Meet Mr. Spenalzo

My main contribution to this weekend's Thin Ice Theater production of the classic "Arsenic and Old Lace" is the creation of a life-sized doll to be the two dead bodies that are called for in the script.

Sometimes he is Mr. Hoskins and sometimes Mr. Spenalzo.  We're hoping there will be time for him to have a super quick costume change.  It's tricky, since he won't be very helpful with the changes.  Another thing he will be called on to do is lose a shoe in the process.

I Know This Puppy

I was searching for vintage fabrics and came across an ad for a children's fabric.  It's actually a reproduction print, not a vintage fabric.  But the designs used are vintage.  A couple of them are identical to appliqués on a 1940s child's quilt that I helped bring back to life.  And couple of others are similar enough, that I'd guess they came from the same original pattern set.

Quilts in Outer Space

Image credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Doesn't this sound like fun?

Astronaut and quilter Karen Nyberg is going to combine these two activities when she joins the space station crew in a couple of weeks.  Read more about her quilting plans here.

I hope she publishes photos of her space quilts when she gets back to Earth.

Being Organized

So.  What do you do when you have 26 young actors wearing 56 costumes and different sets of parents helping out on different days?  You get organized.  You get super organized.  Organizing the dressing room became nearly as big a job for this show as creating the costumes themselves.

Kids and Toys

Here's a sweet fabric in a quilt that was brought to me for repair.  I think it's quite a bit older than the other fabrics in the quilt.  It may date to the 1930s or so, or is a clever reproduction fabric.  I think it's vintage, though - at the time this quilt was made several decades ago, I don't think reproduction '30s fabrics were in vogue as they are now.  There are just 3 triangles of this fabric, making it seem like a special scrap.

When I asked the quilt owner for permission to publish the photos here, he told me that the quilt was made for his mother-in-law, and that she was very involved in early childhood education. So he wonders if this fabric had been included in the quilt to represent that part of her life.  Cool!

Forest Park

I visited the Forest Park Library to clean the quilts that have been on display for several years.  See the previous post for an explanation of the vacuuming process.

Here's a little tour of one of the quilts.  This is a log cabin, barn raising set.

Have Vacuum, Will Travel

Vacuuming is probably the safest way to freshen a hanging quilt.  

I spent a good part of the day yesterday at the Forest Park Library, vacuuming three quilts that the library has on display.