Margaret Ellen Strother Dierkes, my mother, passed away during the first few months of my tenure at Towson. Finding a way to grieve my mother while also creating art work was a difficult prospect. My mother was an incredible sewer and craftswoman, and I avoided utilizing the tools of her trade for the first year and a half after her death. I inherited an abundance of sewing machines, pairs of scissors, hot glue guns, and boxes upon boxes of cloth and thread, but these materials were unknown to me. On one boring Sunday, I found a giant plastic bag of pre-cut quilt squares from the late 1970’s- early 1980’s. Unfamiliar with her professional sewing machines, I grabbed a needle and thread and, without a plan, began sewing the pieces together, careful not to repeat patterns. I watched our favorite show, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (a marathon was on) and pieced the squares together in a long chain. When I finally decided to count the squares, they numbered 58. My mother lost her battle to cancer when she was 58 years old. Margaret Ellen Strother was born and died in November. There are 11 bobbins to signify the 11th month. The clotheshorse at the center of the installation belonged to my grandmother and is over 120 years old. My grandmother, Jo Anne Ryan Strother, also an incredible craftswoman, passed away one year after her daughter, my mother, at the age of 90.
