Vintage Swap 2009

These last few weeks thrifting has taken on an added level of excitement as I prepared a package for Julia as part of Vintage Swap 2009, organized by Heather of Shivaya Naturals. Julia told me she liked muted colors, blues, greens and browns and was interested in vintage fabrics to make things for her Etsy shop.

This is what I found for her:

A few vintage napkins, a vintage pillowcase, several yards of a vintage flowered fabric and that lovely blue vintage flannel — there’s lots of that. Just right for Etsy sewing, I thought.

And a couple other little treats, like a pair of vintage green knitting needles and a few cards by my favorite Gwen Frostic.

So that’s the giving. But with swaps there’s always joy in the receiving, too and Julia did a lovely job finding treats for me:

Can you see there’s a teeny, tiny “h” on this teeny, tiny fork? Little vintage napkins, a tiny saucer, a lovely old pillowcase (just right for backing doll quilts), some buttons and two old Golden Books — Heidi and The Lively Little Rabbit, which I didn’t think I knew, until I saw this picture:

Who could forget an image like that? It came back to me in a flash — one of my favorite childhood books, rediscovered! Thank you so much, Julia! What a lot of joy you sent in one small package!

meet emily

{A finished Emily}

On Thursday, Lizzy said to me right after breakfast, “I want to make a doll.” And since it was yet another rainy Thursday, and I couldn’t think of any good reason why not, we went up the stairs to my studio hand in hand, and we spent the whole morning making her a doll. I don’t know how to make dolls. I’ve never made a doll, as far as I can remember, but it was so much fun to feel my way, with Lizzy’s help. First, she drew me a picture of the doll she wanted:

{Emily –originally known as Suki}

Then, she helped me with every stage of design, often asking Emily her opinion. “You want brown hair or black hair? Both? You want blue eyes?” I couldn’t be more proud that the two of us managed to put together such a sweet, warm and lovely little doll person, with just a very small bit of sewing know-how, wool batting and fabric scraps. And now I’m in the doll business, it seems, because the next morning, after breakfast the first thing Lizzy said was, “Today I want to make Emily’s friend Jack.”

But doll making is a pretty good business to be in. I’m marveling at how far Lizzy and I have come, from her Goggle days, to now, when she can really work with me on a project that takes hours. Of course, those hours included lots of bead-spilling, yarn tangles, fabric cutting (whoa — not that fabric, please! “But Mommy, I making her a kerchief!”) Amazing. And so lovable.

{Lizzy cutting wool batting for stuffing}

{Lizzy winding the wool for Emily’s hair}

{Emily’s underwear, made from a repurposed kid’s sock}

And that sums up how we’re feeling about Emily, too — amazing and lovable.

hats and more hats

More hats, more stripes. It’s looking more and more like a hat shop around here. Hats on the needles, hats in baskets, hats on the floor, hats on heads. Can’t stop wearing them. Can’t stop knitting them. Some are knitted and given away before I even have a chance to photograph them! This little person is happily modeling the newest hat around here.

I love the way this came out — fluffy and soft and tufty and sweet. Speaking to fall and spring at the same time. With each cold, rainy day I realize that winter is really coming and soon, too. So I can’t stay long — lots more hats to knit!

rainy day delights

Today was one of those rainy days in fall which sends the leaves swirling. Lizzy and I spent the morning at home, watching raindrops and making Halloween decorations out of paper for our windows.

Of course we had to go out exploring with umbrellas to carry and apples to eat.

Once Big Sister was home from school and the sky cleared, girls got to run and play and even found time to gather an autumn bouquet for Mommy. Lovely!

Then back home again to appreciate our paper pumpkin handiwork. My pumpkins are happy ones, with big eyes and cheery grins, but as you can see from the pictures below, Lizzy’s are, as she told me, “very, very ‘pooky! ‘Pooky, ‘pooky, ‘pooky!”

Spooky? Well, yes.

fall color arrives

I’ve been loving the seasonal photos posted around the web as fall arrives with its gorgeous coat on. This is just a little photo essay of my own to celebrate the colors we’re seeing, even in the city, in this beautiful but fleeting season…

Stripes for Fall

It seems like the arrival of fall each year also means the arrival of a new fall hat for Lizzy. Here’s last year’s entry. This year I hadn’t planned on knitting her a striped hat, but Fate intervened when I accidentally cast on 30 stitches too few on the wonderful Boyfriend Hat. And didn’t notice it until I’d finished the hat! I’d planned it to be another hat for my husband, but oops…now it’s for you, Lizzy! Hurray!

And it certainly suits her! Great for fall outings with Mommy, or a quick game of chase.

address book

Recently, I met many relatives that I’ve not seen in years, some that I’d never met! Afterward, I felt in need of an address book, so that when I’m writing a letter on the go, as I often am, I can address it, put on the stamp and voila!  In the mail. So I made myself one of these:

A lovely little address book. The pre-made text block came from Hollanders which has amazing book art and stationery supplies and the cover paper came from the Minneapolis Center for the Book Arts. I made a stop there on our recent trip to Minnesota — so great!

Soon I hope to make one of Soule Mama’s Gratitude Wraps to keep all these supplies safely snuggled up. For now it’s enough to have the addresses of those I love always nearby and ready for sending real mail!

kindergarten quilt

Recently I delivered the quilt that I made last year with C’s kindergarten classroom to their teacher, after having finished it over the summer. The children did all the drawings with fabric crayons and I pieced and sewed the quilt. I’d intended for the kids to do more of the actual sewing, but time got away from us. Yet even though it isn’t everything I’d hoped for, it’s such a powerful reminder of my daughter’s wonderful classful of kids. Each drawing brings a child vividly to mind.

Kid’s artwork is always delightful, but looking at this quilt, I realize I don’t often see the work of children pieced together, at least not at home. My two girls’ drawings and paintings hang on many walls of our house, but seeing 20 different children’s work in one quilt really brings out the true meaning of the word “kindergarten” — a garden of children, bursting with color and joy.

The quilt’s not perfect. To be honest, it’s a bit trapezoidal, but to me it’s so heartbreakingly beautiful. This quirky, lovely kindergarten quilt.

hand-me-down stash

My nearly 90-year-old great-aunt Janet was a wonderful quilter in her day. She pulled discarded quilt-tops out of burn bins around the countryside and finished them. She did most of her quilting by hand. I have a quilt she worked on, with her sister Betty, my grandmother. The gorgeous hand-sewn stitches go on and on.

During a recent visit to her amazing, sprawling old house at Pond Hole, in the Poconos, I received a lovely gift from her and her daughter Janney. They let me look through Aunt Janet’s fabric stash and choose some things I might have a use for. Aunt Janet said, with a mischievous smile, “I’m just not interested in quilting any more. Don’t know why.”

So these are some of the beautiful, vintage treasures I came away with. As I washed them and ironed them and touched each one, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of these little pieces, many bearing names of fabric companies that no longer exist, ABC Fabrics, John Ward Fabrics, anyone? Many pieces seemed to have been cut not for quilting, but for clothes. What were they made into? Did my father or his cousin Janney wear these patterns when they were little?

Here are a few of the pieces I love best. My favorites must have been my Aunt Janet’s favorites, too, since there’s not much left of those. Sometimes she saved just enough for one small square, as if even that tiny bit was too precious to throw away.

I don’t know what all these little pieces will become, but I feel so honored that they were given to me, pieces of my family’s past that could become a beautiful quilt in my family’s future. Thanks, Aunt Janet, for passing on your fabric and so much more.

sketching at the farm

It’s been a whirlwind few weeks and it will take me a while to catch up on my posts. My family and I had a vacation in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. We stayed on a beautiful little farm nestled in hills. Here are some sketches I did while we were there.

It was so lovely to hear the birds and bees chortling so loudly away. My city girls changed into country girls in a happy flash, running barefoot up and down hills, jumping out of hay lofts and spending long happy hours on the tire swing. More of that in the next post.

Their delightful busy play had a great advantage for me — they didn’t care what I was doing, so I got a lot of drawing and knitting and thinking done. Happy, happy days.