This is my new book, and I love it so much. Each of the ABC pages has a companion outline page to paint, but they are all colored or painted and would be nearly impossible to clean up. Fortunately, the example pages are in good shape. ABC Painting Reading Whitman Publishing, 1934
This booklet was in the box of old transfers and lace I found at a thrift shop in Utah during our road trip last year. According to sewingpalette.com, Royal Society sold thread, yarns, kits and needlework pattern books from 1915 through the 1920s. “In the early 1920s the company produced a series of hot iron…
For some strange reason, among the main 1930s fabric colors, yellow prints are hard to find. I’m always so happy to see any yellows in a group of purchased scraps or pieces.
This pattern is from a 1985 Lady’s Circle Patchwork Quilts magazine, which featured quilts and quilt patterns from New York state. If I were going to make this block, I think I would redraw the bluebird to make him just a little shorter and chubbier than the one in this pattern. After reading Tina’s comment,…
Originally I planned to do more detailed quilting in the border of this quilt, but in the end I thought it looked better just to repeat the design in the sashing. It’s kind of hard to do elaborate quilting on doll quilts because of the small scale and all the seams. The binding and backing…
Here are more illustrations from one of my favorite old coloring books (earlier group here). My favorite, the accordion, is for Gina. Click images to enlarge.
Here’s the last of these cute kitchen transfers (click here for the other images from this group). Unfortunately, my cat attacked the tissue paper, and damaged a bowl and a measuring cup. Maybe I can reconstruct them in Photoshop.
More Depression era salesman sample swatches, this time in shades of lavender.
Hopefully I have scanned these booklet pages at a high enough resolution to allow you to enlarge these small motifs and turn them into patterns. More hand quilting patterns can be found here.
Do you have any of those embarrassing projects that were almost done, but then somehow never made it to the finish line? My sampler should qualify, having been made for my (now 30 year old) son shortly after he was born. I finished the sampler in a reasonable amount of time, but it has languished…
This cute coloring book was published by Watkins-Strathmore in 1961. I’m pretty sure, although I can find no documentation, that this must be the same Lois Ehlert who illustrated many popular children’s books beginning in the 1980s, including Color Zoo (1989), a Caldecott Honor Book. She would have been 27 in 1961, and it…
These designs are from a sheet of Walker’s blue numo hot iron transfers — the ones on tissue paper with blue raised dots that are one use only. The serial number for this sheet is 1598, and it came in an assortment with 3 other sheets. Sometimes these numo transfers don’t look too great, even…
These fabric swatches are part of a large lot of salesman samples from the 1930s. The photos represent a 2″ x 3″ rectangle of each print.
Because I have always loved scrappy quilts with lots of little pieces, these three patterns are all on my list of quilts to make. I especially love the third pattern, which I hadn’t seen before. There generally are not many directions in these old patterns, and in this case there aren’t any. The first and…
For this little top I used two vintage cloth books published in the UK by Dean’s Rag Book Co. The company began in 1903 producing small books printed on muslin that they advertised as “safe and washable” for baby. Later they expanded into stuffed bears and cloth dolls. Dean’s Rag Books were still being made…