This week Nicky Dillerstone sent me back some old “photos”, from a community project that she did at 20-21 in Scunthorpe some years ago. We took along old family photos which Nicky printed on calico, we stitched into them and Nicky made them up into quilts to be part of an exhibition. The quilts have been dismantled, and the pieces returned to the stitchers.

The one above is of my mum and nanna, when I guess mum was about 7 or 8. Unfortunately there isn’t anybody left who can give me more details about any of the photos.

This one is mum again, aged 2 or 3, and it’s a professional, staged photo. I’m not sure if we all had to use red stitching to bring all the pieces together, but I think so.

This is a professional one of my dad aged about 4.

And this is my mum, I believe, with her paternal great grandmother and her baby cousin, or it could be the baby’s mum, mum’s auntie.

They reminded me that I have more photos printed on calico from another workshop that we did with Nicky shortly afterwards. These are not finished…… no deadline for them!

This bride is my great Auntie Vi with husband Uncle Tom, and on the right, my nanna as bridesmaid. Auntie Vi was 15 years younger than my great grandma. Somewhere, tucked away in an old exercise book, I have notes about the family history from Auntie Vi after reading “Roots” in the late 70’s; so that’s a rainy day project sometime.

My intention had been to embroider the roses and Uncle Tom’s buttonhole.

This again is Auntie Vi, looking very glamorous, which is not at all how I remember her. We usually saw her in her work clothes, gardening, in the huge garden that she managed on her own for many years after Uncle Tom died when I was quite tiny. There is one needle full of thread, but whether I can match it up with more I don’t know.

And this is a later one of her. As the vicar said of her at her funeral, that although she was no church goer she was a great character and everybody in the road knew her. Hers was the first funeral I went to that was more a celebration of her long life rather than doom and gloom. I vividly remember laughing at some tale the vicar told with tears rolling down my cheeks. Just looking at the photos of her makes me smile and brings back many happy memories.