Gathering Dust

Bulk Buys

One of my ongoing resolutions is to have better control over my inventory for my antique business.  Basically, I'd like to get to the point where I don't have tubs of merchandise in the living room and guest room.

But the other side of that situation is that the best way for me to get vintage lovelies to resell is to buy in bulk. 

At a recent estate sale, I had a chance to buy these plates for $1.00 a piece.  I didn't take the time to meander through them and hem and haw about which ones I wanted.  It's so much easier to just take them all.  Sure some might be chipped, or have a strange looking cow on them, but overall, that was a pretty good deal.

I know that calender plates were once a really hot collectible.  Local merchants like J Hait (on this cupid plate) gave the plates away to their customers at Christmas or New Years.

I think this rose plate from Burdett Kansas is my favorite.

When I found a bag full of lace and pieces of feedsack quilts, how could I not buy them?  Some one put so much time into cutting and stitching them, they had to come home with me.  Even though I'm trying to limit my craft supplies purchases to things I know exactly what I'll do with, it seemed ok to make an exception for someone else's supplies.

And thousands and thousands of index cards with music printed on them.  What a great craft supply, not for me, of course; but to sell to someone else. I have them listed in my Etsy shop.

Boxes of  old watch parts- they must be good for something.  I know I just like to look at those old porcelain watch faces.

Even more cutting back on my craft supplies, I'm on a strict yarn embargo.  But I didn't buy this yarn to use.  I bought it because it came in such a cute basket.  I was going to throw the yarn away.  But when I started taking it out of the carrier, I really like the cream, blue and pink color combination...

And wouldn't you have bought the forbidden yarn too, if it came in this barkcloth knitting bag?

 

The Quilt Saver

I've given myself a new name- "The Quilt Saver" and a new mission- rescuing quilts that are no longer suitable as blankets or bed coverings, but have too many hours of work and too many beautiful elements to be discarded. 

It's kind of like the greyhound dog rescue program where dogs that once raced are retired, except you don't have to feed and walk a quilt.

In the last few years, I've run across several quilts that were really works of art, but  time has taken its toll and the quilts are just too fragile to be used for their original purpose.

I've been trying to repurpose bits and pieces of the quilts in other projects.

I made this little pillow from a late 1890's or early 1900's friendship quilt. You can see that the silk has shredded in many places and in some spots I actually glued the silk to an underlying piece of foundation fabric.  The Admiral Dewey piece is a cigar silk- a small printed piece of silk given away with boxes of cigars.

I've heard that people made complete quilts featuring many different cigar silks, but I've only seen one.  The fragile nature of the silk hasn't left many of those quilts still around.

The reason I called this a friendship quilt is I think it was made by several people who embroidered their names and little motifs to the quilt.

I took a bit of one quilt and wrapped (and glued) it around this vanity box.

I couldn't completely cover the ragged edges or shredded silk, but when I use this little box to store craft supplies, I like knowing that I repurpsed a little bit of this 100+ year old quilt.

With this flower basket stitching, I actually used the back of a handstitched quilt as the foundation.  I sewed a crocheted flower basket to the quilt and then added flowers snipped from different pieces of lace to fill up the basket.

The quilt was red and white and all hand stitched and hand quilted.  The red fabric has started to tear, fade and just disappear in a lot of spots, but I loved the softness of the hand quilted back of the quilt.

Here's another piece I stitched using the back of the red & white quilt.

You can see how much time and effort went into making these beautiful but now tattered treasures.  I'm not a quilt conservator, but I hope by repurposing parts of these pieces of the past I'm showing my appreciation for all those who stitched before me. 

("All those who stitched before me" sounds a little bit like Halle Berry's Oscar speech, I don't mean to be overly dramatic, but the words fit how I feel about appreciating works from the past.)

 

January Craft Day

Earlier this week Karla and I had a craft day at my house.  Most of the time when I take pictures for my blog, I try to arrange and style everything to look "just so".  But the picture above is a "Let's get real" picture of what my workspace actually looks like.

Karla gave me this beautifully wrapped Christmas present.  It seems like the last few years, December is so busy that we  end up exchanging Christmas presents in January.

Inside was this incredible handmade journal- every detail is just gorgeous.  The fabric is salvaged from slipcovers and the French net lace is from curtains that once hung in Karla's kitchen.  It really is made from "the good stuff".

I told Karla it was just TOO pretty for me to just play, paste and doodle in- it was just too nice to actually use.  Karla convinced me that she made it for me to use, and I better do just that.  So, I'm going to- and hopefully it will inspire me to step up my journaling a notch.

My main craft day accomplishment was finishing this fashionable lady flip book that's been in the works for years.

For Christmas, my Mom had given me a book about Zentangles.  I'm really having fun playing with these patterned doodles.

Karla used the Zentangle book to inspire this doodle page in her journal.  I love the way she used her painting talents to shade and highlight the designs.

A craft day was a great way to break up this long cold January, and I'm excited to "use the good stuff" in my new journal.

Instagram Redux

Just a few random pictures of vintage finds and crafting that I've posted on Instagram.

I think I've shown these Nordic inspired ornaments before, but this is a reminder for me to make more for 2015, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to start NOW.

A Charlotte family living among buttons and old sewing tools.

Cigar box storage in my craft room....

...holding necessities like vintage drug store labels.

Brrrrr.... below 0 windchill factor here today, and I'm guessing it will be chilly where ever  you might be in North America.   Try and stay warm!

1922

Last week I was restocking my booth at the antique mall and I noticed a woman who I recognized as a regular customer, a lady I've seen at the mall for years.  I don't think she buys a lot, but she lives near by and likes to walk over to the mall for a little exercise and to get out of the house.

She doesn't usually say  much, so I was surprised when she approached me and said "I bought your calendar- the one from 1922, because that was the year I was born."

I replied "Thank you, I'm glad you found something you liked". 

She said "I was born on a Wednesday.  I didn't know that before I bought the calendar".

Something about that just tickled me.  Even when you're 92 years old, you can still learn something about yourself.

This Is What I Know

...Just some very random and unrelated observations I've made since Christmas.  I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in ND at my brother's house, and a few more days with my parents.

1.  If I fly at Christmas time, I will be sick by New Years.  Airplanes are giant incubators for colds and flu.  But I'm on the mend now and with a couple more days rest and ibuprofen, I'll be good to go.

2.  Cute idea for a Christmas decoration from my SIL- wrap a piece of foamcore in gift wrap, add a bow, and hang on the wall.

3.  Christmas decorations don't have to be green and red- or silver and gold.  I love this combination of green, purple and blue ornaments in a battery jar with a little string of lights.

4.  My Mom makes the best Christmas dessert in the world- Bavarian cream pastry.

5.  You can crochet this scarf in 3 hours.  Using a size P Hook and two skeins of  Isaac Mizrahi yarn, chain 130, double crochet in all the chains, make the standard three chains to turn and double crochet again until you run out of yarn. 

(When you're at the end of a row and it doesn't look like you'll have enough yarn to finish the next row, stop.  You want all of your rows to be equal width.)

6.  A beer candle is a cool gift for a beer "connoisseur", but it also smells a little bit like a frat house on Sunday morning.

My Mom and Dad have been married 55 years and they still make a cute couple.

(I warned you at the beginning, very random stuff going on here.)