These pillowcases were made as a Christmas gift. I adapted the designs from the J. F. Ingalls embroidery catalog published in 1886. Scans of the catalog are available on the Exceedingly Curious blog of John Governale. Because the designs are very detailed, I used only one strand of floss. The vintage crocheted pillowcases were purchased on…
The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe and Hey Didddle Diddle — two more blocks for this quilt, copied from “The Very Young Mother Goose.” These are a lot of fun and go quickly using Crayola crayons and 2 strands of black DMC. On ebay I found a big piece of vintage 36″ wide…
I have chosen this quilt (posted In January, 2009) as my entry in the Park City Girl’s Fall Quilt Festival. This pattern is from a 1976 quilt booklet, “Stitch ‘n Patch Quilts.” I love these old pattern books — instructions are minimal and usually take up one page or less. I always use templates to…
I have been collecting these little hankies for a couple of years with the thought that I would make a crib quilt. Originally, I wanted them all to have an ABC or alphabet theme, but these proved difficult to find. I have broadened my search to include basically any other designs that I like, are…
I had never seen a “follow the color” type coloring book before, but I thought the designs were very cute, especially for embroidery. I love any coloring books by the Krehbiels. Here are just a few of the cute drawings. Santa’s Follow the Colors Drawings by Becky & Evans Krehbiel Copyright 1964 Whitman Publishing Company
Here are some of the clothespin ornaments I made in 1975, and they have certainly seen better days. Frank (the farmer) and Alice (the school girl) were two of my cats at the time and I see they have lost all of their whiskers — the poor White Rabbit just has one whisker left. The…
Tom Tom the Piper’s Son is my second quilt block in this series from The Very Young Mother Goose. Jack and Jill are on block #1. Now I feel pretty good about these blocks and they are going well, except I just noticed my wheel is more oval than round. I was thinking that some…
We just got the tree up over the weekend and I was reminded of all the old Christmas ornaments I made when I was young. When Gordon and I were first married, we used to buy these cheap, flimsy natural Douglas Fir trees from Chubby and Tubby that were sort of sweet. We didn’t have…
Several years ago I saw a darling scottie quilt for sale on ebay. It was a bit worn and stained, but I loved the pattern. I saved the photos from the listing and was determined to make one of my own. After drawing the pattern, I began to collect vintage fabric to make the scotties. …
This quilt was made with tiny scraps of vintage 1930’s fabric left over from larger quilt projects. I never throw away any little scraps because they can be used for doll quilts (and vintage fabric is precious). This little quilt was pieced and quilted entirely by hand — even the binding. The back is a…
Here is my second attempt at a Mother Goose quilt block from the book I posted on the 9th. I’m pleased with the way this turned out. The black embroidery outline is nice, I think, but you can’t travel much on the back because the floss shows through the lighter areas. It requires lots of…
I rewrote this post after actually attempting to make one of these blocks. Vintage Mother Goose and ABC books are my favorites and I just found this used book on Amazon. I saw some photos of another one on ebay a while back and thought these illustrations would be perfect for crayon colored quilt blocks with a…
After viewing some pages of this fabulous old coloring book on doe-c-doe‘s blog entry for June 25, I sent her an e-mail and asked if I could possibly talk her into scanning the other pages in the book and sending them to me. I had looked all over for a copy of the Simple Objects…
These Japanese books are available at the Kinokuniya Book Store (which is located in the Seattle Uwajimaya) for around $16. You can also buy them on ebay, but those sellers charge over $25. Although the directions are all written in Japanese, the diagrams are extremely detailed and easy to figure out. If you want to…
This is a doll quilt I made for the new American Girl doll, Julie. I related to this doll since the year is 1974 and she is a hippy like I was (or at least as much as any AG doll could be). Julie was also the name of my sister-in-law who had long blonde…