C2—Lancaster Fanning, Saturday, June 13,1981
Homemaker 9 s
BYJOYCE BUPP
Staff Correspondent
A paralyzed right arm led June
0. Adams into creating a
needlework masterpiece based on
the American dairy farm heritage.
June and her husband Woody are
part of the Adams Brothers dairy
operation, located in a rolling
valley about ten miles south of
histone Harper’s Feny, West
Virginia. The Adams families milk
about a hundred cows and farm
several hundred acres of upper
Shenandoah Valley crop ground.
“I love to create; I love a
challenge,” says June, whose
enthusiasm for crafts is un
bounded. And this talented farm
wife not only enjoys experimenting
with traditional crafts, she creates
her own original ones.
But two years ago, an agonizing
pain in her right shoulder began
numbing the nerves in the hand
that created endlessly. Doctors
discovered two slipped vertebrae
discs in the very critical neck area,
requiring immediate and
somewhat dangerous surgery.
June woke in the hospital’s
recovery room to leam that a
!R (omesiead
c H/oifis
June Adams holds a dimunitive, dainty basket of burlap,
filled with tiny dried flowers. The basket is popular at craft
shows, eagerly purchased by collectors of miniatures.
from dairy farming
problem had occurred during the
delicate surgery, leaving her with
a paralyzed right arm.
“Go home and do your thing,”
her doctor eventually ordered as
therapy, hoping to restore some
movement and feeling to the limb.
June’s “thing” relied largely on
the use of that right hand.
Lying on the living room couch -
after years of boundless interest in
crafts, sewing her own and her
daughter’s clothing, helping on the
farm, 4-H activities and sports
activities like skiing and roller
skating - Tune made up her mind
that sorr.ei. iw she would regain her
physical ability to create things.
For June, working the hand and
fingers, stretching the muscles,
and regaining the strength and
feeling, centered on theraputic use
of common things like knitting
needles, and hours of shaping and
kneading of the soft, pliable toy
clay called Silly Putty.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly,
the numbness began to recede and
a tingling sensation crept into June
Adams creative fingers.
And it was about that time that
craft
A loving tribute to the dairy heritage of Jr
children was what June Adams stitched into a
contest sampler. Included in the intricate
needle designs are her three children, a straw
hatted farmer with his dog, and farm symbols
like the barn, silos, tractor, haystack, Holstein
cows, a barn cat in each corner and the large
Calico roses, arranged in a basket, are part of one of June
Adams latest floral creations. The bouquet of tulips, cro
cheted in granny squares, was her entry in a woman’s mag
azine craft contest.
ideas stem
4-H symbol for the organization that played a
large part of the Adams' family life. June’s
sampler now hangs in the arts and crafts
display in the Museum of Art at Birmingham,
Alabama. Pictured with her are Debbie and
David.
she casually flipped through* an
issue of the Progressive Farmer
Magazine and spotted an article on
the “Southern Country Living
Heritage Sampler Contest. ”
Contests, especially those that
call for the creation of some craft,
are an irresistible challenge to
June.
“Don’t ever get started entering
contests,” she laments with mock
horror.
Traditional samplers, on which
the contest idea was based, were
designed by novice sewing
students to practice their skills on
various stitches and were usually
worked' in a design of familiar
letters, numbers and symbols.
June finally settled on a sampler
theme based on the dairy farm
heritage of their three grown
children, Frank, Debbie and
David.
After carefully laying out the
design on graph paper, June
painstakingly began transferring
and working the counted-cross
stitch motif on a 14-fay-20 inch piece
of sampler embroidery fabric.
She cross-stitched, nearly non
stop, for three months, the feeling
in her hands gradually returning
as the colorful farm theme began
to take form in the cloth.
When the sampler was finally
finished, June’s use of the popular
dairy slogan, “Milk Drinkers
Make Better Lovers” set the
theme for a whimsical look at
dairy farm life.
The work “dairy,” stitched 26
times around the outside, forms a
self-frame for the farm life
symbols set against an intricate
patchwork sky in blues, and the
ground in greens.
Prominent in the finished
sampler are the Adams children
and aJarge 4-H symbol, since that
rural youth program played such a
vital role in the children’s earlier
lives.
Other symbols include a black
and white cow, with a red barn on
the horizon, tractor inside, and
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