C4—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, June 13,1981
Dairy craft ideas
(Continued from Page C 2)
flanked with haystacks and a silo.
A "straw-hatted farmer, leaning on
his pitchfork, and his companion
dog, survey the scene. A careful
observer will even spot the four
barnyard cats, one tucked with
cross-stitches in each corner.
June’s sampler did not win her
one of the top prizes of cash or a
sewing machine.
Instead, it won an honorable
mention, and a truly impressive
honor for June.
“I was just so delighted with
what they chose to do with it in
stead,” June says.
The publishing firm asked if they
might purchase the sampler, and
donate it to the Birmingham,
Alabama, Museum of Art, where
the tribute to the American family
dairy farm would hang in the
collection of Arts and Crafts.
June’s children are just proud of
the sampler they inspired and the
special recognition given their
mother’s art. Because the family
was almost reluctant to part with
the sampler, though, June now
hopes to design and stitch a
sampler for each of the children/
based on their individual lives and
achievements.
Last year, June entered another
craft design contest, this one
sponsored by the Stearns and
Foster Company, makers of
Mountain Mist quilting supplies.
That competition was held to
select 30 original quilt squares,
which would later be combined
iito a display quilt to travel all
iver the nation with the Mountain
Mist craft show exhibit.
To June Adams, the fact that she
lad never quilted a stitch in her
ife was just a minor drawbadk.
For her first attempt at the old
‘ashioned skill, June settled on a
heme that was on the mind of the
world at the time of the contest:
America’s hostages being held
laptive m Iran.
Against a calico background, she
ditched slender profiles, one for
jach hostage imprisoned in the
embassy. The profiles are
uranged around the focal point of
i tree, with a yellow ribbon tied
imminently around the trunk. A
nuslm back and frame accented
he square when it was completed.
While the square was not one of
he 30 winners chosen to be used in
he touring display, June did
•eceive recognition as a semi
mahst and won a book on the art of
juiltmg.
And the attempt at quilting has
given her another goal. Now she
wants to complete a quilt for each
me of the three children.
But the craft that has captured
the Adams family’s greatest in
terest is not cross-stitch or quilting
or ceramics or macarme or any
one of a dozen other creative
outlets that June Adams has tried.
It’s burlap flower design, a craft
that June Adams invented.
The burlap that claims the bulk
of June’s craft hours is not the dull
brown material that once came
wrapped around livestock feed, but
a big-city cousin of the feed
company standby, purchased by
June m bolts of a rainbow of colors.
Most of the burlap yardage is
then chopped up into pieces of
various lengths and literally torn
apart, piece by piece into bunches
of loose threads.
Massing, shaping, trimming,
and fastening with wire and floral
tape, June magically transforms
the fluffy threads into flowers that
even fool the bees that alight on the
flowers as she works outside in
sunny weather.
Pale lavendar burlap, for in
stance, becomes clover flowers,
attached to wire, floral-tape
wrapped stems. Leaves are cut
from green burlap, and dipped in a
mixture of half water and half
glue, making them rigid when they
dry. Yellows and oranges become
mangolds and sunflowers, gray
turns into realistic pussywillows,
and the glue-dipped green burlap
sometimes even is transformed
into garlands of trailing ivy.
June was introduced to burlap as
a craft material while working
with 4-H’ers. Not satisfied with the
ideas then in use, June began
further experimenting with the
fabnc and the flowers
blossomed from her creative mind
and nimble fingers. i
She found an outlet for sharing
the new craft publicly when nearby
Harpers* Ferry national'historic
park scught community ideas and
support for a crafts festival. June
reasoned that it would take some
new craft twist to catch the in
terest of’visitors and potential
customers. The entire family
pitched in to prepare for the first
burlap booth at the festival.
Burlap by Adams was a
smashing success.
Many displays later, June
hauled her burlap and finished
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' licual arrangements to a Rich
mond, Virginia crafts exhibit.
While she was showing there,
two women kept returning each
day of the show to watch her
demonstrate the burlap
techniques. But somehow they just
couldn’t get the instructions down
to put the flowers together back
home.
“Have you ever considered
putting out a book?” they finally
asked June.
“I never though I could do
something like that,” was her
immediate reaction at the time.
But the suggestions took root, and
before too long, June and Woody
set out to write, photograph, print
and publish a book on burlap
flower designs.
“There were times when I
almost gave up on it,” she
remembers, reflecting on the two
years of sometimes frustrating
spare time efforts it took to
develop the 22-page-plus-covers
softbacked publication.
June wrote the step-by-step
burlap flower instructions, and
sketched illustrations for “Magic
With Burlap,” while Woody took
pictures of arrangements using the
completed flowers. Patterns for
the various designs of leaves were
included.
The 2,000 copies June bad
printed were sold only through her
burlap display booth at craft
shows; and that printing is now
nearly exhausted. She’s con
sidering a follow-up publication,
one that would use color pictures
FOURTH ANNIVERSARY
JUNE DAIRY MONTH
COW MAT SPECIAL.
instead of the black-and-whites in'
the first volume, and that could be
distributed on a wider scale.
Several months ago, June wrote
to a New York burlap supplier
about her craft and was invited to
visit the firm’s offices. She and
Woody earned along a suitcase full
of her burlap flowers, which
received quite a favorable reaction
from the company’s' top, ad
ministrative staff. June hopes that,
by working with the burlap sup
, plier, her, design knowledge can be
shared with more crafters.
As the popularity of June’s
burlap creations brought in
creased customer demand, the
fabric bolts, completed flowers,
arrangements, and miscellaneous
supplies took a bigger and bigger
chunk of living space in the Adams
house.
“One day my son came home
from school gnimbling that he had
found burlap in his bag lunch
sandwich,"’ June relates. “Then I
knew something had to go.”
Woody came to her rescue by
purchasing a small, older-model
mobile home, parking th ; trailer at
the edge of the bad; yard. Here
June stores all her inventory of
craft supplies, finished products
packed for show, and maintains
her work area out of the family’s
living space - and sandwiches.
Ever on the lookout for yet
another idea for her expanding
following of customers, June is
now .developing fabric roses to
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(Turn to Page C 5)