Archive for February, 2010

• Ladies Art Company Quilt Pattern Book – 1922

  Wednesday night I slipped and fell down our hardwood stairs.  Nothing is broken, but I am kind of a mess and pretty much stuck in bed — for a few days, anyway.  This seemed like a good opportunity to clean up and share this wonderful Ladies Art Quilt Pattern Book which I had scanned earlier.
  I [...]

  February 26th, 2010

• A to Z by Peter Mabie – 1929

  This is one of the best alphabet books I’ve ever seen — a 1929 Art Deco ABC book by the fabulous Peter Mabie. I don’t own this one (it’s prohibitively expensive), but over the past year I have slowly managed to find photos of the inside pages on library and auction sites. Because [...]

  February 25th, 2010

• Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

  This is a large mail order transfer dated 1938 from Laura Wheeler Designs (#2266). My copy is in pretty bad shape, with some mouse chews and stains in addition to the usual yellowing. Probably mothers don’t teach this poem to their children anymore because of the whole dying in their sleep thing. Of [...]

  February 23rd, 2010

• Antique Jacob’s Ladder Quilt Top

  This is my latest quilt top purchase. My plan (as usual) was to take this apart to make antique doll quilts, but now that I’ve had a chance to look at it in person, I am almost tempted to remake it in it’s current form. There are many puckers (which really bother me), [...]

  February 22nd, 2010

• Cross Variation Doll Quilt

  This quilt top was really a drag to quilt. On a doll quilt, I try to get my quilting stitches as small as possible so they fit the scale of the piece, but it’s hard on a top with this many tiny seams. The same thing happened when I originally quilted the Mariner’s Compass [...]

  February 19th, 2010

• Vintage Fabric Gallery — 1930s Greens

  Here are some photos of several of my vintage fabric pieces. I have collected thousands of scraps, small pieces and swatches, and I’d like to document some of these patterns before they get sewn into quilts. If you click on the thumbnails, the enlarged photo represents a rectangle about 2 1/2″ x 1 [...]

  February 18th, 2010

• Sawtooth Doll Quilt

  Barbara’s doll quilt is finished. One quick dip in a tea bath was just enough to tone down the bright white to match the border that I selected after I’d made all the blocks. My quilts are always done this way — never completely planned at the beginning.
  The quilting is diagonal [...]

  February 17th, 2010

• Sawtooth Doll Quilt Top

  Yesterday I made this doll quilt for my friend, Barbara, at Oodles and Oodles. Last month she sent me a box of cute vintage scraps which I assigned to several different quilt projects. A little doll quilt seemed like a nice way to thank her, and I was just thinking about the colors [...]

  February 14th, 2010

• Happy Valentine’s Day!

  February 13th, 2010

• Mariner’s Compass Doll Quilt Top

  This is a pattern from Mini Quilts From Traditional Designs, by Corcoran and Wilkinson. The book is out of print, but used copies are available on Amazon. I made this years ago when I first began using vintage fabric. The brown and tan background fabrics are reproduction, and the compass circles are [...]

  February 11th, 2010