July 21st Birthday Quilt

A little girl was born on July 21, 2008.  This is important to me, because July 21st is also my birthday, and because this new baby is the great-granddaugher of my husband's uncle and aunt.  This is the time when it would be great to have easy names for relatives, but we don't.  She is our first cousin, twice removed.  I think.

I love putting tons of symbolism into commemorative quilts.  (See these posts also:  wedding quilt, remembrance quilt, remembrance quilt.)  Here's the story of this one.

Zig-Zag Sewing Machines

I recently posted about a blouse I repaired, dating to the 1920s or 30s.

I became curious about the dating of the blouse relative to the seam finishing techniques.  They are French seams, finished with a machine zig-zag stitch.  

outside

inside

Vintage Net Blouse

This vintage blouse is made from a netting embellished with eyelets and a lovely lace edging.  It is in remarkably good shape for its age, likely in the 1920s or 30s.  So delicate and so feminine.

Woven Memories

This little quilt has connections to several other things I've blogged about:

Dye Migration

This ocean waves quilt is in my own collection.  It's one of the first quilts I purchased when I was starting to learn about antique quilts, in the early 1980s.  I bought it because I like the soft color combination, and especially liked that the quilt-maker had built on the reds in some of the prints, and accented those soft colors with a cheerful red binding.

A short while ago, I took it out of storage to bring it to a show-and-tell lecture I was about to present.  All my quilts are kept in acid-free storage boxes, and padded with acid-free tissue paper.  Lo and behold, I discovered that the tissue lining the box was covered with pale red triangles.

Van Gogh

I found this vintage smock at an estate sale.  I bought a bunch of craft supplies and doo-dads at this sale, all the while wishing I had somehow known the woman whose house I was in.  I think she and I would have been good friends.

The Key to Myself

So, now it's summer, and while my quilt repair biz keeps me busy enough, the costuming biz is pretty well on hiatus until the next season begins.  With the "extra" time, I've begun sorting and organizing closets.  It actually feels marvelous on the inward, emotional level.  It's great to jettison stuff and see how I'm moving on with Life.  It's great to feel a bit (every little bit helps) more in control of Everything.  And the walk down Memory Lane is really fun.

A Lovely Crazy Quilt

This great Victorian crazy quilt was brought to me as a top.  I replaced one missing corner area with a brown silk, covered several worn pieces with crepeline to protect the fraying fabrics, backed it with a black cotton, and bound the edges with a brown silk.

Here is a square with several crepeline-covered pieces - the white piece on the left, the two central light pieces, and the one on the lower right, where the broken silk is very easy to see.  From this photo, you can get an idea of how nearly invisible the fine crepeline silk is.