Halloween is a big deal in our family — especially for my sister, Mary. Every year she decorates her whole house and has a big family party. Also, my little brother, Larry, was born on Halloween, so we always made a big fuss over him. Larry was born with many health and developmental problems and…
These block pieces were purchased on ebay in 2002. The fabric scraps were hand stitched to a foundation of 1943 newspaper pages. The stitches were not as close as I would have liked, but I couldn’t figure out how to go over her stitching. In the end I just removed the newspaper — then soaked,…
When my son, Elliott, was little, I loved to decorate his denim overalls with leftover trim pieces and embroidery stitches. As he grew taller, I’d cut that pair into shorts and stitch a new one with long pants. Once he started kindergarten, he told me he didn’t want to wear overalls anymore. I was sort…
I just finished this second floral table topper, made with some of the same fabrics as the first one posted last month. This topper contains a smaller selection of vintage fabrics, but it has the addition of some old, hand-crocheted edging. The patches were already cut, so I was thrilled to discover that I had…
This is a little coloring book (6″ x 8″) with only 14 pages — with the exception of page yellowing, it is in perfect condition. Linda Lou’s daddy might have bought this for her in France while he was waiting to be shipped home at the end of the war. My father was in France…
Last week when I was taking photos of some of the things I’ve made for my sister, Sally, she brought out this little doily which I had forgotten about. My mother-in-law also showed me a doily on one of her bedroom walls that I made for her. When I saw them, I did remembered making…
I wish I could remember where I saw this quilt pattern. It must have been in one of my books, but now I can’t find it, of course — this is always a problem for me. The original quilt may have had 2 petals, because I vaguely remember my husband telling me it would look…
There are many quilt patterns referred to as RPTPP — two of the most common are the one that looks like Orange Peel and this design, which is essentially a set of 4 Drunkard’s Path blocks. I first saw this quilt in one of my books from the 70’s — Once Upon a Quilt —…
This little quilt was made for my sister, Sally, in 2004. The basket design is based on a USPS 13¢ stamp series issued on March 8, 1978. I think I remember that the 4 stamps were connected with all of the handles toward the middle, which is the set you usually see for this block….
Here are half of the circus quilt blocks — they are so much faster to stitch than the alphabet blocks. Two more rows and then I’ll start drafting the elephant border which I hope works okay with the size of my blocks. It would probably be more efficient to design the whole quilt at once,…
I have finished stitching 4 more circus blocks, and should get them sashed and posted tomorrow. In the meantime, I thought I would share some more illustrations from this old coloring book. Most of my coloring books from the 1930’s are very different from the other decades — they don’t have an overall theme and…
This coloring book was published by Whitman in 1934 and the binding is falling apart. Fortunately, all of the pages are intact — although some of them are colored in, they are neatly done. I love so many of the illustrations in this book — there are lots of simple designs that are very unusual…
It took a long time to come up with a plan for this quilt. Originally I was going to use the print fabric as an alternate block, but when I layed out the fabrics, I didn’t like it at all. Next I decided to put the embroidered blocks in a straight set with striped sashing,…
This top was finished a few days ago, but I just got around to photographing it today. You’ll have to take my word for it that it looks much better in person. This is a hard quilt to photograph — for some reason the embroidered blocks always look sort of washed out (especially the lighter…
I’ve probably mentioned a few times how much I love anything vintage with a Mother Goose theme (as well as ABC’s). This is a spread I found on ebay — it still has the tag and looks brand new with no odor or dinginess. The spread is a bright pink with no fading at all…