Treasure Excavated

I’ve been working very hard sorting and moving my fabric stash to new, larger cupboards. My reward for digging deep was finding this marvelous appliquéd and embroidered parrot piece made by Mary M. Davidson in the 1980s. Mary lived in Plymouth, Massachusetts. She taught stitching and wrote a book called Plimoth Colony Samplers.

I purchased the piece in 1999 on eBay from a woman named Kara who found it in Mary’s house. She gave me some background so I have a good provenance on the work. Kara said, “Mary Davidson was the stitcher, she lived next door to my parents in Plymouth… She taught classes at the Plimoth Plantation, wrote a book… and was a very well known authority on needlework. She was a neat lady, very independent… drove across the country in a convertible with girlfriends in the 1920! She died in 1987 and left her house and belongings to my parents. She saved everything, and when my sister bought her house from my parents we started going through all her things – boy is that a big job!”
You can click on the picture to see the stitches even better.

My new cupboards are filled now. Going from 28,168 cubic inches (16.3 cubic feet) to 48,372 cubic inches (28 cubic feet) was well worth the effort. I still have lots of room for more stash.

Remember the “before picture” with everything tumbling out of the old space and no room for little Gem?