Dorothy Dale, local artisan, has been a crafter all of her life. She drew up on a farm in southwest Michigan in the 1940s without electricity or running water. Nothing was thrown away. “We were recycling before the word was invented”.
She was crocheting rugs to keep the floors warm in the cold Michigan winters before she was old enough to go to school. She was making all of her own clothes on a treadle sewing machine by the age of nine. She taught herself to knit so she could make mittens for herself and others in high school.
As an adult, she handmade all her Christmas gifts, matching shirts for her family, and draperies (made from sheets) for her home. She taught knitting, crocheting, and hand embroidery to the local 4-H and Girl Scout groups.
After moving to Tennesse in 1989, she began selling some of her handmade items at local craft shows and has won many blue ribbons and several “Best of Show” ribbons at the Cumberland County Fair.
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Dorothy still recycles, or repurposes, old neckties, used greeting cards, and empty containers for some of her projects which are available, along with her needle work at FACS in Landers Crossroads Mall.
Her book, “Cornfed, Countrified, and Consecrated”, a collection of short childhood memories, accounts of mission trips, and observations on life, is also available there.
Her philosophy of life is summed up in one of her poems:
