May Your Week Be Filled with Love

This sweet jacket was made just about 40 years ago.

 Although it was sewn together on the machine and the bias binding was applied by machine, the applique and quilting were  done all by hand. It's my original design.

 If I remember correctly, I created the design for a pillow for my white sofa, and then thought it needed to appear on something else, but I didn't want to make it over and over for a quilt.  Yes, there was once a time when single and childless made white fairly practical.

 Each sleeve was adorned with one applique heart plus two quilted ones.
I was not the kind of gal who wore her heart on her sleeve, but these seemed okay.
The red fabric was left over from a shirt I made my dad as either a Christmas present or a birthday present, probably in 1967 or 1968. The green is by Wamsutta and is one of the few 100% cotton prints available at the time. The white is a  simple unbleached muslin, probably purchased from J. C. Penney.  Yes, every Penney's store had a nice big fabric department back then.

 Each front was also treated to a heart, along with some clam-shell quilting.

 Such fine stitches!  It was hand-quilted on a 14-inch wooden hoop with Coats & Clark hand-quilting thread.

The tiny little applique stitches were learned by studying my paternal grandmother's applique.  She was the first Dolly I knew of, although her full name was Dora Maude Shreve Scheer. She passed away when my dad was ten years old.

I made the jacket because I certainly wasn't inviting people into my bedroom--or at least that's what we joked at the time. Quilt shows were almost unheard of--at least where I lived in Central Illinois.  I think the closest we came to a quilt show was the annual Mennonite Farm Sale at Exposition Gardens in Peoria, Illinois.

I haven't worn it for years.  It's too small for me now because at the time I made it I was ill and quite thin. My daughter is much too thin to wear it, so it lives in my closet, and I take it out occasionally and reminisce about making it and how much simpler life back then seems in retrospect and compared to the lives we live today. I know it merely seems to have been simpler because our healthy brains are smart enough understand that gratitude is life-sustaining, so we've tossed most of the negative memories and experiences.

I hope you're feeling loved today and that you take time to celebrate love all week!

Happy quiltmaking,

Linen Rescue One

I washed the vintage linens I rescued this weekend and then put them in to soak with a washerful of Oxiclean.  I just let the washer fill on the soak cycle, turned it off, and then went in several times to let it agitate for a few seconds.  Then, around noon today, I put them through another wash cycle, but with no detergent or oxygen bleach.

If you decide to try something like this, it's important that they air dry, not dry in the dryer.

If they air dry and need to go back into an oxygen bleach solution, they can do that.  If they go into the dryer, the stains will set forever.

I'm thinking I may need to re-soak the pillow sham and the dresser scarf once I determine whether I can live with the very slight discoloration.  I think I would like to quilt both of them. It would be nice if a vintage quilted dresser scarf would motivate me to keep the top of the dresser clear.

The linens that are off-white or almost eggshell color fascinate me.  I wonder why the women of the mid-1950s to 60s decided to leave white and go to off white with that beige/gray embroidery.  I need to talk to some of them before we lose them.  One of the beige embroidered napkins looks like it had already met bleach some time in the past.  The rose-woven damask napkins are so old that their corners and hemstitching were done by hand.  They do make my heart sing!

Our little town's internet service got "backed up" as in "traffic jam" yesterday.  Some customers got re-routed; some of us just were disconnected.  I think we're back on now, but it was a throw back to old times for nearly 24 hours!  Twenty years ago all this internet connectivity was pretty much just a dream.  We've come a long way since then.  Twenty years ago I hadn't yet had the opportunity to crawl in ceilings and pull wire through a school building.  Now we are wireless.  Very nice progress!

Happy quiltmaking,

Cedar Chests

I often feel sad that in other parts of the country people seem to have no trouble finding beautiful cast-off vintage linens.  Vintage linens are some of my favorite things.

This morning I walked into  a local thrift store and straight to a bag of vintage linens marked at $5.
You can bet I paid for those and left as quickly as I could.  This store almost never has any vintage linens, and I'm guessing most of these came from the same person or estate.

However, when I returned home and opened them, it was clear they had been stored in a cedar chest--for years.  They were once gorgeous, and I'm hoping they can become so once again. These were all once white.

The damage is especially notable around the edges and on folds, and where they had touched the cedar.

However, these are the two that take the cake!--Stored with food spills still on them!  I'm going to go take care of that right now!

The lessons these former owners will probably never learn is that cedar chests are moth prevention for woolens.  If something is any other fiber, including paper, an airtight cedar chest is a very, very bad idea! I wish I knew how to get that information out to more people!!

Happy quiltmaking.

What Was On the Bed - Again

Here's what was on the bed last week:

 This is a very simple Double Nine Patch--in the traditional sense of the title.  This one is set with alternating plain blocks.
Beginning quilters need to be aware that we can make really nice quilts from simple designs.  Furthermore, if we love the quilting part,  those simple quilts can become truly spectacular!

 Yes, it says it was finished in 1990....but it was begun several years earlier.

 One of the fun things about making this quilt was all the color changes in the quilting.

I also enjoyed the double diagonal lines in the background--inspired by quilting in antique quilts. 

 Also signed with a monogram...used to replace the hearts that are the other blocks.

 I also changed the color of the hand quilting thread from block to block. 

 Back then I used Mettler 100% cotton hand quilting thread.

These are a couple of vintage pillowcases with hand crocheted lace.  I found them somewhere as singles.

I'm thinking there are two main reasons for so many single pillow cases that have survived.  One is that sometimes women started making a pair and just never finished the second. The other reason is that one wore out faster than the other.  I know that on the farm, my dad's pillowcase always wore out faster than my mom's.  She said it was because  he did so much welding that there were always chemicals left in his hair, and over time they caused the fibers to deteriorate faster....I'm guessing there may well have been a lot of truth in that!

Happy quiltmaking....

More Vintage Treasures

 Our church has a new kitchen, so they were replacing old things with new stuff.
[Unfortunately, the inspector could not be convinced that our new church kitchen is not a commercial kitchen; as a result, we can not have any potlucks or bring in any food that is not commercially prepared.  I don't know if that's the result of an anti-Christian bias or something else.  But I do know that for those of us who love to cook for people we love, taking the potlucks away from a church removes a lot more than just food!]

 JoAnn wondered if I would like these!  Oh, yessssss!  They are old flour sack towels.  I'm guessing most of them are 60 years old, maybe older.

 This is a piece of bark cloth appliqued to the towel with buttonhole stitch.  The selvedge of the print says "Guaranteed not to......" followed by illegible writing.

 I love this one because someone was learning to cross stitch, and the upper line of stitching in the pale orchid leaves is a series of vertical stitches instead of cross stitch.  Also, the Greek key design was stitched only on this section of the towel, not the entire border, and the left petal of the iris is missing.

This towel has three printed circles machine stitched down and topped with three colors of ric-rac.

The hem of the bunny towel in the first photo was hand stitched with a feather stitch, much of which has worn away.

JoAnn said a couple of the ladies thought no one would want these; they were going to throw them away.  I absolutely love flour sack towels.  My first embroideries were done on flour sack toweling.  Then when I was in third grade and my mother decided it was time for me to learn to use the sewing machine (her Singer 201), it became my job to hem the feed sack towels.  We didn't buy flour in those sacks, but after feed and seed companies stopped using printed fabrics, they still used unprinted cotton sacks for many years.  We washed them and bleached out the writing and then hemmed them.

Of course, I love them.  And of course I will use them! And I hope the church ladies enjoy the new towels in the new kitchen half as much as I'll love using these old ones in my old kitchen!

Happy quiltmaking.....

Quilt Plan and the Turn of the Century Home

I've been working on the plans for Sweet Teen's Opportunity Quilt.

 Here is the plan for the quilt.  I decided that due to it's size, I wanted the simpler blocks  in the corners so the quilt will show itself off better on a bed.

 I'm still figuring yardages for cutting since I want to strip piece it and EQ7 can't really provide me exactly the information that I need. This quilt was inspired by a 1903 triple Irish Chain made in the Oklahoma Panhandle that by the mid-1980's was living in East Tennessee.  I made a rather close copy of that blue and white quilt, but I no longer have the quilt.  I'll look for a photo of the original or of my quilt and scan it so that I can share it at some point while I'm making Sweet Teen's quilt.

These are the main fabrics.  The one in the Lower left barely shows, but it has many colors in it, is much more intense than the background fabric, and will show up in the quilt. I think one of the challenges of making quilts is that complicated fabrics don't usually show up well in photos.

I've also been very busy painting in preparation for the likelihood that I'll be back to work on Friday (after I see the rehab doctor on Thursday).

I repainted the fireplace surround in the livingroom and changed the display to seven of the pitchers I've collected over the years.  The one on the left is the oldest--from the days when my grandparents lived in a house without indoor plumbing.

 When we first bought this house, we used the fireplace all the time, and I didn't understand that the reason we were getting smoke in the house was that our chimney just isn't tall enough.  Now we never use it.  It's pretty, but it's just not worth the work and the mess. In any case, the mantle and the surround direly needed painting.

 This is why I'm questioning "The Turn of the Century."  When I was a child I always loved visiting homes that were much like they had been at the turn 19th to the 20th century.  I'm sure almost anyone would say I have just too much in my house, but since I'm not trying to sell it right now, and since my house is definitely my haven, I love being able to see things I treasure.  These boxes are full of yarn and needlework.  The lovely spider plant is one my assistant gave me a start of when she moved last January or February.  Clearly, it loves living in my haven too!

In any case, we may have passed the next turn of the century, but I still have a seventeen year old turn of the century house.

I rearranged another wall in my living room--putting up more plates that need a new home now that my buffet has a "hutch". Two of these plates have been in my family for at least three generations, one is fairly new, and the others were gathered from thrift stores, antique stores, friends, and a flea market over the course of many years.

Although my computer shows the wall color as somewhat lavender, it's actually a pale orchid.  Because the living room is on the north side of the house, blue would have been too cool a color (although I did use blue and yellow in the kitchen).  The orchid shade looks cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

 I really was a Victorian when I rearranged the piano and the wall above it. I will be putting more doilies along the edge of the shelf when they are dry.  I just love the little things I've collected.
The plate on the wall to the right is a commemorative plate from my hometown's centennial in 1954. (My daughter loves that it has a picture of my high school--apparently built from a plan used by many different communities.   Some people bought enough of these plates for a table service.  My mother had a few, but this is the only one I have.

 I love the antique candy dish my cousin Joy gave me a few years ago, and the inkwell is one that has been in my family for many years.  I have no idea what happened to the lid.  It had been a while since I polished the tray it sits in--but it's no long blue and black with tarnish!

 The rose plate at the rear is very old, but I found it cast aside at a thrift store.  The silver birds are a salt and pepper set my mother received as a wedding gift (the salt has corroded the head and neck of one).  The little blue iridescent bird is dated 1990 and was a gift from my Aunt Louise.

This little harp playing angel was part of a set my mother purchased decades ago, but it's the only one left, the others having been seriously chipped and broken over the years.

See?  Lots of little treasures that I still treasure (and which make my daughter crazy).

 And here's the freshly painted "hutch" that is actually an Ethan Allen Nutmeg book case from the 1950's  I bought it because I've been looking for about 15 years for a hutch that matched my buffet.  The irony:  you can't even see the lines at the top that match the bottom and top of the buffet.

I'm going to link to Esther Liu's WIPs on Wednesday and Freshly Pieced, as well as Connie's Freemotion By the River  and will hope that none of my visitors mind seeing the redecorating endeavors.

Updating to add a link to Vintage Thingee Thursday over at Suzanne's blog.


Happy Quiltmaking.....

Sweet Spring Baby Quilt - Progress Report

I've made some progress on the quilting of the Sweet Spring Baby Quilt, although I still have a distance to cover.  So far I've used Fil-Tec Bobbinline thread for a bit of stabilizing, some turquoise Madeira thread I've had for years for some of the quilting, and Fil-Tec Glide in pale orchid, medium orchid, and some white.
I've quilted on both the Necchi BU treadle in my living room and the Singer15-88 treadle in my sewing room.

 A bit of the back:

 Sweet Teen, who is on spring break, and I made a stop at Busy Bee Quilts in Edgewood, where I succumbed to the temptation of a yard of pale orchid 1930's style fabric, and some fatquarters that will go into at least four different projects.  I also purchased a Pigma Pen so I can get the writing on the Robin's Nest baby quilt.

 

And the surprise vintage goody in the mail [apparently sitting in the local post office since last Friday when, for some reason, they failed to notify or gave the notice to some other customer, was a pillowcasewith white and pink crocheted lace.

We have a sunny day here east of the Sandias with a couple of windows open.--I'm hoping we don't get our usual high winds in the afternoon

I'm linking to Connie Kresin's Quilting by the River,
and to Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story

Happy quiltmaking, all.....