Thursday, August 13, 2009

My Inheritance

Those of you who have been reading my blog for awhile will remember this emotional post about a year ago. Well, about a month ago I received the rest of my inheritance from my grandmother: two trunks of antique quilts! My mom (the quilt hoarder) has a lot more, but she let me have these :)

An antique scrap quilt. Most of these fabrics are leftovers from the other quilts in our family collection.
This is a well-loved and very faded quilt
Perfect hand piecing
I couldn't believe it when I saw this one (my hubby is a pilot)!
This one is just amazing: needle-turn applique and embroidery:

A closeup of one of the blocksAnother embroidery one, very faded:
I also got an antique sewing machine from my Aunt. She was using it as a table, and knew I would love it, so she gave it to me. Isn't that sweet? Something is stuck in the table, so I haven't been able to get the sewing machine out yet. My hubby will have to use his carpentry skills to fix it.

Here's the instruction manual:
The sewing feet in a velvet-lined metal box:
And the little drawers were still full of vintage notions!
Some threads:
And rick rack:
I love it all so much and feel so blessed to have received all these treasures from my family. If any of you have any advice for displaying and caring for antiques quilts, I'd love to hear it!

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Mail Call!

Today I got two books I had pre-ordered from Amazon. "Blogging For Bliss" and Tilda's new book "Sew Sunny Homestyle". "Blogging for Bliss" is just fabulous. If you haven't got it already, run out and get it!

I'm a big fan of Tilda, and I had seen some photos of her new book on Flickr. It was released in Norway last winter, I think. There was a cute little mouse in it, and I had no idea what projects were in this book, but I went ahead and ordered it. You can see all the pages I have marked already! And that was within 10 minutes of opening the box!

Here's what's first up on my "must make" list:
How cute are those "cake" pincushions??
I know a couple of friends who would like one of these:
A jewlery keeper:
Ta-da!! The adorable mouse! He needs to be in my sewing room!
And look at these cute little houses!
So you all know what I'll be up to. My quilt buddy Stef has been showing me up with all of her completed projects. She got me inspired to get back to work on my UFO's. Back to the sewing room!