More vintage embroideries......

I'm glad you enjoyed the vintage treasures from my previous post and I have two more to share with you. The piece above is a close-up from a dresser scarf that is pictured below. Each one of these vintage pieces was on very sheer fabric. The one in the photo below was the stiffest of the four pieces. It was a preprinted design with very faint writing on the piece. The embroidery was mostly finished but the piece was never completed. One has to wonder.........was it a pillow top or perhaps a doily that would have had a crocheted edging? It was very wrinkled and I couldn't get it to smooth out for a good picture and I didn't have an iron handy. :-) I really liked the design on this one and I see inspiration for a penny rug design in this one!

The softest of the four pieces was this beautiful dresser scarf. The embroidery is just beautiful.

I've printed out copies of all of these designs so that I can trace and do black and white line drawings of them. It's a project for later on in the fall when the cold weather sets in. :-)

Tomorrow, I am going to take a few items to the county fair and enter them. I have all my items together but cannot remember where I put my "JOY" Christmas stocking. I can see myself folding it up with care and then that's it. I looked in the box with all the Christmas stockings and such and it's not there. I looked in the box where the leftover fabric is that I used to make the stocking. I've decided I will sleep on it and get up in the morning and see if I can find it. And if not, well, I'll enter it next year. :-)

Have a good day!

Sandi

Pretty treasures from the past.......

A week ago last Friday evening and after my mom had given me my birthday quilts, she pulled out some delicate vintage linens that are some of her favorites. I took pictures of them so that you could see these "little pretties". Here are two of the pieces and tomorrow I'll share the other two items. Both my mother and I have a fondness for embroidery. She doesn't do as much as she did years ago but it still makes her happy just to look at lovely embroider work or patterns and magazines filled with designs. When she pulled out this little pillow sham, I went "ooooooooohh! that is lovely!" The pale green background fabric is a very thin cotton and the embroidery floss that was used has a fairly high sheen to it. This piece would be fun to recreate.

And so would the little apron in the photo below..........................

I placed this sweet little tea apron on the reverse side of a doll quilt that my mother made just so you could see how sheer and delicate it is. This lady is not a Sunbonnet Sue has she actually has some definition to the embroidered edge of her face. This design would also be pretty on opposite ends of a table runner and would also be fun to recreate. Oh, so many things one could stitch and only so much time in the day! I think that by enlarging the photos of these designs and then printing them and tracing same, that I could get a good enough sketch to be able to do my own embroidered piece. So, another project to add to the "to do" list. LOL!

I can't start any new projects now, though, as I need to get the quilt blocks for August finished and posted here on my blog and in my Yahoo group. I am reading posts and have been strolling through some blogs trying to catch up on what you are all doing this summer. I may not get "caught up" til the end of August! Look for the August blocks by the end of the week. Back soon with more "pretty treasures from the past"............

Sandi

The Days of the Week

When I was a kid, I remember wearing cute little undies with the days of the week. No, I won't be showing any vintage undies. Although my mother gave me a number of vintage lace-edged nightgowns and things when I visited her at the end of April. She also gave me a couple sets of embroidered dishtowels that she had purchased at auction. I remember lots of church bazaars with hand made items and embroidered dishtowels with a variety of "Days of the Week" designs. The dishtowels in the following photos are some of the most beautifully embroidered dishtowels that I've ever seen. I say this because they look as good on the front as they do on the back! And they are in excellent condition and I am sure they have never been used!! The toweling fabric was also very fine.

First, we have Sunday and MiLady is off to church............

and look at the back........neat as a pin!! I have never seen embroider done this well on the backside of anything. I try not to have too many stray threads but I think this is just amazing!
Mildady's work begins on Monday with the wash,

and it's a pressing Tuesday to get the wrinkles out of these shirts........

and so Wednesday must be spent knitting and darning socks.........

and it's off to market on Thursday because.......

she must spend Friday cleaning

and Saturday is for baking so that Papa can have a fine dinner after church on Sunday.

And then the work starts all over again on Monday!!

This is the second set of dishtowels....

They are simply cross stitched in the Days of the Week and the back of these towels are not nearly so neatly stitched. This set also looks like it has never been used but the years and storage have not been kind to this set. There are darks spots on the towels and discoloration along the folded edges.

They are still very attractive and I am going to try washing one towel carefully and see if some of the marks wash away. I don't plan to actually use either set and am considering some type of rack or display for them so I could rotate them and have a set on display for awhile and then let them rest and put out the other set. You know, kind of like I had my own mini-museum display. LOL! My desire to keep and display some of this stuff just drives my husband nuts sometimes but he watches NASCAR endlessly so we all have our hobbies that keep us entertained!

It occurred to me as I was taking these photos, that even as a new bride in 1968 no one gave me embroidered dishtowels. Instead, blue and green and orange and brown were all the rage and the same colors you see in the stores now and those big flower prints, were what I preferred in my kitchen back then. Is that funny or what?!!!

On that note.......

Time to turn out the lights and say goodnight......or is that good morning?

Sandi

At the end of the day...........

I am recalling that it was just a year ago today, in the evening, when I first began to blog. If you go here you can read that first post. Blogging is one of the best things I have ever done. It was good for my soul because I needed to write after the passing of my dad and just to collect my thoughts. My mother had also been very sick just months before he passed away and for my brother, sister and me there were just lots of things to deal with. Blogging helped.
It opened doors, too, and by reading other blogs, I could peek into their world and see the creativity that abounds in this ring of quilty, crafty bloggers!! I have made such good "friends" and although, I've never actually "met" some of you, I have talked to a couple of you on the phone. It's just been a really great thing to blog and I just want to say "THANK YOU" to Blogger because it's user friendly and it's free. :-)
So, as noted above, it's the end of the day and if it's one year since I started blogging, shouldn't I be celebrating? Well, of course!! And who could I ask to help me make this a celebration?


Why, Brown Bear because he always does what I tell him to do! LOL! He is ready to help me get rolling on my One Year Blog Anniversary Giveaway and because I have had so much fun blogging and meeting so many of you, I am going to really have a great giveaway!! You can see that there are eight green gift bags with pretty orange bows. They just say "summer", don't they? The minute that I saw them on clearance at Michael's I knew I had my idea for my giveaway. I started blogging in 2008 and so there will be eight gifts. The first gift bag and it's contents will be posted on Tuesday evening, May 26, the actual date of my blogging anniversary. Each day through June 2nd, I will post another gift bag and contents. You will need to leave a comment on each post in order to be entered in each drawing. That means you can have a chance to win eight prizes! Once all eight items are posted, I will take comments through June 8th. Comments will close then and it will take me a day or so to tally it all up and notify winners. I'll have more details available when the first gift bag and prizes are posted.

Before I close, I thought I would share a couple more photos of vintage linens. I am curious about the pair in this photo...........

What do you think? Were they hand towels for the bathroom or tea towels for the kitchen? The embroidery is lovely and even the addition of the red and black cotton at the hem is done very well.

Then there is this cutie that my mother gave me the last time I visited her. I know someone who will be abuzz when she sees this. I'm thinking it's cute enough to frame.

This last one is pretty worn but I love that message "cool as a cucumber". I can recall having to be "cool as a cucumber" on several occasions in my life. LOL!! This one, too, could be framed. I'll have some more vintage towels to share in my next post.

Night all,

Sandi

Emma's Quilt is finished!

Connie, our local Postlady, called me on Thursday afternoon and asked me to come to the post office on Friday morning for a photo taking session for our local newspaper, The Henderson Independent. The handquilting was finished by Esther and her quilting friends and Connie had finished the binding, so it is ready to be taken to the Fundraiser for her grandaughter, Emma. If you are in the area of Waconia, MN on Saturday, May 30th, you can stop by and bid on this beautiful quilt. Just click here and you'll find all the info. That's Connie in the photo with the quilt and then I took a photo of just the quilt. If you don't see your blocks in this quilt, remember that I took about a dozen blocks to make a small quilt for Emma and her family as a wall quilt that they can keep. The large quilt will be auctioned and monies raised go for costs related to Emma's medical care.

The ladies who did the hand-quilting were led by Esther Wroge. She gathered together Eldora Miller, Marilyn Jensen, Kathy Schrader, Elaine Graupmann, Kathy Stuedemann, and Ardeen Graupmann, Bev Wilkens, Mary Lou Wroge, Leona Wroge, Luella Prehn, Sharon Dummer, Donna Schmidt, Adeline Miller and Violet Zebell to get the hand-quilting finished in record time!!

I took two close-ups of their quilting work. The fan above is a favorite block and was made by Claire who is a cancer survivor and wanted to contribute blocks.

And I loved the simple way they quilted in the center of most of the star blocks. Much of the quilting is "stitch in the ditch" and that allows the design of the blocks and the colors to really "pop"!

When the photo taking was all finished, James, the reporter who will write an article about the quilt gathered info from Connie and me on how the quilt came to be. I'll be sure to link you to that article when it appears in next week's issue of the paper.

After that, I came home to continue some closet cleaning I've been doing this week. I am organizing vintage linens and quilt tops and such, although "playing with them" would be a more appropriate term. I took photos of some things that I'll share as the weeks go buy but I decided to pick one to show you why I'm having so much fun. This is a small tablecloth that was probably used on a cardtable. The color is just as vibrant as you see in the picture and the embroidery is just beautiful. It's in very good condition and has the same flower design on all four corners.

I am not usually an orange fan, but I absolutely love this piece. I have loads of treasures to share, so keep watching for more.

Time to turn out the lights as my grandson will be here at 10:00 tomorrow morning!

Sandi