Gathering Dust

Sometimes, It's All Just Pretty

 

Sometimes when I go to estate sales, I find weird stuff (doll heads); valuable stuff, but not that interesting (DAR medals); or even useful stuff (good wool yarn), but today, I found PRETTY.

Like three vintage prom dresses.  I took one with me to the antique mall to dress up my "undressed mannequin" there. 

 

Look at the little beads and rhinestones sewn all over the front.

And this beautiful blue dress has a fabric corsage below the waist.

 

I know- like my husband would say "nice tshirt under that dress".  And it definitely would benefit from some more time with a steamer- but what I did steam smoothed out nicely.

Whenever I see dresses like this, I think of Heather's Pretty Petals Boutique and the beautiful dresses she sells.  When I was talking to Heather about dolls, she said the secret to unwrinkling their dresses is to hold them over a steaming tea kettle.  I think I'd need a industrial steaming VAT to pull out the wrinkles from this beauty.

 

And if you were going to WEAR this lovely dress, where would you keep your jewelry- in a BLUE dresser box.

 

The dresser box has tiny bluebirds and roses as part of the background.

 

Here's some beautiful Belgium lace hankies with original Fabrique in Belgium label.

 

 

But the best part is the box- isn't it pretty?

 

Speaking of roses- how are these pillowcases for sweet dreams?

 

Note:  the reason all my pictures have the same blue background is that I took the pictures for ebay- and then I thought you all might like to look at some pretties, too.  And if you're interested in looking FURTHER- here's my Ebay store:  Gathering Dust...I have some of those "risque pin-ups" for sale, too ;)

 

 

A Weekend in the Woods

We spent last weekend at my husband's annual family get together.  We were way up north in Minnesota, at Itasca State Park- where the Mississippi River starts.  There were 25 of us, ranging in ages from 6 mos to 87 years old.  With such a big group, we rented an entire log cabin  hostel.

The cabin was surrounded by trees and at the end of the road, so we didn't have to worry about cars & kids & traffic. There was a little shortcut through the woods that lead right to the bike, canoe & kayak rental and beach.

 

The sand was perfect for castles and moats.  And if you couldn't catch a fish, you could always make one out of sand.

  

We rented tandem bikes and caravanned to the headwaters of the Mississippi.  The picture at the very top is the actual start of the Mississippi- just in case you were wondering what the Mississippi looked like when it was a baby.

  

 

The whole weekend was kind of like summer camp, and it wouldn't be camp without arts & crafts.  The girls all got together and made paper doll dresses.

 

And I did get to a little antiquing along the way.  This little pink & green dress is made of CREPE PAPER.  I'd never seen anything like it.  It looks like it jumped right off the pages of a Peter Pan book.

 

It has the sweetest details- the crepe paper petals are rolled on the edges.

 

And I found some poor baby dolls to rescue.   I know some people don't "get it"- why  I think these are so wonderful, but I know that most everyone that reads this is going to understand why they had to come home with me.

Another Week, Another Estate Sale (or Half Dozen Estate Sales)

 

Our sod is in, and even though our backyard isn't finished, it looks better than it has in three years.  Now we need a deck- so I'm making the rounds of estate sales to find treasures to sell on eBay to  raise deck money.

 

The truth is, I'd go to the estate sales whether I needed a deck or not because its one of the highlights of my week.

One of my finds was this beautiful very fine baby dress.  Other than missing its top snap, it's in wonderful condition.  I love vintage clothing- a lot isn't really practical to wear- so many pieces have teeny tiny child-size waists, but I think they make beautiful pieces of decor- hanging from a decorative hook, or on hanger on a coat rack- or hanging in front of a window.

 

Bakelite flatware- I love the warm colors of Bakelite, in jewelry, in buckles, in buttons (duh!) and even in Mah Jong tiles and dice.  I've been collecting it piece by piece, and was thrilled to find 12 pieces for only $6.

My favorite pieces are the hard to find two toned handles.

 

Of course, it's not really a good estate sale day unless I can pick up some jewelry- I love these GROOVY flower power pins.

 

Most of these pieces are broken- but they're still pretty and I'm sure I can find SOMETHING to do with them.  The cheesy pink plastic earrings remind me of something Laverne (Cher) would have worn at the laundromat.

 

I picked up something for myself, too.  This antique desk sorter is about 3 feet long and 2" wide.  It has compartments that are just perfect for sorting...

 

Valentines...or holding...

 

...my Betty Lou spoon.  I don't know who Betty Lou is- but I know my Raisin Bran will taste better when I eat it with a Betty Lou spoon.

My find of the day was definitely this antique mercury glass vase.

 

It's next to an old wedding cake topper- something else I'm always on the look out for.

 

They're on top of a silverplate pedestal that was part of a couple stacks of silverplate serving pieces I found stacked in a box at a barn sale.

 

Guess what I'm going to do this afternoon?

There She Knits Again, Auction Finds & A Bad Back Yard

I've been on a scarf knitting kick lately- I love the feel of this cotton yarn and it's candy colors.

I read about a kind of knitting called "condo knitting".  I do not know why it's called that- it was big back in the 70's.  You use one BIG needle and one smaller needle to get kind of an open scarf pattern.

You can knit up a scarf really fast.  I made this one in about 3 hours last night.

Why, in the middle of summer would I want to be making scarves? Well, besides that the fact that I'm addicted to knitting- my backyard looks like this- not a great place to spend summer.

We had our foundation reinforced a couple of years ago, which led to a messy backyard, having a bad patio put in and drainage problems.  We had multipe issues to address and it seems like its taken forever to find someone to fix them that we thought was competant.  (I'm crossing my fingers that this works.)  So this is what your backyard looks like when someone spends a whole Sunday driving over it with a bobcat.  The sound of a bobcat is also a very good alarm for a Sunday afternoon nap.

So, besides knitting, I've been selling on eBay like a big dog- selling for sod is how I think of it- and then it'll be selling for deck money.  I seem to be much more motivated to push myself to list things on ebay when I have a goal in mind.

SO- if you're going to sell on ebay, you have to have something good to sell- so of course, I went to an auction.  I'm actually not going to show you the stuff that I got to sell on ebay- it's boring (to me at least)- Norwegian pewter, DAR ribbons, old chauffers badges.  But someone will want it...sometimes people ask me what I sell on eBay, and my answer is usually "anything I can make money on- except drugs and porn".   I'm not even sure that the porn part is true- last week I sold some Vargas pin up calendars.  Maybe I need to change that to "anything except drugs and HARDCORE porn".

So- at the auction, I did manage to find a few things that I'll keep for myself.

The piece on the right is a Victorian match safe.  The piece on the left, I believe, is part of a woman's chatelaine.  According to Wikipedia, a chatelaine is "a set of short chains on a belt worn by women and men for carrying keys, thimble and/or sewing kit, etc". 

This opens to show celluloid calendar pages. This one only has four days- apparently the Victorians had short weeks.

I also snagged this hat with gorgeous velvet roses for The Hat Whisperer herself (Karla). And now, I better get back to making sod money.

ONE Decent Estate Sale + Cuttling & Crafting = A Good Day

My regular Thur routine of estates sales did NOT start out very well.  The first sale I went to  at 9 am didn't actually open until 11.  The second sale was full of sky high prices, but it didn't really matter because I didn't see anything I wanted any way- not even the Ralph Lauren sweater for $65.  The third sale was so sparse that I don't even recall any of the details- except I didn't buy anything.  This is NOT my usual pattern- I was hot, tired and discouraged and decided to head home when I saw  a sign for am estate sale that I hadn't marked in the classifieds.

Luckily, I can rally into a buying mode in the blink of eye, because the sale was great.  Lots of vintage crafting and sewing supplies.  A precious pin cushion with a velvet emery strawberry, gold rick rack, velvet leaves for crafting, thimbles, lace and sewing baskets.

A bag of these little gold curtain clips- you can use them for hanging your curtains, or to make an easy to change valance.  I've used them to clip a lace scarf to the cafe curtain on my back door, and Karla uses them to clip vintage hankies to the top of her sheer panel curtains.  They also make cute hangers for craft projects.

They also look nice just resting in a gold trim  bowl.

I found a pretty blue velvet sewing box with a nice quilted lining.  The lining has a little wear and tear, but I kind of liked that- it adds to the character.  And it makes a great place to keep your Girl Scout pin.

This ca 1900 crazy quilt is so heavy that you almost don't even want to touch it on a 95 degree day, but I know I'll love how cozy it will look on cool evening in October.

What IS going to feel nice on a hot July night is these old and soft cotton pillowcases with a lace insert and lace edge.  I'm not sure what the initial is- maybe "M" for MINE.

One more estate sale find- this Bessie Pease Gutmann 1906 print- it's called Making Up.  I love the old Eastlake wood grain frame, too.

I finished up my shopping with a smile on my face and headed home to pack up to go to Karla's to craft.  I followed through on my plan to take everything on the top of my craft table (and the boxes of paper on the floor) to Karla's.  All that was left on table was the telephone book I use to glue on, handy wipes and a tub of scissors.  (and it's stayed that way- the tags on the table are the projects I worked on at Karla's.)

I met up with Shawn, Marilyn and Gwen at Karla's. Karla had a made an initial tag for each of us. I love the rich neutral style of my tag- and that flocked wallpaper- yummy!

Shawn brought her Cuttle bug and we were all amazed at what you could do with it- cut fabric flowers, emboss card stock, tags, sheet music- the possibilities are endless. 

Gwen has lived in France and buys antiques by the 40 foot container--I think it's a big deal when I fill up the back of my Scion- anyway, Gwen brought lots of wonderful French ephemera, ribbons, lace- yummy yummy stuff.

And French text pages (and card stock) look great cuttled.

Gwen brought us each some great French ribbon, game pieces and tiles.  She has so much cool stuff, we think she should start a blog, open an Etsy shop and share some of her French flair.

I used the Cuttle bug to emboss card stock and then inked the card- easy background.

Karla had her binding machine out, and I used it to bind little manila envelopes into a book.

Crafting can be a kind of solitary activity- cutting and pasting by yourself late into the night, so  it's fun to be able to share a day laughing with and learning from other people that like the same things that you do.

Bumper sticker for the day:  Grab a friend and craft something!

Sewing Collages ...and a Few Others

 

During my incredibly hectic and busy of July schedule of knitting scarves and watching Law and Order marathons, I dug into the pile of papers on my craft table and put together a few things.  And, not surprisingly, a lot of them had some kind of sewing or button theme.  These girls were cut from pattern envelopes.

I've posted before about "clean up crafts"- making things from the bits and pieces that are left on my craft table, but I've come to the conclusion that if I don't clean off my table completely at some point, I'll never get to start a new project- the scrap pile grows faster than I can glue it down!

 

So, I'm going to  Karla's on Thursday for a craft day- and I think I'm just going to sweep everything on the top of my table into a box and take it along- I'll have one more day of "clean-up crafts" and come home to an empty craft table- "Oh my, whatever shall I work on?"

 

I'm sure I'll come up with something...

If your in the mood for some button fun, Abbie is hosting a swap at Button Floozies, and as Abbie says "Closet Floozies are welcome too!"

Vintage Wallpaper Book - Before & After

For my birthday, Karla gave me this wallpaper book that she made.  She used pieces of vintage wallpaper, old postcards and made them into a book with her handy dandy binding machine.

I like to add pictures, trim, buttons, jewelry, old postcards, lace etc etc to the pages kind of randomly.

It's a good way to use up those pretty scraps that accumulate on my work table. And this is probably about as close to an art journal as I'll get.

Here are some "before" and "after" pictures.

Plethora refers to my buttons, Karla's millinery flowers and both of our wallpaper collections.

 

 

I've still got quite few a pages to finish- but its nice to know that when I want to craft, I have an easy fun and pretty project to work.  This afternoon I'm working on this:

Yep, Christmas- it's going to take some doing to get me in a Christmas mood on July 5th.

I had to include one sewing (sort of) picture.  This is kind of a tribute to the latest issue of Somerset Living.  Karla and I were looking at her preview issue- Karla has a lot of projects in the current issue- and we were intrigued by Somerset's use of string.

This is Grace, my 18 month old (great) niece, taking after Auntie Bethus, and sorting buttons. But I think you should be SMILING when you're sorting buttons. Apparently Grace takes her button sorting very seriously!

If you're still jonsing for more buttons- check out the Button Floozy Blog.

Baby Button Cards

To avoid complete button withdrawl, I wanted to share a couple of baby cards I made using the new Button Card collection from The Vintage Workshop.

The collection has other buttons cards, not just baby- but these are just so darn cute the card practically makes itself.

I don't know if you can tell from the scan, but I did sew a few REAL buttons on each card- I think that gives it a nice 3-d look.