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Many of us have textile keepsakes handed down through our families, connecting generations, safeguarding memories in a material continuity. We keep safe these small tokens of ancestry, taking them from home to home, passing them onto the next generation as emotional touchstones of where and who we have come from. In traditional cultures, when a girl marries and goes to another village, she takes with her sewn dowry, the embroidered blessings of her family, the sewn treasure of her cultural heritage.
Read about my memory cloth....  

My grandmother, my father's mother, died before I was born. But my father kept part of a dance costume she had made for him when he was a boy: a cream brocade jacket with braided velvet cuffs. My parents always said that I had inherited my sewing skills from her. When my father died, and we had to leave the house I grew up in, I managed to salvage a cuff from that costume. And when I trace my fingers over its  rise I feel a tangible connection to my grandmother and to my father. It is a memento of family. It is evidence of a skill passed down through the generations. But, more than that, it is a sensory keepsake of belonging.