter, Cleo Lampos.
Somehow, Thompson never did find the time to complete this awesome endeavor. It was possibly just one of a lifetime of unfulfilled dreams left behind by this hard-working woman.
Years later, Lampos would find her mom’s project still in a bag, waiting to be stitched.
When Lampos was 33, she sought advice from her mom’s sister, who was a master embroiderer. Aunt Lois advised Lampos in the art of French knotting and keeping the stitches tiny and on the blue stenciled line.
In three years, Lampos was able to complete 10 of the quilt squares. Then life got busy while Lampos worked on her master’s degree.
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“Then the bag of fabric and thread was stuffed and forgotten in the back of the closet while a crazy quilt of activities overtook my life,” Lampos said.
Several years ago, Lampos and her husband Vernon joined the Calvin Christian Reformed Church in Oak Lawn. Soon she discovered Stitchers, a group made up predominantly of women who meet at the church fellowship hall on the second Friday of each month. Members gather to share the love of their craft and typically also share a meal.
Founding member Joyce Beenes invited Lampos to join the group of 20 stitchers. The bag of unfinished embroidery once again emerged from the recesses of Lampos’ closet.
She spent the next four years sitting among the Stitchers, some seated in front of their own sewing machines while others stitched by hand or used some form of needles or hooks to knit or crochet.
As she honed her craft, Lampos also cultivated deep and lasting friendships. Marge Speelman and Jan Bos especially gave her the encouragement she needed to persevere.
During that time, Lampos found inspiration in an unlikely place. While traveling across the Rocky Mountains to visit her brother-in-law, she saw a finished version of the quilt design hanging on a huge wall at the Colorado Welcome Center.
“Every bird and flower was perfectly detailed with filled-in hues of finely sewn threads,” Lampos said, recalling the moment. “I knew what I had to do.”
She went to work researching the authentic colors and shading of each bird and flower. Her workmanship took on an excitingly different appearance to match how far she had come along, “as my personality over the 30-odd years had changed drastically from an anxious young mother to a settled ‘Glam-ma,’ ” she said.
Lampos had completed 26 squares at about the same time her 15-year-old granddaughter, Kaeley Clark, announced that she wanted to learn to sew. Clark joined Stitchers and, during her first session, she mapped out 20 of the completed quilt squares on the rug.
After arranging and rearranging them many times, she took a photo of them with her cellphone – for future reference.
Lampos knew immediately that her granddaughter was totally invested in her great-grandmother’s project.
For the next year, Clark attended the meetings and initially ran Lampos’ sewing machine to create the quilt’s border and connecting pieces. Other members were in awe of her precision and perfection, achieved at such a tender age. They often remarked that Clark was truly “fearless.”
At some point, her grandmother’s simple sewing machine stopped working. Determined to find the cause, Clark disassembled the entire machine piece by piece. To their dismay, the broken part was too expensive to replace. Lampos then bought a Brother sewing machine for Clark, one with lots of modern features.
In Lampos’ own words, “At age 16, Kaeley rose above her peers as the only one who owned a sewing machine and had pieced together a quilt.”
Clark’s artistic talent is evident in her successful scholastic career as well. She is a junior at Oak Lawn Community High School and is heavily involved in speech and theater.
In her own words, “I like to do things outside of the box,” she said.
She aspires to attend college to study art and is entering many scholarship competitions and hopes one day to become an illustrator.
For now, Clark finds comfort and satisfaction sleeping under the finished quilt that was so lovingly begun by a woman she never met but who shared her love of art and creativity.
Stitchers always welcomes new members (women and men) to join them. Membership in their church is not a requirement. The group’s mission is to foster talent, skills and legacies to the next generation.
For more information, call the Calvin Church rectory at (708) 422-0790.
Reggie Sabadosa is a freelance columnist. She can be emailed at [email protected].