I have a large container of these beautiful scraps of embroidery -- all done by the maternal fore-women of my family. Sometimes the original finished piece had served long enough, and rather than ditch the whole cloth or garment, all the beautiful hand done embellishments were carefully cut and stored, hopefully to find new life in other ways -- a length of filet crochet as a new edging on a pillow case, a sweet patch like this to decorate a crazy quilt, a bit of handmade lace to adorn the cuffs of a new blouse.
**I am adding in this photo I took after we moved to Boulder, Colorado. Tucson has no reference for the rose my great grandmothers on the plains embroidered -- the small, wild pink rose that hunkered between the strands of tall grass. But when I saw this beauty while walking through the fields below the Flat Irons on the Front Range, I felt that spark of recognition: these flowers live here.
Midori Snyder is the author of nine books for children and adults, published in English, French, Dutch, and Italian. She won the Mythopoeic Award for The Innamorati, a novel inspired by early Roman myth and the Italian "Commedia dell'Arte" tradition....
