Margo lost her older brother Joe this week

Joseph Michael Takacs was born in March 1926 in Hungary and died peacefully in his sleep this Monday in Windsor Ontario, after suffering a stroke two weeks earlier.

Joe loved to golf almost more than breathing and we are all very glad to know that almost the last thing he did before his stroke was to play a really great round of golf !

Margo made one of her famous hankie quilts out of a hankie of Joe's, received by him as a recruit in the Army in WWII (today he'd get a t-shirt !) as a memento of his time at this particular boot camp.

I always loved that story and that is what I first thought of, when I heard that Uncle Joe had passed.

Margo's husband Rowland is down in Windsor now to be at Joe's celebration of life at his favourite golf club, where he (and his wife Paula and their 4 kids) spent 47 happy years---- and where he played that last round of golf ...

The hanky quilt mom never got to make

My mother said after publishing her book on hankies that she wouldn't do another hanky quilt - but she did.

She knew all about about my forthcoming penicillin book.

 I had told her how that during Operation Manna and Operation Chowhound in late April -  early May 1945, new Amsterdam-made (Pfizer) penicillin was supposedly dropped (unofficially) to the dying Dutch in old Amsterdam.

This story has been widely doubted by most historians, because the Allied-German Truce rules were that only food parcels were to be dropped and quite literally dropped - dropped without a parachute.

This was so that the German occupiers would not mistake them for an incoming paratrooper invasion force.

Often even heavily built food parcels in strong tin cans broke up on impact, so historians asked how on earth could penicillin survive in its normal delicate glass vials?

I had always believed it could have survived ---- if it had been emptied out into a tiny tin screw-topped bottle and wrapped inside a lot of strong padding.

What I had missed, while my mother was still alive, was the very sensible explanation that many, many bomber crews gave for how the Dutch children below got the airmen's personal sweets rations without the candy breaking up.

The airmen took their own personal - and omnipresent - hankies and made them into mini parachutes to gently lower the candies to the ground !

This is almost certainly how the widely reported 'airborne vial of penicillin' (later picked up by a Dutch doctor) arrived.

The Dutch in western (urban) Netherlands were not just 'starving' by that point in the war - they were well past that - the very old, very young and the very weak were now dying by the thousands every week.

Any normally minor infection could spell death because of their weakened state.

Food helped their recovery, but to prevent death in the short term, if sulfa didn't work, only penicillin could save them.

Presumably Dawson-hearted medical personnel at the Allied airforce bases realized this, even if their commanding generals didn't, and stole government issue penicillin to give (unofficially) to the Dutch.

Dr Dawson's physical body had died 24 hours before the first plane, the Canadian-crewed BAD PENNY, took off on this life-saving Manna mission.

 But his spirit definitely lived on and I am sure it was aboard those Manna planes - and taking a ride down on those little hanky parachutes !

Since my mom isn't here to make this hanky story quilt, maybe I will have to....

Rowland will have his first solo art show in Seaforth

Margo Takacs Marshall's husband, Dr Rowland C Marshall, will be exhibiting some of his many paintings - including one dating back to 1948 ! - at the Seaforth Community Hall Jan 7th to the 28th.

The Opening for his solo exhibit "SPACE AND PLACE" is this Sunday,  Jan 9th 2011.

A e-book catalogue of the exhibit  is being planned.

The Seaforth Community Hall, across Highway 207 from Margo's home, was where she would go to make her quilts, among a group of quilters who regularly meet there.

Seaforth is along the 207 Highway, just past Lawrencetown beach,Three Fathom Harbour and before Chezzetcook - a wonderful winter's day Sunday Drive.

This because unlike most of Nova Scotia's so called 'ocean highways', the 207 actually does run along side of the wide open ocean - particularly at Seaforth.

Which is exactly why Margo and Rowland decided to settle there in 1955....

OneHankyQuilter sails off with Captain Hornblower

Margo Takacs Marshall always wanted some of her ashes to end up on the ocean.

Born in landlocked Hungary, she fell in love with the big blue ocean when she read the very first book in the Captain Hornblower series in the late 1930s , as a small child.

She always delighted in telling the story of the school librarian not believing that such a young (girl) reader, with English as her second language to boot, could possibly read such an adult (and male-oriented) book so quickly.

She was marched off to her teachers, before all concerned agreed she could and had read the Hornblower book and wanted more books of adventures on the sea.

When she and her husband Rowland rounded a corner, on a 1955 trip out into the country from their home at the edge of the town of Dartmouth, and saw the open ocean 10 feet from Highway 207 in  the community of Seaforth ,they instantly fell in love with that view.

They resolved this is where they wanted to live and to die.

So, on a wild and windy day in November, some of Margo's ashes were sent off into that ocean she loved so much.

The peak of high tide on Wednesday November 24th 2010 was 9:30 AM - the retreating tide, as that water fell down to its lowest point, would hopefully take the boat containing some of her ashes far out to sea.

But late Tuesday afternoon it began to rain and pick up in wind - and it got worse and worse throughout the night.

Thankfully just before dawn the rain stopped and the wind calmed a bit.

Family members and friends - her husband Rowland, son Michael, granddaughter Rachel,co-mother-in-law Bev Leal, daughter-in-law Rebecca and family friends Leslie Savoy and a cat called ORANGE gathered at the very very end of Seaforth's Causeway Road - where land meets open ocean.

A ceremony was held, starting with the reading of Psalm 23, prayers, and ending in the singing of the hymn Amazing Grace.

Pictures were taken of the group and the boat bearing Margo's ashes.

It had a rose from Margo's garden - she loved her garden like a child - and a sail of her quilting material - she loved her quilts like her children.

She also loved animals - cats in particular - and it was very nice for Orange to hang about the fringes, uninvited but welcome.

Leslie arrived to take some more pictures - for Facebook and for distant friends and relatives.

As the boat drifted off in the waves and the wind, as a final gesture ,we all threw in red (Margo's favorite color) carnations on behalf of relatives who could only be there in spirit....

If you click on any picture it gets big enough to see all the details - the movie also needs a click to start.

the last words MARGO wrote were about quilting

Margo Takacs Marshall 1928-2010

My mom, Margo Takacs Marshall, passed away a month ago, around 1 pm, September 19th 2010.

She began feeling she might have had a mini-stroke two months earlier on July 12th.

Then at 1 pm, September 12th, two months later, she distinctly felt unwell and told my father " I think I have had (a full) stroke".

 Then she went off to the hospital in an ambulance and died exactly a week later.

Mom had kept a diary on yearly calendars, as many women do, for dozens of years.

Recently, I noticed that her very last entry she ever got to write was this :

"Quilting" ( her regular weekly quilting session with others at the rural community hall across the road) - and then in a much worse handwriting "very unwell".

Mom noticed the effects of her ongoing stroke, not when she felt very unwell - something she often was for the last 50 years of her life, but only when her writing got noticeably bad.

By the time I first saw my mom,the morning of the next day, she opened one eye (unseeing) and momentarily stared at the direction of my voice - just that once during the whole week, just that first time.

Most of the family did not even get that brief response.

So I feel that for me and most of my family, we weren't really there when mom started having her stroke and was still lucid.

 This handwritten note on her diary is the last we 'saw' of the mom we all knew, before she lapsed into a total stupor.

It is a small bit of writing but very precious to me.

And how appropriate that the last thing mom ever wrote was about quilting - for the last 40 years she had defined herself first and foremost, not as a mother or spouse or gardener but rather as a quilter .

 And it was as a 'quilter' that Margo died in harness, doing what she loved most....

"I'm Still Here": Quilting together a wonderful life despite severe chronic illnesses

I am Margo Takacs Marshall's oldest child and a co- author of this blog with her.

I am planning a PDF Ebook of lots of color photos of Mom's non-hankie quilts, together with comments on each from her family and friends.

The title will be as above.

Here's the story behind that choice for a title.

In 1962, when Mom was 34, she was told by her three doctors that she's never live beyond 35.

When she was 70, that is twice 35 (35x2=70), she had a birthday celebration.

During it, Mom recounted that at 70, ie twice 35,  her three doctors, not much older than her, were " all gone" , but she added, "I'm still here !"

Her new doctors thought she would be dead on Monday,then on Tuesday then on Wednesday -- after that they gave up.

Sunday AM, she was "still here" .

Without her normally heavy meds, her heart, lungs and kidneys were still going strong, even after a "massive, massive stroke" destroyed half her brain.

After a lifetime of heart and kidney disease, she was still going strong.

During that almost half century of extra life, Mom was never really free of pain or disability for very long, but she carved out time to raise a family of five, do much volunteer work, garden, bird watch, animal-save, read,read read - and quilt.

At the age of 80, she became an author of an unique approach to featuring individual hankies as the centre piece of a medallion quilt, each quilt and hanky telling a story.

This afternoon, Mom's body finally went south but her spirit, and her quilts live on - are "still here" .....

Margo Oct 15 1928 -Sept 19 2010

Hannah Hauxwell's story inspiring to all women

I am fascinated by the story of Hannah Hauxwell, the women from the High Fell country in North Yorkshire on the border with Durham (the High Pennines) ,who struggled to operate a farm by herself with no money, running water or electricity.

Like my daughter in law, she got her water with a bucket from a stream -first breaking the ice cover in the winter, as the weather up there ( in northern Britain and well above sea level) was like a winter in rural Nova Scotia.

For years she struggled on in dire poverty and all alone, after her parents and uncle died.

I saw the TV documentaries on Hannah back in the 1970s ("Too Long a Winter") and now I want to read all the new books on her - and maybe own the new DVD on her life.

By the by, she is a little bit older than me and still alive and spry - living more comfortable in a small village (Cotherstone) near her farm (Low Birk Hatt Farm) - of which part has become an international wildlife site.

My son, himself an avid blogger, wants me to do a quilt about Hannah Hauxwell ... and I just might !

AVA JANE a marvelous young blogger

I do not blog as much as my son, Michael ( see his new blog

 " MO goes PO") but I did read and enjoy the work of the young cub reporter AVA JANE writing for the blog, 

"EVERGREEN NOVA SCOTIA").

She reads well, spells well - and clearly, writes well !

Two Aussie Sisters hope to revive HANKIES' heyday !

Here's a uplifting HANKY story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Barbara Cloud:

"Can Australian sisters bring back hanky's heyday?"

Jennifer Moran from Brisbane and Angela Galgut from Sydney, wrote to Barbara after they spotted one of her columns about how important hankies once were to ladies, rather like white gloves were once essential nightwear.

I can recall how important hankies once were to both men and women - and by men I mean boys from about 14 upwards, who once loved to wear sports jackets - complete with highly visible hanky.

People routinely gave each other hankies - the conscripts at my brother's WWII basic training army camp all got hankies, named after the camp, as a keepsake of their hard slug there.

Hardly sissy stuff - and hankies were part of it!

I will write more on this soon - off to play cards with my daughter-in-law, after she gave me a new deck of cards with safety tips for seniors on each card.....

Rowland warns us of a "Warming Earth"

My husband, Rowland, is a visual artist and poet.

I do quilts - he paints - in acrylics mostly - and pulls prints - and even creates sculpture.

He often attaches short poems to his art and makes them into

handmade and bound 'artistbooks'.

His latest is called "Warming Earth" and is on his virtual art studio site, " Rowland's Seaforth Art Studio ".

My son, Michael, posted the texts and images for Rowland on the site.

Michael made the pictures interestingly different than the originals and much better than what Staples made of them, when they made photographic prints of them.

I think the original art was the best by far, but they are certainly different on the web site - almost glow in the dark coloring...

But go see for yourself.

New images of my hanky quilts added to my website

I have added about twenty high quality images of my hanky quilts to my website, OneHankyQuiltmaking.

Enjoy !

You say Hanky, I say Hankie, or Handkerchief or Handkerchef and on and on

A little history about how the humble hanky/hankie/handkerchief came to be so named.

(And we're only dealing with its many names in English - it gets even more complicated once other languages get in the mix !)

In French, a head scarf/band/veil was called a couvre-chef (head coverer).

This became, in English, a kerchief or kerchef - sometimes alternatively called a bandanna , bandana or even a do-rag.

If used to cover the neck, it became a neckerchief/neckerchef.

Similarly, if about the same size and of the same sort of material, but held in the hand instead of being fastened about the head or neck, it became a handkerchief or handkerchef.

This was later shortened to hanky or hankie.

Finally this word more or less disappeared in common usage in North America, replace by tissue or Kleenex - a trademarked brand name in the process of becoming a generic name for this type of material.

Off topic, but interesting indeed is the fact that this little square of cloth is one of the few means of decoration that even the most macho of men would permit for themselves - a touch of bright color around the necks of cowboys, in the shirt or suit upper pockets of business tycoons or around the heads of gang members in the 'Hoods....

My website is going live

My website,Margo Marshall,Maker Of "One Hanky Quilts", is beginning to come together !

Pat Long Gardner inspired 'One Hanky Quiltmaking'

Pat Long Gardner, the American quilter, first put out her pioneering book on 'one hanky quilts', titled simply (and a bit misleadingly), HANDKERCHIEF QUILTS, way back in 1993.

But I didn't discover her book (and her wonderful idea) until 1997, while browsing the stacks in my local public library.

Few quilters can keep up with all the beautiful quilting books coming out, under their own steam.

Fewer of us can afford to buy them all, in any case.

And of course it is a rare bookstore that will stock them all.

Thank goodness that librarians in public libraries keep an eye out for the quilt book that is truly different and add them to their public collection.

(Though, in this case,perhaps someone saw a review of this book in a quilting magazine and asked them to purchase it.

Most librarians are open to suggestions from knowledgeably and regular library patrons.

Pat's book was a revelation to me because hanky quilts aren't that rare but I had never seen or heard of a quilt only using one hanky.

Pat used her single hanky to become the central motif  in a traditional medallion-type quilt.

(Her one hanky quilts were about 40 by 40 inches, mine are 20 by 20 inches - seems a small difference but her quilts actually take four times as much material and quilting tome to complete !)  

I quickly notice that Pat did not cut up the hanky to make the quilt - something that usually happens whenever we quilters seize upon a beautiful piece of fabric. 

Nor did she fold up the hanky, to make another shape like a butterfly, and thus diminish the original artist's design and art.

(If you 'double click' on the image above, (#6 in my series of one hanky quilts and entitled "Whole Cloth Banadanna Quilt" , you will see that even the tiniest of wording printed out at the edge of the bandanna/hanky is still available for the viewer to read.

I think it adds greatly to the charm of this quilt that you can learn that it was "crafted with pride" in "India" out of "100% cotton" by "Emanuel Geraldo"!)

Pat did not emphasize these advantages to her technique but they inspired me to take her ideas much further along this path she had pioneered, if unwittingly.

Because, to me, here was a way to re-use , re-value and yes, recycle, two dimensional cloth heirlooms and mementos- without diminishing them in the process .

Here was a way to take them out that back closet or bottom drawer and displayed them in all their original two dimensional glory.

By the second or third 'one hanky quilt', I realized that the border around that central motif and the label on the back (and you do put a label on all your quilts, don't you?) gave me room to tell people why this hanky meant so much to me or what story that hanky seemed to want me to tell about it. 

More about Pat in a later blog post - don't forget you can see all 57 of my 'one hanky quilts' , lovingly photographed in rich full colour by Peter Barss in my book "One Handkerchief Makes a Small Quilt" ...

Googling the phrase "One Hanky Quilt"

Small quilts that use one hanky as the central motif of a medallion style quilt are being made ,all the time, all around the world.

However.

They are usually done as one-offs, not as part of an extended series, so the quilter who made them can't really stretch out to show some of the fun you can have with whatever hankies you have on hand.

Whenever I Google the phrase 'one hanky quilt' I usually only get my site or blog.

"One Hanky quilts' are definitely being made but not usually being described with such a succinct term.

But I recently came across a blog post from a fellow quilter who mentioned she couldn't go to bed because she was working on a 'one hanky quilt'.

Made my day !

Heirlooms or Collectibles too Precious or too Nice to Cut up

Quilters generally take a beautiful piece of cloth.... AND CUT IT UP !

Their intention is too make something even more beautiful out of it, of course.

 TWO DIMENSIONAL CLOTH COLLECTIBLES

But what if your beautiful cloth item is already perfect as is ?

Or because it belonged to your mother who treasured it as it was, is too precious to cut up?

I don't mean a shirt or a skirt, etc obviously - those don't lie flat enough for quilting until cut up.

But there are lots of  other two dimensional cloth heirlooms or collectibles.

Hankies come to mind (naturally !) but we can add lots of others that are 'designed' to be beautiful as they are, but are thin enough and small enough to be the start of a wonderful quilt.

A place mat may be small and beautiful but is too thick to use in a quilt.

But tea tray cloths, doilies, kerchiefs,neckerchiefs, bandanas, scarves, luncheon napkins, tea towels, table top 

runners - they all fit the bill.

You can think of others.

My daughter-in-law Rebecca mentions those cloth wall hangings we all buy on vacation, perhaps made out of Belfast linen and decorated with some images of Northern Ireland , bought on a trip to the Emerald Isle.

They all can be the centerpiece of a medallion quilt - around them you can create a border that complements them 

and perhaps even tells a story of what that item meant to you or your mother.

When I say I love my children - I mean my animal children as well - many have gone before me , but live on in my quilts ! Here is an example of what I mean....

Hankies become Butterflies become Quilts

A quilter who goes by the name of StudioBeth loves to fold hankies till they are shaped like butterflies and then she appliques them to her quilt design.

She reports it is all rather like making paper origami and gives some hints on design considerations.

She has a wonderful example made by a woman named Pauline G, who won a prize for it at her county fair in 2003.

Pauline didn't get her hankies from her sainted old grandmother, as the quilting cliche usually goes - she had to go out and buy brand new ones, but it still looks wonderful !

Cloud Flowers - my latest quilt. Surprisingly, its a one hanky quilt !

I know I said I would probably not do any more 'one hanky quiltmaking' after publishing my book on the subject.

I have a developing website on the subject of one hanky quiltmaking.

But a family friend, a latter day flower child, gave me such a beautiful ,flower-oriented, highly unusual hanky I couldn't resist.

The material of the hanky was wonderful to work with - a soft linen.  In keeping with the theme, I added a tied-dyed backing to this quilt.

The hanky was made up of flowers floating as if in the sky.

The fact that the friend, Amy Honey , is herself a young 'flower child' in many ways, made the making of this 20"x 20" quilt a delight.

My son, Michael, and his better half, Rebecca, helped name this quilt.