I was fortunate enough to have met both of my Austrian great-grandmothers. I was also fortunate enough to have been given a box of their handmade lace by my grandmother, who knew I had a penchant for textiles.

Like many keepsake boxes are wont to do, it sat on a shelf in my studio gathering lint and dust from the myriad of other projects I was busy with over the years. Who knows why the time felt right to open it up and take a look again, but I’m so glad I did. What I found was a stunning collection of lace handiwork from a distant era.

The intricacy of these doilies left me awestruck. I kept wondering how long it took to make each one – and there were stacks of them!

There were some that matched, but mostly they felt like whimsical improvisations.

These napkins had beautiful lace edging and embroidery.

And this set of doilies had a playful dot pattern.

Many of the pieces had discolored with age, but in such a lovely way that created a subtle interplay of color when placed adjacently or layered together.

One of my goals, in revisiting these personal heritage textiles, was to explore the possibility of combining them into a larger memory piece. Like many of the materials that come to me from clients, their original function was no longer applicable. Doilies are no more part of my home decor than wearing the clothing of a deceased loved one is for many of my clients. By transforming them into the context of a newly created textile, these precious materials can be seen, felt, and enjoyed as daily reminders of someone’s presence.

And so I began arranging the lace pieces in various ways on my table, overlapping and layering edges to see what I could “build”. Normally, I would have taken scissors to the material right away, but these doilies and napkins were like little mini works unto themselves, so I used them as building blocks instead.

What began emerging were these snowflake compositions which ultimately felt like larger versions of the doilies themselves. No snowflake is exactly the same as another, just like my great-grandmothers’ lace creations.

I took some of my solid linen fabrics and started playing around with different background colors and how they affected the look of the lace laying on top. This taupe linen blended really well with the various tones and shades of the aged lace.

I ended up making a total of three large-snowflake wall-hangings, each on a different shade of linen. I did allow myself to cut the embroidered corners off the napkins to make some snowflake points.

In the box, there were also lengths of handmade lace trim which I decided made a lovely headers at the top of each piece.

The center doily of this lavender snowflake piece had some raised, tea-colored, embroidered shapes which were delightfully odd.

For this third and final snowflake piece, I used a lot of the age-colored doilies, as well as a bird-themed header.

In all three finished pieces, I chose to leave the ruffled edges of each doily free by stitching them down from further inside the circle.

Here they are hanging all together.