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Friday, February 11, 2011

Big Football Game Mystery/Baby Quilt

A friend's link to a mystery quilt on (dare I use the trade-marked name?) Super Bowl Sunday grabbed my attention. It was supposed to be a table-topper. I decided to make it bigger so it could be a baby quilt and I chose to make it in red, blue and yellow. Red and Blue for the Kansas University parents. Yellow added because red and blue and yellow look really great together! Using just three fabrics is NOT in my comfort zone! Why use three when you have thirty? But I did!

I pieced the mystery on Sunday. If you take off your glasses and squint to blur your vision, can you see the football? The football should be easier to spot - can you see my mistake?


Not a big deal, certainly not worth the frog-stitching fixing the mistake would require!


I like baby quilts to be about 60 x 45". To make the table-topper bigger, piece a few more blocks, presto-chango - baby quilt! Not quite that easy, as the football in the center made that territory un-touchable! So my extra blocks were added to the top and bottom. Presto-chango - baby quilt!


Cute top, quilting to be done at a later time!

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Vintage DellaJane...


One part of my sewing life is "new". I dye and sell DellaJane Hand Dyed fabric. I make quilts, mostly non-traditional. But I've always loved old things. Antique furniture. Old houses. Postcards and photos. And I especially love old sewing things. Vintage fabric! Quilts! And sewing patterns! I buy and sell and collect them. I'll be sharing pictures and stories about my vintage treasures on this blog. Please come back to visit and see what wonderful "new" finds I'm writing about.

The treasure I am sharing today came to me a couple weeks ago, when a friend gave me a large plastic tub of patterns from her mother-in-law's estate. She knew I liked "old patterns". Wow!

They are mostly mail order patterns, ordered from Grit, The Omaha World-Herald, Capper's Weekly, Hoard's Dairyman and the Sioux City Journal. Patterns from Kate Marchbanks, Anne Cabot, Vogart, Aunt Martha, Aunt Ellen, Carol Curtis, and more!

I can't wait to catalog them, scan the pattern covers and share them here. Do I start with the Spring 1952 issue of Vogart or the Work Basket from 1948? Maybe the Grandmothers Art Needlework catalog dated Fall, 1954. The undated items will require a little detective work. Is that postmark readable? You'll see more details of the items in the picture, along with other patterns from my collection. See you soon!