I have had yet another busy week in my family story keeper role, when I wandered down ‘memory lane’ as I sorted through my linen cupboard (a chore I have been putting off for quite a while). However, I find the Australian winter an ideal time to sort through and re-assess many of my family belongings, now that I am getting older.

I began with the serviettes (or you may call them napkins) and found some of my parent’s beautiful damask linen 15″ squares, and was reminded of whitening them with lemon juice and starching them with Star Starch. We all had our own serviette ring at our family dinner table when I was a child.

Then I found several sets of placemats and matching serviettes that I had embroidered at school to place in my Hope Chest, along with over a dozen embroidered huckaback hand towels and initialled handkerchiefs – I think the Sisters of Mercy hoped we’d all enter the convent!

I came across a cache of dressing table sets (1 large oval or square cloth and 2 smaller circular cloths), tray cloths, mats to place the bread board & carving tray, smaller cloths for cake plates & sandwich trays and even crocheted covers for sauce bottles! My goodness, we did make a lot of washing and ironing for ourselves, didn’t we? Some of these I’d made before I married and others were made by my mother, sisters and family as gifts (home-sewn gifts were highly prized when I was a young lady).

Right down on the second to bottom shelves, under the sheets, were several pairs of pillow shams, which Mum had embroidered and Nan had crocheted around the edges. They were so beautiful, I have decided to place them on my bed for the first time in years, when I am reminded of both Mum and Nan daily. There were also about six pairs of embroidered pillow slips and some darling, tiny baby pillow slips & bibs which I made for my children.

The family Christening gown lies in its box, protected by tissue paper, ready for the next generation of infants in our family, along with a tiny gossamer bonnet from the mid 1850’s. I handled these treasures carefully and lying them back in their protective box reverently, aware of the 70+ tiny infants who have worn these items, hand stitched with such love and tenderness, though the subsequent generations.

What treasures lie in your linen cupboard?

Is your cupboard filled with family heirlooms, stitched carefully with love for your mother’s Glory Box? Do you have a collection of family aprons through the ages – what stories could they tell about the everyday life of the woman who wore them daily?

Don’t just discard these old remnants for an earlier age – get them out, talk to your mother and female relatives to discover the stories attached to all of these memorable pieces of your heritage.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 at 7:32 pm and is filed under Aunt Ruby Remembers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.