pretty feedsacks

Don't forget the Madison-Bouckville Outdoors Antique Show is this coming weekend in upstate New York (Bouckville is located on Route 20, roughly halfway between Syracuse and Utica). This will be my fourth year and I always find great stuff—with 1000 dealers how could I not? The weather is looking good so far, which is great. There are very few indoor booths (some large tents) and, believe me, it can be pretty miserable if it rains. The very high humidity we had one year wasn't much fun either. I'm hoping to find some great vintage fabrics this year.

I've been doing lots of updating to the Primrose Design website lately. There's now a fourth page of vintage plastic buttons, a few new pillows (including some smaller handkerchief designs), and lots of new trims (including shell braid in five colors and rick rack in the package and off-the-bolt). Remember the discount code (CUPCAKE) for 20% off your order!



Illustrating this post are some new feedsacks I won last week on Ebay. I've added the pictures to the Flickr Feedsack Group, which is a great place to view gorgeous feedsacks uploaded by members. We're always looking for new members, too, so feel free to join and start posting your own photos. There are almost 500 so far!

Don't forget the Madison-Bouckville Outdoor Antiques Show this weekend. If you've been reading my blog for a while you'll know that I've gone to this show every year for the past three years. It's a very big, very tiring-to-walk-through show (90 acres! 1000 dealers!!) but I always find great stuff and I wouldn't miss it for anything.

If you've just started reading, here are my 2007 and 2006 posts about it. I guess I didn't write one for 2005.

I've been so good this year — not attending many shows and generally cutting back by not buying things I don't need. This show is my weakness so I may be bad this weekend :)

Rather than battle the lines at the food stands or try to find a restaurant in a nearby town for lunch we're bringing a picnic basket this year. We usually make a few trips back to the car anyway, so we'll plan one around lunch time. Not sure what that basket will contain just yet — except for the fresh peaches I got at the farmer's market a few days ago!

Will let you know how it went next week, hopefully with lots of great pictures of my finds :)

Road Trip: Bouckville Antique Show

The sun finally came out and I was able to photograph some of my vintage finds from the show last weekend! I'm going to go with what I originally wrote on Sunday even though it's now days later—

Boy do my feet hurt today! You don’t realize how big a space this show takes up until you’ve been walking around for 4 hours and come to realize that you still haven’t visited every booth let alone every row of booths. Yes, it’s that big! And at some point in the day you go on overload and run out of money anyway.

For me it was a vintage fabric kind of day and I found some beautiful barkcloth (which I’m starting to like again), feedsacks, and floral cottons. Here’s a sneak peek at a few of them.


Barkcloth curtains—very 50s glam!


Doesn't this barkcloth have the best colors? I think I may redecorate my house based solely on this fabric!


Vintage cotton with daisies.I actually have a feedsack in this pattern but the background is orange.


This is a tablecloth and it has great colors, too—very fruity and bright.


I bought this sweet flannel baby sacque embroidered with kittens from a woman who could have been Cate Blanchett's twin sister. I swear, she looked just like her.


Another of those 1930s quilt tops that I seem to be finding lately. Bright colors set off by a black background and three colorways of the same fabric. I’m not so crazy about the gold border fabric (plus it isn't cotton) so I’ll probably replace that.

And my most fun find was this stamped for embroidery towel with a little black girl pushing a grocery basket with a watermelon. Not very PC, I know, but this is from the 40s so you have to consider the times. You’re supposed to do French knots for her hair but I may try bullion stitch (one we haven’t done yet on Stitch School) for a little more texture.



Right before we left I finally found Emily Lewis’s booth and stopped in to say hello. Emily was featured on Vintage Indie last week and we both advertise there so I had to go introduce myself. And she’s just as sweet as the wonderful little cakes she crafts from vintage chenille and trimmings. Don’t they look good enough to eat? Her biz is called Crazy Cakes and you can find her online at Etsy and read about her adventures on her blog Now What is She Making?.

I also met a seller from Pennsylvania who has a 14,000 square foot warehouse full of vintage fabric that she’s invited me to visit. I bought three gorgeous feedsacks from her at the show so I can just imagine what she’s got. Better start saving my pennies now!

So, it was a good day for me. I spent too much money but I’ll have materials to work with all next winter!

Next years show is August 16-17 so mark your calendars and consider making the trip if you live within driving distance. Even if you don't buy a thing (if that's possible) it's very inspiring to see the huge variety of antiques that are out there.