More Vintage

Mom gave me these beautiful crochet pieces. They were part of her collection and not made by anyone in my family.

This is a lovely dresser scarf or table runner:

Here are two doilies that would probably have been used on the arms of a chair:

They were probably never ever used:

This is a lace trimmed linen table runner. If my dining room table wasn't piled high with sewing supplies and projects, I might use one of the many table runners I have in my collection. I think this is a kind of bobbin lace. I am not sure, as I have never tried making bobbin lace.

I like to use my rainbow crochet afghan underneath my crochet photos. I tired of crocheting that blanket before I finished it, but it does generously cover one side our our queen sized bed on chilly nights.

Nostalgia!

One of the reasons I started this blog was to keep track of my own projects and to archive the vintage linens in the family collection. My mom has been cleaning out her house and has given me piles of lovely sentimental things and I am hopelessly behind on photographing them.

Among the things she has found in the corners of my childhood home are some art projects I did in school. Here is a very surprised looking portrait of someone:



I made this in 1976 when I was in Mrs. Mustoe's 4th grade class.



In fact, here is a picture of that very class. I'm the girl in the middle row on the far right below the teacher. On facebook, someone tagged the little girl with the glasses in the front row as Liz Phair whose indie rocker career has cooled a bit in the last decade, and the boy below me in the front row is a successful producer of short lived guilty pleasure prime time soap operas.


At any rate, don't think I was particularly talented with clay, but here is a wall hanging we appliqued in art class:



I love that blue burlap. I suppose someone still sells soft burlap like that, but I don't see it at my fabric stores..

Mom also found some very beautiful crocheted things. These were not made by anyone in my family, but they are still lovely.





My grandma gave these thread crochet aprons to my mom because Mom used to hold a little vintage style tea party for a small but lucky group of little students of hers. The tea party was a fundraiser offering at her elementary school. I think I was already away at college when the tea parties occurred.



If I had a vintage style waistline, I would totally wear these.

Circus Embroidery - Free Patterns!

Last spring I posted about a circus embroidery piece my Grandma Nelson did for my mom when mom was a child. That would have been sometime in the 1940's. People really liked it and recently Shawn Lorette contacted me at Flickr to see if I would allow her to make tracings of that embroidery piece so that free patterns can be available to people who want to embroidery it themselves.

HERE is her flickr photoset for the tracings. If you want to copy them, you choose the picture you like and click on "All Sizes" You can download the image to your own computer or print off a copy in a size you choose.

Thanks, Shawn Lorette for making these available! Be sure to let me know at Flickr or here on my blog if you stitch any of these circus motifs. My Grandma would love it!

Vintage Tea Towels

I unearthed some more of the adorable embroideries Mom gave me from the things that were my Grandma Nelson's. She definitely used these tea towels. I remember them sort of in her kitchen.

Don't you love the gingham applique? The angry flowers are so funny.

Here are a colorful girl and boy in their folksy clothes out in the jaunty garden.

Tonight I'm taking the Brownie Troop to see Mary Poppins downtown in Chicago. Everyone is raving about the show. This is our last activity as Brownies. Next year they'll be Junior Girl Scouts. How fast things change!

Mothers Day

I'm remembering my sweet, gentle Grandma McKee today. In this photo, it is the mid 1930's and she is holding her first baby, my Uncle Curtis.

She always had a beautiful project in her hands. When they stayed with us in the summer and over the Christmas holiday, she would always be making beautiful thread crochet motifs that she would assemble into heirloom tablecloths for all her grand daughters and grand nieces.

Here she is with my beautiful Aunt Nancy who sadly passed away this year.

She made cross stitched quilts like this one for all of her adult children. This one was Aunt Nancy's. I am grateful to the family who saw to it that I would receive it. She made a red version of this for my Mom and Dad. This blue one is dated 1965.

I feel a strong connection to both of my grandmothers. Their personalities could not have been more different, but they had the same hobbies which I find that I share. My Grandma N favored sewing and quilting and crafted with her girlfriends for sales and church bazaars. Grandma McK was a content and kind spirit. She stitched in her younger years, but I only remember the thread crochet. Several family members have handmade wool braided rugs that she made with scraps. Her afghans were used and loved.

Gram passed away shortly after Mothers Day about 12 years ago after a long, devastating decline from Alzheimers Disease. Even in the worst stages of her illness, she was kind, loving and sweet, especially to my Grandfather.

Happy Mothers Day to you all. I hope you take this day to remember sweet times with the matriarchs in your families.

Vintage Printed Linens

I love winter, but this was a really bad one. It was frigid cold for a long long time. At least we had some snow here to brighten things up. The weather here has turned beautiful, at least for the last few days. My lawn is starting to green up a little and I see some very small buds on the trees.

With all this bright sunshine, I feel like I want to put away my old stuff and make way for some new things in my house and my life. My mom has been doing just that. She cleaned out her vintage linen collection and gave me some of her treasures. We think some of these printed linens may have been my grandma's but at this point, we can't remember and we aren't sure that it matters. Mom has collected vintage kitchen linens at antique stores for years and years. She has always favored red.

This one may be my favorite:




This one is a beautiful soft linen. It must have been used and loved, but it has no stains at all:





I think this one is new. A long table runner was cut in half to make two shorter runners. Mom used these out in her back garden for summer picnics and luncheons:


This is a vintage tea towel. It is a soft, thick cotton.

For awhile, the style was to collect these vintage things and sew them up into kitchen curtains and throw pillows. I think that may still be in fashion, but I don't have the heart to cut vintage things up unless they are stained and worn out. I'm so happy to have these lovely things for my kitchen and my summertime patio.

Thanks, Mom!

Chicken Scratch Embroidery

PAT and VIP are super excited about their embroidered gingham! I was relieved to finally find this McCalls booklet. Grandma had saved it since 1962 and it came to me when she passed away 5 years ago.

This has illustrations and pattern information for sewing patterns McCalls sold at the time and then on the opposing page is the gingham pattern:


There is a lot of retro charm here:


Most of the cross stitching is really simple:


In case you have never cross stitched, it is easy to learn. Here are some instructions:


I like these simple geometrics:





Unfortunately, I don't think the charm of chicken scratch embroidery really shows in this booklet. It would benefit from some actual photographs. I did a "chicken scratch embroidery" search at Flickr and found some wonderful projects HERE.

I bet someone has these pattern packs offered by McCalls in the early 1960's. I sure wish Grandma had these!


I have a few more photos of this booklet at my flickr HERE. You can see the full sized patterns if you click on a photo and then click "All Sizes".

I have done some aprons with some embroidery like this along with rick-rack. I actually think this was from a modern McCall's apron pattern. This is an old photo taken with my old, bad camera:

I love gingham, but....

This is like Holly Hobby on crack:



I found my grandma's stash of embroidery on gingham patterns. They were hiding with my cross stitching stuff. This was an article from the June, 1979 issue of Better Homes and Gardens.
The patterns they included were very simple geometrics:


Even better is the 1962 McCall's booklet, "Cross Stitch on Gingham":


This one has good simple patterns I'll share with you tomorrow.

Hankies

What a relaxing weekend! the weather here was perfect. It was so cool, most of the bad mosquitoes were scarce.

Since I'm not crafting too much lately, here is a visit with one of my collections. I've been collecting vintage handkerchiefs for years. My mom gives me a little stack at almost every gifting opportunity. We find them at antique malls and they used to be had for about a dollar, but now they are more expensive.

My mom favors the ones with highly detailed thread crochet or tatted edgings.


I love those, but I have a soft spot for the printed ones. Particularly if they have unusual colors. Mostly I have florals or nature motifs and not so much of the ones that are tourist souvenirs, although those are great too.



Occasionally, Mom finds printed ones that have beautiful handstitched edges:


Once Mom hosted a bridal brunch for a close family on the bride's wedding day and we gave several beautiful hankies from my collection as favors for the bridal party and the groom's family who had traveled all the way to Chicago from Brazil for the event. The bride used a beautiful elaborate white one at the altar and has saved it as a pretty keepsake.

Here's the pile of scraps from some of the hankies I used in a quilt as a gift for my mom. It was very difficult to get up the courage to cut into them, but I managed and the quilt turned out cute.


I've clipped a lot of patterns and ideas for ways to use vintage hankies, but I hate to cut them up! This is only a small sample of my collection. I switch a few of them in and out of a couple of decorative places in the house, but mostly, they go into a beloved drawer that I browse through fairly regularly.