Art Deco illustrations are some of my favorites, and this old paint book is full of them. It was published by Whitman, and although it is not dated, it’s pretty clear that these images are from the 1920s. I am going to be taking a blog break for the next few weeks, and plan to…
This small page was part of the group of antique transfers I purchased on our road trip last year. There were some very old Royal Society and DMC transfer booklets in the lot, but this page did not seem to belong to them. There are no identifying marks on the sheet, except for the following…
Today, instead of vintage fabric, here are some sweet Art Deco advertisements for vintage fabric. Kalburnie gingham was one of many cotton textiles manufactured at Lancaster Mills in Clinton, Massachusetts. I have noticed both in these ads and in my vintage catalogs, that these old ginghams were not limited to the two-color checked versions so…
I have always referred to this pattern as Flying Swallows, but it actually has lots of names: Falling Star, Flying Star, Whirling Star, and Circling Swallows. Whatever you want to call it, it’s a beautiful pattern. Cathi (Quilt Obsession) has been piecing a slightly more complex block which has this star in the middle, and…
This old quilt top is kind of a mess. The stitching in the blocks is not bad, but the yellow border is crudely sewn with many odd-sized pieces. It will not lie flat. I thought the blocks might have been sewn earlier by a different person, but upon closer examination, it’s clear that both the…
Here are the last two pages of my current favorite ABC book. I’ve mentioned before how much I love the bold graphics in this book, but the unusual alphabet words are also pretty great. To locate the other alphabet pages, click on the Children’s Books category on my sidebar.
When I was organizing my vintage transfers today, I found another sheet of Workbasket patterns with a Japanese theme. The motifs in this group are much smaller than the earlier group with the beautiful geishas.
My friend, Patty at Petalier, pointed out that the first group of neon type antique prints I posted last week is from the 1890s. It’s always a bit risky purchasing these very old blocks and tops because the fabric can be in poor condition without showing any obvious signs of damage. To test the fabric,…
As I was looking through my 1924 Ladies Home Journal Pattern Catalog, I immediately recognized the quilt at the bottom of this page, probably because a copy of the original quilt appeared on the cover of the book, “American Folk Art Quilts” by Maggi Gordon (possibly made from the LHJ pattern). I’m sorry I don’t…
As I have mentioned before, I made several quilts in the 70s when I was in my twenties, and didn’t make another quilt for 20 years. In 1995 a quilter came to our school and gave a presentation to my daughter’s 5th grade class in preparation for a class quilting project. The speaker brought a…
Finally, here are the pages from the two vintage coloring books I used to make my Santa’s Follow-the-Colors quilt top. The small blocks finish at 6″ square and the large at 12″ x 6″ (pictures somewhat smaller). When combining the two-page images, I sometimes made a few changes in the drawing. The squares in the sashing…
These three patterns are from a sheet of transfers stapled inside an old Workbasket magazine. The sheets were printed with red ink on heavy newsprint type paper (like my old coloring books), and because the paper turns brown and brittle over time, they are usually very fragile. Oops! I forgot to add the little piece…
The original antique quilt top was made with a large assortment of different fabrics you would expect in a top of this age — indigos, homespuns, shirtings, madders, double pinks and mourning prints. The individual 4″ squares were wonderful, but the mix of all the colors and patterns didn’t really appeal to me, and it…
Last year I talked about an Anne Orr quilt top project from 1937 that I purchased on ebay. The quilter had done so much work drafting the pattern, calculating how much fabric to purchase, and beginning construction, that it seemed really sad to me that the project was never finished. She only had a tiny…
Finally, the quilting has begun on this poor, neglected quilt top that I finished almost two years ago. The past two Christmases I have put this quilt on the wall as a top, and felt terribly guilty that I couldn’t manage to get it quilted. Hopefully, I can complete the quilting in the next couple…