This is a wonderful old coloring book that I’ve been wanting to share for some time. Unfortunately, all but a few of the 96 pages have been colored with crayon, so each illustration requires a cleanup in Photoshop. I shouldn’t complain, because I’m amazed that these books survive at all as the newsprint type paper…
Over the past couple of months, I have been working on several different quilts, including Seven Sisters, Triangle, Grandmother’s Flower Garden Star and these Friendship Knot quilt blocks. I wrote a post about this pattern in 2010 when I only had one block finished — now there are five. That works out to be about…
Here’s the latest block stitched from my old painting book published by Platt and Munk Co. It took a long time to complete this block because I’ve only been working on it sporadically. I’m more than halfway done, with five more blocks to stitch, and I still have no idea how I’m going to put…
I’ve never seen a cross stitch book like this before. It’s the same size as a typical Whitman soft wrap children’s book from the period (9 1/2″ x 13″), and I think it might have been published simply as a Mother Goose picture book, albeit with unusual illustrations. Of course, you could also use it…
It turns out I was wrong about this transfer. Although it looks very much like the Alice Brooks Cottage #1 transfer, it’s an American Weekly pattern. Of course, it could be that American Weekly was just another name used by Needlecraft Services Co. who published patterns under the Alice Brooks and Laura Wheeler names. The…
This is the first of the large group of vintage transfers sent to me by my friend, Patty (Petalier at Etsy). It’s one of two cottages in the group, and I wonder if there might have been even more in the original series. It takes 8 scans to capture the entire sheet, and fitting the…
The Triangle Quilt now has 22 rows. You might wonder what is taking me so long, since this is a relatively easy to sew pattern, so I’ll explain. Each triangle is drawn and cut by hand, and most of them are recycled from old quilt blocks and tops which need to be unpicked, soaked, and…
My friend, Patty (Petalier on Etsy), sent me an enormous box of vintage embroidery transfers, many of which were the large format designs from Laura Wheeler and American Weekly. I am in the process of scanning the transfers and will be posting them soon. Tucked in among the transfers was this timely and pretty quilt…
Here’s what I said in a post about this quilt when I first started: This project began with a box of vintage salesmen sample swatches — probably from the 1940s or maybe the 1950s. There were hundreds of prints (some with duplicates and different colorways), and all of the pieces were the same size (1…
Although it’s a little difficult to make out in this busy print with it’s unusual color scheme, this is actually a Christmas apron panel. It was another interesting gift from my friend, Patty, who has a wonderful Etsy shop, Petalier, where she sells her beautiful quilts, along with vintage sewing-related items. The panel was mostly…
Children’s Playmate Magazine Fern Bisel Peat, Illustrator
I love these old Herrschner Art Needlework catalogs from the 1920s; the aprons and children’s wear items are my favorites. The style of these aprons is appealing to me because they are simple to make, have good coverage (I am a messy cook), and the embroidered details are so sweet. For my two aprons, I…
In 1959, not long after this coloring book was published, Alaska and Hawaii became the 49th and 50th states. As an 11 year-old growing up in Oklahoma, I remember thinking how cool it was to have such exotic places become part of the United States. You can find the previously posted countries by clicking on…
I noticed that African and South American countries are underrepresented in this coloring book. A modern “Children of Other Lands” coloring book would probably be a lot more diverse, but I wonder if the illustration style would be as cute. You can find the previously posted countries by clicking on these links: Holland, England-Sweden-Hungary-Czechoslovakia-Austria, Japan-China-India-Burma-Korea-Arabia,…
Finally, I have managed to scan and clean the rest of this cute coloring book. Over the next week I will post all of the remaining countries in no particular order. You can find the previously posted countries by clicking on these links: Holland, England-Sweden-Hungary-Czechoslovakia-Austria, Japan-China-India-Burma-Korea-Arabia, and France-Switzerland-Italy-Germany. Click any image for slideshow.