Out Antiquing!

With the price of gas these days ((And yes, I KNOW it is double what we are paying over in Europe and beyond, but it still smarts a bit here!)) I don’t want to make short little jaunts – I want them all to count as one big loop together to make the best use of my time and money. That meant that Post Office, Bank, Car Dealership, Sew & Vac and Massage were all on the same loop yesterday afternoon.

That also means that instead of running home with 2 hours to burn in between the Car Dealership where I needed them to PLEASE fix it so my new phone connected to the blue tooth in the car so I could talk HANDS FREE ((And they fixed it! Genious!)) and my Massage that wasn’t until 5pm ---I spent some time just browsing some favorite haunts that I hadn’t gotten to in quite a while.

You saw the machine from the Salvation Army store yesterday via iphone-o-gram. But what you didn’t see are the lovely antique quilts I found at a local antique mall! Some finds were sweet, some were funny, all had me running my fingers over the stitches wondering who the makers were, and how/why did they end up in an antique mall in hopes that someone would take them home and love them?

The first pic of course is NOT a quilt, but a machine – poor beat up piece of history, too abused to be of “Much” value, but I turned her hand crank, and she moved just fine. I wonder what was stitched on her? Wedding gowns? Baby clothes? Household items? The every day chore of mending and patching --- and maybe….there were quilt pieces that went under this needle too.

This sweet green and pink bear paw variation caught my eye….at first glance I couldn’t see that there were bear paw triangles on the green squares…..it looked totally like an asymmetrical block to me…does it to you? But look:

The pinks have faded…but I can see pink triangles around those green squares!

And since it is spring, and Easter is on the way ---Let’s put the Easter bonnets ON the ducks!! It looks like someone got into Sunbonnet Sue’s closet and ran off with all her bonnets..LOL! The fabrics were really funny --- this one made it look like she had appliqued an eye:

Maybe it’s not a duck. Maybe it’s a --- buzzard? :cD

These just made me giggle ----with those bonnets just perched on top of the heads….but maybe if it was wearing the bonnet like SUE wore hers, you’d never be able to tell it was a bird at all, the whole head would be invisible? :cD

I turned the corner to catch a glimpse of vibrant color --- drawn to it like moth to flame ---and found a double-knit polyester wonder ---- big triangles set in broken dishes with some checkerboard going on at the bottom end. It was heavy and stretchy, just a top. I remember my mom making pant suits out of this kind of fabric when I was little. That stuff was always kinda itchy --- and HOT! There wasn’t room to lay this one fully out --- cramped quarters and narrow hallways.

Now this is more to my liking! Very springy cactus baskets 1930’s style! pink backgrounds, blue sashings, yellow cornerstones and baskets – and the basket tops are all scrappy. LOVE the large fan quilting!

Isn’t this just sweet?! Definitely a good season for Easter Baskets!

Lots of 1930’s love found yesterday. This top was tied as a comforter --- and used and used and used. Kind of sad to see it so shredded, but on the other hand, it covered those the maker loved while they dreamed. It lived its life as it was intended to.

Here you can see the ties that held the layers together --- and even see the hand stitching in the lighter areas. It felt like it had a heavy wool blanket inside. It was only held together by random ties – it might have survived better if it had been quilted closer.

A very funky double wedding ring with big stitch quilting and machine quilting too! Was this a multi-generation project?!

The arcs were all big stitched in the inside, but the melons and around them were zig zagged!

A tied wooly kaleidoscope, busy and fun!

My diggings unearthed a treasure --- a feathered star!

All kinds of bells and whistles were going off on this one ----do you see the half round shapes in the center of each star block? They are all slightly different which gave me the clue that there were indeed different makers for each block. Look:

Lovely red and cheddar and a sweet print background. Some of the melon shapes were appliqued, some had machine stitching, some reverse appliqued! All different kinds of skill levels.

The points on this one are pretty precise --- and the round tops of her melons are machine stitched!

Big chunky rounds…and evidence of a pen and ink signature or initials in the center….

Close up: The ink…and the larger round half melons, appliqued, not machine stitched ---

Love the pink plaid in the center! And this one had embroidered initials…

Oh, I love the colors in this one! See how different the size of those half round thingies are? Don’t you wish you knew more about how this quilt came to be?

Love this fabric combo too! Not to mention the cheddar/blue sashings! Still different shapes yet when it comes to those melon thingies --

I love the simple red blue/cream combo…..and how the quilting shows up in this photo. Double diagonals in the border…simple echoing (twice) in the side triangles, and X’s in the corner squares. Can you see the machine top stitching on the melons?

Sweet color combos! Yellow and pink and burgundy! Taller pointier melons! Only two of the blocks I found had evidence of signatures or initials.

Lots of cheddar, lots of double pink….browns and blues, but something could have faded out along the way ---I love this in all its wonkiness!

And just before you think that’s all I found ((As if that feathered star didn’t completely blow me away!))

How about a sweet piece of Americana? Look at these fun churn dashes!

It had a wide red paisley binding, with curved corners. I flipped it to check the backing fabric --- somewhere around 1890-1910 as far as I can guess --- and my favorite of that time period – quilting in BLACK THREAD! I love black thread quilting!

Check out this awesome block! It has Masonic Symbols – Compass and the Square. What an interesting novelty!

I spread it out to get a better look. Do you see the churn dash with the two blue corners and two red ones? FUN! And I love that odd cream bit in the bottom border where they ran out of blue.

And if you guessed that THIS is the one that came home with me ---- you guessed right! As much as I loved that feathered star – this is the one that called to my heart in all its simplicity!

And now I get to confess that it is still in the car because DH was home when I got home last night and I didn’t want to bring it into the house yet…LOL!