>> Ever since she retired from
teaching--
>> I was in the classroom for
55 years.
>> Lois Lawton has been,
well, teaching.
>> One, two, three, four--
>> She can teach how to sew.
>> So you sew, so shall you rip.
>> And how to laugh.
>> That's someplace in the
bible.
>> She loves to talk about
family.
>> I'm the 5th of 11 children.
>> But Lois doesn't just talk
about family.
>> This sampler is for a family
that I knew very well.
>> She records it.
>> These are the things
they did.
>> One stitch at a time.
>> I cannot make this unless I
love them.
>> They're called samplers.
>> This is Kiren and Delores.
Here's their daughter.
She's a teacher also.
>> Family trees on fabric.
>> Every one of these is a
story, and it tells the story of
the family or the person that I
dedicated it to.
>> Lois has been making them for
decades, so long she's
lost count.
She's made them for her fellow
teachers--
>> She taught kindergarten, and
her children still cherish her.
>> --for former students--
>> He learned.
He was like a sponge.
>> --and just about anyone else
who asks.
>> I will get all the
information that I need.
And then I will mull it for a
month or two.
I wrote all kinds of crazy ideas
in my notebook.
>> The work starts with
research.
>> What did they do in their
free time?
What did they do for a living?
Did they enjoy camping?
So you put a tent up there with
a little puddle and a fishing
pole in it.
And you reduce it to pictures.
>> That often means sketching
items from real life,
a picture of a butterfly,
or the steeple of a church, then
sewing them on linen.
Each picture helps tell the
family's story.
>> Here's a perfect hand
of Sheephead.
They played Sheephead.
Over here we have the Green Bay
Packers, and fishing.
They loved to fish.
He loved science, so here's a
Bunsen burner.
And books and, oh, little test
tubes.
I never charge anybody
for these.
What price does love have?
>> Each is signed,
some simply "Grandma Lois."
Of course, some stitches are
tougher than others.
>> This is the other daughter
who died in 1976 at the
age of 14.
>> And when families are tested,
Lois sees the ties that can bind
them back up.
>> Some of these parents went
through a lot of hell
because of children dying
or because of disasters that
happened.
But they chose to use-- to come
to each other.
>> Still, for all the family
trees she's made, Lois hasn't
made one for herself.
Maybe her family is just
too big, too complicated.
See, Lois and her husband never
had children.
But there are hundreds of
people, younger and older, that
call her "Grandma."
They're students she once taught
as a substitute teacher--
>> I am going to read this to
you and you follow it, please,
with your eyeballs.
>> --and students from the
church confirmation classes she
still volunteers to teach.
>> I don't care how many
thousands of children I had, the
children in this community
started calling me Grandma.
Kids said, "Can we call you
grandma?"
I said, of course you can.
>> Lois doesn't know quite how
many kids call her Grandma.
And she doesn't know how many
more of these samplers
she can make.
But she hopes that, even when
she can't sew, she can
still teach.
>> There will come a time when
my hands won't allow me to
hold a needle anymore.
Then holiness, for me, will be
to give up graciously that which
I no longer can do well.
That's the way I figure it
will go, if it gets to that
point.
But until it does,
I will continue doing
these things
for the people I love.