dia de los muertos

In honor of Dia De Los Muertos, I am sharing photographs from my mother's funeral from 2019. 
We put my tulip quilt on her casket and a bouquet of tulips.
The casket was from Trappist Caskets, made in Iowa. They are wonderful to work with and it was the beautiful, simple casket that our mother asked for.
At the cemetery we placed dirt from the farm where she grew up on the casket.
And we had her buried with a thimble on her finger.

Remembering her today with love, and with love for my sisters with whom  thoughtful decisions were made.

a new year, a new alphabet

I've been working on this for a couple weeks. It will be a longer term project as spring semester course planning is taking precedence. 
I am using shirtings for the backgrounds and indigo, cadet, and royal blues for the letters; reds and madders for the sashings. I am using up some precious small pieces of Japanese fabrics from a trip there in 1989. It will be a medallion quilt so I will design it as I go.

I jokingly told a friend that instead of numbering my alphabet quilts, I should letter them as getting to 26 might be happening. This is number 6, or F.

The letters are adapted from the Primitive Gatherings Mini Alphabet by Lisa Bongean. I again used Doug Leko's folded corners tool (the small one) and Bonnie K Hunter's Essential Triangle tool to make my construction adaptations work. 

Happy New Year! Another year of uncertainty, but another year of hope.
One of my mother's expressions of wisdom, in times of uncertainty of her health, was telling my sisters and me, "Keep making plans". She did not want us to hold off on anything in anticipation of her condition changing. 
In 2022 I'll be over here in Chicago, making plans.

birthday

Today would have been our mother's 90th birthday. She was a joyful, creative woman, full of grace.
Photograph of Henny and her camera at age 15.

mom's quilts

My sisters and I gathered in May to do paperwork and distribute our mother's possessions. We had tea using her teacups.
Chairs and equipment went to elderly relatives. Clothes went to a memory care patient of a granddaughter. 

Photographs are a minefield of emotions we deferred for another time.

The quilts went into several piles--for each of us and for our children and grandchildren. There were a few that mom made herself; most were made by me.

We chose one I made for mom to give her caregiver  Gwen who was a cheerful visitor to our mother every evening. 

We also pulled one patriotic one I had made for my father to go to our friend Hugo who became a US citizen this spring. Our country is better with him.

I wrote a friend, also a nurse, who was asking how I was doing:
"For years I have been telling my hospice families that our archetypes of Father=Protection and Mother=Life go far beyond our love of the person. Living that now. I can let mom go. I cannot let go of needing a mother."

sewing with fabric from my mother

A quiet day. The first Mother's Day since our mother's death.
Nice commemorations from our children. Henrietta had nine pretty incredible grandchildren.
Tonight I sewed a bit and used the butterfly fabric from my mother's scraps. She made summer dresses for us from it.

Thanksgiving 2018

Easter

This is our first Easter without our mother.
I am sharing photographs from her funeral. We used the tulip quilt I made for my parents' 60th anniversary on the casket and had a bouquet of tulips on top.
We had her buried with a thimble on her finger.

I want to acknowledge the wonderful help we had from Trappist Caskets, made by monks at the New Melleray Abbey in eastern Iowa. They sell to us Protestants too!
My mother wanted a simple casket which is surprisingly difficult to get through traditional means with funeral homes.
We chose the simple rectangle style directly from the Abbey, which shipped it quickly. It was beautiful, reasonable, and respectful.
https://trappistcaskets.com/

35 years

So glad to celebrate 35 years together.

With sadness this year with my mother's death.

Henrietta Scholten Dykstra 1929-2019

Pictured sewing my wedding dress 35 years ago this week.

reunion!

Our Scholten family has had reunions periodically over the years. Last week we met at my sister Beth's house.

My mom found this photo of the first Scholten reunion, organized in 1915 by my great-grandfather Jan Scholten who came to America as a homesteader in 1870. Over 150 attended!
It pictures the young people who helped set it up--my three great-aunts, Hattie and Jo on the left and Beth on the right, and my grandfather Jan is somewhere in the back row. Note the flag of the Netherlands along side the American flag.

I took along a stack of quilts to give to my cousins.

Vern loved the turkeys

Lorelei chose a sampler

Neil came on his Harley Davidson so this Dragon Teeth was just the right size to fit into his pack

Mary gets two! 

Erica and Rachel chose some nice ones

I like this one that Helen selected

My brothers-in-law made some birdhouses for the cousins using license plates from my late brother Lee's collections.

round-robins and reunions and rhubarb dessert

Rhubarb time bring memories of my mom's rhubarb dessert. We loved it. We never tired of it. It was so sad when the rhubarb bolted and we had to wait another year to have it again. It was rather recently when I discovered you could buy rhubarb, I thought it was only available in your own yards.
This dessert was a regular item mom would bring to pot lucks.

Mom received the recipe for her dessert from a friend at the annual Company K picnic. This was a reunion held at Terrace Park in Sioux Falls by the families of  men who were called up to the draft  and sent to serve from Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota in 1952. They were Company K at army boot camp. For decades we would gather for this.

Another army related group we had reunions with was a group that had gathered at the DeHamer home in South Carolina near Fort Jackson in 1952/53. Mr. and Mrs. DeHamer were Dutch-American transplants from Michigan who at church invited service members and spouses to come to their home on Sunday afternoons to eat and relax. Most who took them up on this were other Dutch-Americans, because, well, that is what we do.
This group would have reunions every 3 years and has (yes, continues to this day for 66 years) a round-robin letter. It is like a group-chat in letter form.  It arrived at my mother's when I was there last week.

A third reunion we had was annually with a group of my mother's childhood friends. They have been so for over 80 years and also have a round-robin letter.

I love these connections my parents made that continue for decades.

Round-robin letters

Rhubarb Dessert 

(adapted and annotated, because I cannot leave well enough alone)

Crust (use food processor, metal blade)

1 cup cold butter, cut into cubes

2 cups flour

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

Pulse til coarse, press into ungreased glass 9 by 13 pan, bake 350 degrees for 25 minutes

Filling (use mixer, paddle)

7 egg yolks

1 cup whole milk

1/2 cup flour

2 1/2 cups sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

Pour over 5-6 cups of chopped rhubarb on top of crust, bake 1 hour

Meringue (use mixer, whisk)

7 egg whites beaten stiff

slowly add mixture of 6 Tablespoons sugar and 2 Tablespoons corn starch

Spread evenly and bake til brown, about 12-15 minutes.

Tastes best at room temperature, but we usually start on it while it is still hot.

Ella and her daughters

My grandmother, Ella with her daughters, Henny, Grada, Jeanette, Betty
1946
Boyden, Iowa

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!
Eve and Mom, the Scrabble Queen.

grandma great and charlie

Spending a few days with my mother. We enjoyed a visit from my grand-nephew tonight!
My mom is called "grandma great" by this generation.

In the background hangs my version of the Seeing Stars quilt by Turning Twenty.
http://www.turningtwenty.com/store-detail.php?ID=2762

visiting my quilts: party like it's 1999...

I had a quick visit with mom this week. She asked we hang this quilt.
I made it in 1999 using scraps from mom's and from her mother's sewing.
The pattern was in an early Fons and Porter magazine.
Beth uses waste triangles to make a legend of the origin of each fabric.

peripatetic quilts

My sisters and I have a deal.
If any of us sees something from home in one of the other's house that she wants, she can ask for it.
It doesn't mean you have to give it to her, but most often that happens.
You can always ask for it back later!

This is one of a pair of quilts we had on our beds growing up, pieced by our mom of her and her mother's sewing scraps, and quilted by our great-aunt Jen.
Mom enjoyed looking at the fabrics today and telling the history of them.
The quilts had wonderful ball-fringe that over time we pulled off and threw at each other.

Mom gave one to Beth and one to me a few years ago.
Because Andy and I are preparing to move, I offered mine to Beth so the quilts could be reunited.
Janna then asked if she could have them as she is setting up bunk beds for her granddaughters to use.
So, soon off to Wisconsin so Great-aunt Jen's great-great-great nieces can sleep under them!

Janna said she may sew on new ball-fringe.
If history repeats itself, there soon will be more late-night ball fights.

summer about 1936

My mother on the left with her siblings and cousins.

When you are thinking of throwing away the less than perfect photos, think how precious they may be 80 year later.

chickens--a quilt for Janna

Made from the 12 inch chicken block found in Farm Girl Vintage by Lori Holt of Bee in My Bonnet book.

The back has actual chicken feed sacks, saved by my mother. I had to work around the holes left by the chain stitched closing. There are a few stains here and there, but that adds to the story!

Janna was my egg gathering partner. We were both terrified of the chickens. She would hit the outside of the nest boxes with a stick to shoo out the chickens so I could get to the eggs. I thought she was so brave!

My mother's sister recently moved to a nursing home and many of her photographs came to Mom who found this one of her mother, my Grandma Ella Scholten, with her chickens.