Threads Through Time

How one artist's emotional creation reconnected the threads of her family's Native American past

Every quilt tells a story and the story behind Melinda Schwakhofer's historic quilt dubbed "The Road to Oklahoma" is very personal and dear to her heart.

Melinda, 60, is a textile artist. She was born in Hollywood and spent most of her youth in America. She now lives with her husband, Steve, a copywriter and filmmaker in Dartmoor, where she works in her studio in their garden. Her great-grandmother, whom Melinda was named after, was Native American.

Twenty years ago, Melinda decided to pour her creativity into the creation of a quilt that tells her family's story and felt her ancestors' voices guiding her with every stitch, snip and color choice.

The quilt tells the story of two very different journeys to Oklahoma. The one made by white settlers which was full of hope and promise, and the "Trail of Tears" was undertaken by Melinda's ancestors when they were forced out of their homelands into new "Indian territory"-named Oklahoma in 1906.

"When I first came to the idea of making this quilt, I was following my own road to Oklahoma," Melinda explains.

"I knew my father was the son of a young Mvskoke woman, Mattie Davis, and an Austrian American man called Ted Schwakhofer whose family were white settlers, but that was about it.

"They met in 1919 and were just sixteen when they had my father, Frank.