Antiquing at Gary’s Picks!

Next door to Prairie Stitches in Oswego, IL is a darling antique shop called “Gary’s Picks.”

Don’t you just feel like quilts and antiques just GO together? I wish all antique stores had quilt shops next door to them, or the quilt shops would have antique malls next to them – how much happier would this girl be?

After we had our little shopping spree at Prairie Stitches ---we wandered next door to see what interesting things we would find.

We weren’t disappointed!

Old bicycles and model planes up by the antique tin ceiling? A feast for the eyes! Where do we start first? I’m usually pretty methodical when discovering a place like this…it’s either cover every inch going clockwise or counter clock wise…depending on where the first quilty item sighting is found!

How about a cutter quilt piece of a string star behind glass, with some bits of vintage thread crochet tucked in? I loved this – if my suitcase weren’t already at weight limits, and if this wasn’t fragile, it might have come home with me!

I spied some burgundy and white folded up in a basket, and we unfolded it to reveal this “Baby Bunting” quilt ---isn’t this a striking pattern? I think those are Sandy’s feet below the quilt, and Jan is in the pink holding the edge up ---

Here’s a close up of the blocks…the quarter circle at the base of the arrays is machine topstitched --- evidently this piecer did not enjoy curved piecing either! She machine appliqued them down! My guess is that this quilt dates to around 1910.

Not far from the 1910 quilt was a 1960’’s elongated hexie! Look at those prints! These are the prints of my early childhood ---I can’t believe we actually wore any of this stuff…LOL Do YOU recognize any of these fabrics?!

We wandered the aisles, picking up things, examining them, talking about them, “remembering when” and firmly deciding that if those items happened DURING our life times, they could not POSSIBLY be described as ANTIQUE ---right?!

There was a very cute, albeit fairly shredded and fragile “Not quite an ocean waves” scrappy top….that had me fascinated just by the pattern play.

It had fun fabrics from about 1920 on forward through the 30s..maybe into the 40s…but it had been washed and was all a thread mess on the back side and the edges were really ragged -- -fun though, don’t you agree?

a 1970s hexagon quilt was peeking out of a drawer…some of the fabrics look as new as the modern fabrics today --- and that FLORAL!? It reminds me of Goldie Hawn’s dress on Laugh In back in the day! ((Sock it to me!))

Some giant scrappy vintage maple leaf blocks in wild fabrics ---

And a more traditional Grandmother’s Flower Gardn in lovely 30s prints with nile green pathways --

There’s Jan doing “Killroy” behind a 1960s funky log cabin quilt….this had really great fabrics in it!

And sigh – this pretty baby, a singer 66 needed to stay behind – as much as I tried to convince the girls that someone needed to adopt her --- she was in beautiful shape, but a bit pricey ---someone will adopt her and give her a new life.

If you are planning a visit to Prairie Stitches, be sure to leave some time to explore Gary’s Picks right next door. It was a real treat!