Hand-Rolled Hems

Repairing vintage clothing for Basya Berkman Vintage for these last few years has lead me to learn about all sorts of clothing construction techniques that I've never had to use before.

My mentors have been the generous folks who post how-to's on the internet.  I have learned how to mend holes in sweaters, so far just with bulky knits.  I have learned how to make swing tacks.  And just recently I learned how to sew a hand-rolled hem.  Let me tell you, I am now addicted to hand-rolled hems.  They are nearly magical!  I honestly was grinning the whole time.

Silly, Silly

So here I am, having spent the day napping and nursing my incredibly sore sinuses and sometimes sore ears and throat.  And my mind, well, it's gone all silly.

My blog visitors graph is the culprit, and the cat head you all made by visiting my blog inspired me to add a little cartooning.  I hope you enjoy, and I'll be heading back to the couch now.

String Star

It's Thanksgiving here in the US.  This quilt combines stars and hearts and family mementos, so by way of giving thanks for brightness and love, here is its story.

This quilt came to me for minor repairs.  I find it very well balanced and visually pleasing.  The blocks are 25" square, so the overall effect is quite strong and graphic, but is balanced by the soft pink sashing and scrappy piecing of the stars.

Ballet Costumes and Inspiration

Welcome to some pre-holiday fun.

I recently visited Victoria Dancewear, a local ballet costume company.  Victoria designs ballet costumes, and has been in the clothing and costume biz all her life.  Victoria is my friend Julia's aunt, "the" Julia who sends me all the fun vintage clothing to repair for her Etsy shop.

Both Victoria and Julia credit their ancestor Basya Berkman for their love of clothing and design.  In fact, Julia named the Etsy shop in her honor.  It is so heartwarming that such an obviously creative and loving woman has such a wonderful legacy.

Blog Celebration

Thanks to everyone out there in internet-land who subscribes to and visits my blog!

Smiling Corn

Here's a 1950s Double 4-Patch comforter.  

It's got a fine collection of 1950s colors and prints.  Here are my favorites, with the best saved until last.

Crazy Quilt, c. 1925

Here's another beautiful crazy quilt to add to all the collection of crazies I've documented on this blog.  What makes this crazy quilt stand out from the crowd is the era and the fabric choices.

World Turn'd Upside Down

Dancing the Virginia Reel, 1897

Here's a great person I met via the internet.  She wrote to me about a post, and upon reading her blog and her "all about me", I saw that we have many, many interests in common.

Her name is Stephanie Ann and her blog, World Turn'd Upside Down, is a wonderful collection of all things historic.  She is a re-enacter, and so is interested in absolutely all aspects of historical lifeways.  There are hours of great reading here!  The illustrations in this post can be found, along with many others, on her blog.

Cleopatra's Fan

My entry in this year's Fine Art of Fiber show is another in my series of quilts called Something From Nothing.  This is my own little challenge project, made with decorator fabric samples and other "found object" fabrics and trims.  You can find photos of the whole collection on my website.

What follows are the steps I took to create this quilt.

My Quilt Care Book - Update

Hey, hey!  I am sooooo excited!!!  My book on caring for antique quilts is having just kind of success I hoped for!  

I heard recently from a quilt restorer who has been using the info in my book, and having great results.  She wrote, "I've consulted your book many times, so thanks again for the great advice."  

Here are her before and after photos, and comments.  I am extremely grateful for her permission to share them with you.  Just look at her beautiful work!

"The red, black and white quilt was used and much loved by the owner and her dog.  The dog had taken several areas away from the edges. I was extremely lucky to find fabrics that were very close in color.  I was able to add a little batting and stitch in the replacement pieces."

Favorite Quotes #6 - It's The Little Things

I've been caught up in a book by Elizabeth Goudge called "The Bird in the Tree".

It's a rather slow moving story - one that in the book group we had with homeschooling teens and their parents would have elicited the oft-heard comment, "But nothing happened."  So far, and I'm a third of the way into it, it's much more of a character study with lovely, lovely poetic descriptions of Nature and Life.  And I always love a good tale told in poetic language.

Here are a few noteworthy quotes, about art, and therefore about Life ......

Kampsville Quilts

What does this:

(photo IL State Museum)

have to do with this?


Answer:  Kampsville, Illinois.

Twinkle, Twinkle

Twinkle, Twinkle, Kathy's Star

This happy quilt came to me with several tears and some weak and splitting fabrics, which I patched.  The owner is taking the quilt to someone in her area that does long arm machine quilting, who can help replace at least some of the missing quilting.  The thread has weakened and snapped throughout the quilt.

There's nothing unusual to tell about the repairs.  It's the design and story that make this quilt special.

Here's the inscription on the label:

Three Pine Trees

The quiltmaker's name was Jeanette Cooper.  She was the second wife of the owner's great-grandfather, Herbert Dudley.  His first wife had died in childbirth and Jeanette was employed as the housekeeper.  She then married Herbert, and the owner's grandmother was their only child.  Jeanette died just two weeks before the owner's mother was born, in July 1933.

An additional family story tells that Jeanette's stepmother had tried to poison her when she was a child!  She certainly added some interesting tales to the family "story book."

Narrative Portraits

My Grandma, Marion Straus, c. 1899-1900

My previous post introduced you to a vintage collector I've just met via blogging, and some lovely old French fabrics.  Here's an intro to another friend of mine.

My friend Barbara Novak has a really interesting and unusual business.  She makes audio recordings of elders speaking about their lives and experiences so that they can review and interpret their lives, and so that families can keep and share family tales and memories.  She's just recently been starting up a second theme - stories about birthing babies.  Barb has loads of experience as an oral historian and interviewer, and is able to gently draw out lots of information and thoughtful insights.  I love the name she's given her business.

Vintage French Fabrics

A short while ago, I came across a really nice blog that I'd like to share with you.  Actually, to be more precise, this blogger came across my blog and wrote to me with a question.  I, of course, visited her blog as I was answering her, and was really excited by her posts.

The blog is called "Treasures From A French Attic".

Shipping Quilts

Over the last couple of months, I've had quilts arrive from customers in some pretty badly battered boxes.  So I decided to write some guidelines for packing for safe shipping.

Here's one battered box.  It's quite crumpled and almost bashed in.  Also, one digit was missing from my house number on the address label.

Ice Skating Costume

This friendship goes way back, 14 years and counting.  My son met Chris Davis in a gymnastics class when they were 6 or so, and his mom and I struck up a great friendship sitting on the benches outside class each week.

Chris has gotten seriously into competition level ice dance.  At this point, I consider him another son, so when they come to me for costume help, I am right there!

Embroidery Mistresspiece part 3

Here's how I replaced and re-embroidered a couple of patches on this wonderful crazy quilt.

Usually, I patch just up to the embroidery, so the original stitches are maintained.  But there were a couple of patches where the embroidery covered nearly the whole fabric, so the owner and I decided that I should replace both.

The worn patch.

This photo became my reference for reproducing the embroidery.

Embroidery Mistresspiece part 2

Here is a wonderful story from the owner of this wonderful, mistresspiece crazy quilt:

"When I was a teenager I mowed a lawn for a very nice elderly lady in St. Petersburg Florida. She had a very large Spanish home that had been built in the 1920’s and was beautifully maintained. In the summers she had me do various things around the house and always brought me inside to talk to me before I left to go home. At the age of 78 she was courted by a gentleman who had owned the first Ford dealership in Philadelphia and was very wealthy, he swept her off her feet and they were married and moved to his home in Palm Springs Florida. Before she left she told me she had something special for me and gave me the quilt.

Embroidery Mistresspiece part 1

This quilt is a full-out embodiment of the height of the crazy quilt style.  The embroidery is off the charts for precision and creativity.  

Here are some pieces where the maker toyed with and built upon the designs on the fabrics:

1920s Beads and Fringe

A good friend of mine is sharing these lovely family heirloom pieces with us.  They belonged to her mother, as flapper style as you can get!  Shapeless, drapey, and embellished like crazy.

Dress No. 1
chiffon with underdress
beaded with seed beads and pearls
pearl dangles at the shoulders
ruched flowers at the waist

First Prize Quilt

This surely is a "collector's dream" quilt.

It pretty certainly dates to the 1930s.  The peach and soft green were both new and popular colors at the time. I think the cream background is fairly close to the original color, i.e. not a yellowing of a truer white.

Trip Around the World

This Trip Around the World quilt is a comfy cozy sort of quilt, don't you think?

Here's a cross-section close-up view of all the fabrics.

There were two squares with torn fabrics.  For both of them, I used the trick of flipping the patch fabric to the reverse side.  Sometimes this works really well to mimic the faded look of the older fabrics.  It totally depends on how the fabric was printed.  The reverse needs to have just the right amount of bleed through color from the front.

These photos compare swatches right sides up (at the bottom of the photos) to the reverse side completed patches.

And in this photo, I marked where the patches are.  I had lots of trouble finding them, and I'm pretty happy about that.  Goal achieved.

Embroidered Initials

This quilt dates to c. 1900.  This 4-patch 9-patch combination block would be a nice pattern for beginning quilters.

There are initials embroidered with a tiny stem stitch in most of the blocks.

This block has a previous repair - I can tell because I can see the appliqué stitches and the pieces don't always match up to the old seams.  The initials were covered over.

Here's a tiny patch that I did - I'm excited about successfully manufacturing a two-color patch across a seam!

Happy Summer Sailboats

Isn't this just the happiest quilt!  This is part of what makes repairing quilts so much fun - I get to have quilts like this come and visit for a while.

The combination of block designs and colors make this quilt a delightful rendition of being out on the water on a sunshiny day. (And yes, it does look like it was cut down at some point in its life.)

And isn't this interesting - an appliquéd Mariner's Compass.  Has anyone else seen one before?  I love that it's multicolored.  But these days I'm finding myself drawn to any design that uses the full spectrum, so that's not too surprising.

Art Deco Second Addendum

Well, here's another addition to my increasing knowledge Cleopatra's Fan, the Art Deco-style pattern on this quilt.  Here's what's gone before:
Original post
First addendum

A very astute and friendly reader of this blog scouted out and is sharing a couple of websites with us.

Art Deco Addendum

I posted about a week ago about the quilt I repaired with an Art Deco pattern that I couldn't name.

Yesterday morning, over breakfast, I was leafing through the current catalog from Keepsake Quilting, and came across a kit for this quilt.

Keepsake Quilting kit #6253

Embroidery and Prairie Points

Next up in the quilt repair queue:  The stitching on this one, both the embroidery and the quilting, is really expert.  And then it has the prairie points giving a nice sparkle to the edge.  Try imagining the quilt without them; it really would lose a lot of spirit.

Sadly, this lovely embroidered quilt had an unfortunate interaction with the family dog.

Here's the repair step-by-step.