Make your heirlooms

By Carol Weimer
Canastota Corner

This is the time of year when you start getting out the “holiday things.” Getting a step ahead of the busy season perhaps you start washing up the good china, the turkey platter, the good silverware that might need a going over with the polishing cloth.

Some of the china was new to you when you started keeping house, and some might be hand-me-downs going back generations. These heirlooms will be passed along to the next generation.

Some of those without heirlooms are manufacturing their own and shopping garage sales for someone else’s antique items. We’ve mentioned before old time photos of ancestors are turning up on living room and den walls. Some of these ancestors belong to the family, while others have been purchased at auctions or garage sales and “claimed” as ancestors. Who would question if that was Grandfather or Uncle Ned?

How often have you gone through your own photo albums that were put together by one of your relatives, but never identified who the folks in the pictures were? Aren’t we all to blame for this? Printed snapshots are becoming extinct anyway. Now with telephones that take pictures to be viewed on your computer, you don’t need the expense of having them printed.

It’s called modern technology and it’s great.

But to those who don’t want phony photos, there are other ways of having heirlooms. You can hand-craft your own and pass them along. Quilting has become popular and almost everyone who can thread a needle can do it. There groups that meet each week to quilt. In one community there is a circle of ladies who making lap robes for elderly people in hospitals, assisted living residents and nursing homes. Some are called prayer quilt robes that are accompanied by a card with a prayer on it. What a thoughtful gesture.

The patterns of some of the quilts have been handed down from generation to generation and while the material may be new, the pattern is an heirloom. There is plenty of time if you start now to create your own quilt for Christmas gift giving to your son or daughter or favorite niece. You can also stitch one up for your bedspread. There are all kinds of calico now available to make replicas of granny’s quilt.

For the men who might want to pass along heirlooms of their own and don’t sew and are handy with carpenter tools, there are patterns of the olden toys to make complete with kits to supply wheels, and other parts to toys used by boys in the 1890s.

They are reproductions, but in 25 years they will be the beginnings of an heirloom if the gift is given to one who plays with it carefully so it can be kept to become an heirloom.

I have given wooden toys that I purchased at craft shows to my small boys that are relatives, and while they show some wear and tear that is expected, they are now 25 and 30 years old and are sitting on shelves in their bedrooms and will one day be given to their children to either play with or put on display as show pieces.