Maker: Lyn Parkinson

Panel number: 462

Petition sheet number: Did not sign 1893 petition

Person honouring: Dawn Louise McAndie

Relationship to maker: Mother

“Who is the girl with the startled look?  Resembles Bambi – out of a book. On pins so slim as she trips by…’Daybreak’ the local lads all cry!“ My mother, Dawn, that’s who.

Dawn Louise Tomlinson was born in Palmerston North and raised in a modest home in the small town of Rongotea (just out of Palmerston North). She was the eldest of seven children, six surviving into adulthood. 

After leaving school she nursed in sanatoriums in places such as Otaki and Rotorua, required for the ailments of the late 1940s. She met her ‘Sailor Sweetheart’ on the train from Palmerston North to Auckland. They married not long after and had a family of six children – raising us children in such places as Auckland, Fielding, Waiouru, and Wellington. 

Sadly, my father passed away at a relatively young age in Wellington. My mother took on the burden of raising and providing for me and my two younger brothers who were still at home at the time. Through her grieving she showed a fierce independence and 'can do’ attitude. She had not even driven a car until this point, so her driver’s licence was obtained rather smartly! 

My memories of my mother were of her sitting at her sewing machine (at night as she held down a job during school hours), and creating something wonderful but practical for us children. I think she preferred sewing to other handcrafts as her  sewing machine was always out on the dining table right up until her passing. I am now the proud owner of that machine and remember her fondly when I use it. 

Mum moved to Tauranga in the mid 1970s to be closer to her own mother and sisters. She enjoyed the company of others around her, so spent most of her later years working as she had been such a hard-worker all her life, a habit she could not give up.  My mother enjoyed watching her children grow, marry, and have children of their own and has left a wonderful legacy to us all who remain to tell her story.

Panel materials: Recycled main fabric (an old cotton basinet sheet), cotton, embroidery cottons, beads, cotton lace, and old buttons from my mother’s collection. All fabric and embellishments were not purchased new for this panel, but gathered from either what I had inherited from my mother’s stash of sewing bits and bobs, or from my own stash.