pancakes + jelly = fun

Wow! I always thought this was something my mother invented herself. Whenever I've mentioned to anyone in conversation that I used to eat pancakes layered with grape jelly they've looked at me like I was crazy. Now I have proof that such a thing existed and was called a jelly stack!

I found this ad while going through a pile of 1960s women's magazines that I've had hanging around for a couple of years. I'm trying to clean up my studio a bit and thought I'd go through them and pull out the good bits for future reference.



My mom would have read these magazines (Better Homes & Gardens, McCalls, Ladies Home Journal) and many of the recipes for the casseroles we ate as kids came from their pages. I've already mentioned the dreaded spam and canned salmon concoctions, but some of the recipes were actually pretty good! Of course, I moved on from grape jelly long ago so I might substitute cherry or peach jam today. It sounds like a nice change from maple syrup.

An interview with Sharon Stark

Please welcome Sharon Stark from Sharon's Antiques: Vintage Fabrics and The Rickrack Rag who’s agreed to do an interview about feedsacks. Sharon lives in southeastern Pennsylvania and has been collecting and selling feedsacks for more than 11 years.



Let’s start at the beginning. How did you get started collecting and selling feedsacks?

The feedsack business resulted from a number of coincidences. First, my husband and I have been into antiques for years, both separately and together. When we got together, he had a used bookstore and I operated a stand selling general antiques at a local antique market.

We started selling on eBay in late 1997, as the internet began to make big changes in the marketplace. One major change was in my husband’s field, used books, and it became less practical to have a physical store instead of an online presence. So we decided he’d give up the store and sell online.

He found free webspace and started a list of books for sale there, also listing with a service that included a national selection of booksellers. Since he had created the website for his books, he looked around to see what sort of website would benefit my business, and what items would lend themselves to sale online. While selling on eBay, we found that feedsacks (we had always called them feed bags) had begun to sell for more than the dollar or two that they usually brought around here. Since they were easy to scan (we didn’t yet have a digital camera), we selected feedsacks for our beginning web site.

You live in a great area of the country for finding feedsacks with lots of farms and Amish communities. Do you find most of your feedsacks locally or do you travel to find them?

We find most of our feedsacks at farm sales and auctions in our local area, though we have bought them from friends as far away as Nebraska and even California. We also scour local antique markets and co-ops for feedsacks. When the Feedsack Club was in operation, we were members and bought lots of them at the annual conventions. And as our website grew, we were sometimes even able to buy some on eBay to resell on our site.

As far as traveling, we don’t travel a lot anyway, but when we do, of course we stop at antiques shops and look for feedsacks and other textiles, but nowhere are they as plentiful as in our local area.

gone awol

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. And I was doing so well lately, too. On top of getting ready for the craft show, one of the shop owners where I consign emailed and said she needed more stuff so I quickly diverted some of my show products to her. And cut out more tissue cozies and wallets to make up the difference.

And I'm in the last stages of refinancing our mortgage, so fielding lots of phone calls. I'm glad I'm not as unorganized as the people who work at the bank - I'd never get anything done. The paperwork isn't quite ready for closing, my lawyer still needs to review it all, so I have no idea when this is going to actually happen. Hopefully/maybe next week.

When there's not much to talk about you can't go wrong with a cute kitty picture. Here's one of mine sleeping on top of an old quilt in a laundry basket. I must have walked past about ten times before I realized she was there. The basket is full of things to be ironed, another project on my very long to-do list.



Be sure to stop in next week for my interview with Sharon Stark of Rickrack.com; we'll be chatting about feedsacks!

dem bones

Treasure hunting with others in tow can be fun, but you probably shouldn't go with people who are looking for the same things you are - that could get ugly. My hunting partner is often my husband and he goes with his own mental "list". I do have him trained to spot feedsacks and buttons though. If he wanders ahead, he comes back frequently to alert me about booths of interest ahead. And I keep an eye out for things of interest to him. Like the Chinese enamel dishes he collects. For our trip last weekend the interest was old dominoes.



It started with an entire box of them for $3 at an outdoor flea market located in the park adjacent to the indoor flea market. Then he found two full sets in their original long boxes, including one with colored dots. I know what you're thinking—what's so special about dominoes? Just look at how cool the designs on the backs are! Could that be the Greek goddess Artemis surrounded by a border of little flowers? Scroll designs are always pretty and the dominoes in the mixed box have scrolls on the fronts and the backs. The ones in the long box have Empire State Buildings on theirs.



Dominoes are sometimes called "bones" because the earliest ones were made from animal bone. The most sought-after and rare are made from ivory inlaid with ebony—since 1989 it's illegal to produce dominoes (or anything else) from real ivory. You can also find them in vegetable ivory (from the Tagua nut), bakelite (1907-1950s), wood, plastic, or even thick cardboard. Dominoes are generally either white with black dots or dark with white dots. The colored sets, with one color per suit, make it easier to find matches—just connect the colors. Here's a little history and more information about dominoes if you're interested.

This sudden interest in dominoes doesn't come as a complete surprise. It really started two years ago with the purchase of this domino-covered box at a New Hope, PA antique store. Isn't it cool? I've seen boxes covered with seashells before, and ones with matchsticks, but never one with dominoes. Because of their small size, the artist (this is definitely handmade) was able to fit a lot onto the box. And the stacked dominoes to create a handle—so clever!



So, when we get tired of playing with our dominoes there are a few boxes around here that would look great covered with them :)

Road Trip: Lewisburg, Pennsylvania

We arrived at Roller Mills, a three-story antique mall in a restored 1880s flour mill, about 10:30 am to find that, contrary to what it states on their website and signage, they don't open until 11:00. We ran into a lady in the parking lot who told us this and it would have been nice to know so we could better plan our 2-hour drive. But, she told us to drive down the street to check out the flea market and that was great advice.


Plastic flowers, carded silver-rimmed, and cool 1950s polka dot fabric-covered buttons.

Named The Street of Shops and located in a restored historic woolen mill, the upstairs features a row of shops selling country crafty things (if you're into that kind of thing; I'm not) and the downstairs is a flea market with a weird mix of stuff—some kitschy knick-knacks and collectibles and some vintage and antiques. I found tons of buttons, a few hankies, and a sealed package of cotton pillowcases from the 50s for $4 (love that vintage cotton!). The back had rooms of furniture, all for amazing prices. If I ever open a shop of my own I'll keep this in mind for shop display furniture. Still coveting that painted iron 3/4-size bed but I had no way to fit it in the car!


Doesn't this look like it was made from a berry basket?

Back at Roller Mills, I found more buttons, the birdhouse shown here, and an old feedsack baby dress with red trims—rick rack, prairie points, and manufactured flower ribbon. I seriously considered an antique free-standing chalkboard with rolling pictures in the top panel but, at $85, it was a bit much to spend for something I don't really need.


Click through to my Flickr page for a larger version and a closeup photo of the detail.

We were disappointed to find that the town itself was virtually shut down on Sundays—something to think about if you want to do any shopping along the main street. We weren't sure we could even find a place to eat a late lunch but stumbled across a gem in the Lewisburg Hotel. We would have been happy with a sandwich or salad, but the dinner menu looked so good that we opted for an early dinner instead. I wasn't looking forward to cooking after the drive anyway, and it turned out to be a good decision because we were stuck in traffic on Rt. 80 forever and got home much later than we thought we would.

On the way out of town we stopped at the Silver Moon Antique Mall, which has changed locations since my last trip here. It's smaller with less antiques and more collectibles, but I found more buttons, some aprons (including two from feedsack), and this gorgeous blue sewing basket with woven sides and floral decal on top ($15). There are even some usable buttons and trims inside!





It was a long day, but it's nice to revisit places you haven't been back to for a while. Pennsylvania is such a large state that you often have to do a bit of trekking to find the good stuff.

All Lewisburg, PA 17837:
Lewisburg Hotel, 136 Market Street
Street of Shops (first-floor flea market), 100 N. Water Street
Roller Mills Antique Center, 517 St. Mary Street
Silver Moon Antique Mall, 150 Silvermoon Lane (2 miles north on Rt 15)

a lesson in color and contrast

Have any of you seen Timeless Treasures' new fabric collection named 'Lena'? And the pattern within named Daisies & Disks? Doesn't it look familiar? It should if you've been reading my blog over the past month. Remember that gorgeous feedsack I showed you from my trip to Kutztown a few weeks ago? This one—



Well, I was over at eQuilter.com this morning checking out some of their new arrivals and came across the reproduction, available in three colorways—orange and purple (shown at left), and blue.

I'm not even going to get into how uneasy I feel about modern fabric designers 'borrowing' old designs, changing a few details and colors and calling it their own (it's happened before). Or the fact that five years from now you'll be seeing this on eBay being passed off as feedsack by someone who doesn't know any better (I've seen that, too).

What bothers me most are the color choices. I believe I mentioned when I first posted my photo how I loved that the very bright red-orange flowers popped against the subtle gray background. Now look at the two colorways shown here. See how the background is the first thing you notice in the orange example, and how the background and red flowers fight for dominance in the second.

And there's something missing, isn't there? The dark navy accent color used for definition in the flower centers and for the striped half circles is no where to be found. And it needs to be there. When you have colors that are the same tone, you need an element to provide contrast, and the addition of a very dark color (or black) would have helped with that.

They were probably thinking that if they swapped brighter fun colors for the original gray, it would appeal more to younger modern sewers. Personally I think the older colorway, which is perfectly balanced to my eye, looks more modern than any of the new variations.

And FYI, I'm a grump about old classic movies being remade to appeal to modern audiences, too. One of my favorites is Father of the Bride with Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor. All I can say about the remake, also called Father of the Bride, is that Steve Martin is no Spencer Tracy :)

veggies

I usually make my fruit and veggie towels as custom orders, but I thought I'd make up a few for the craft show I'm doing next month (more about that later). I have a cool, old, wooden towel rack with feet that's the perfect size to sit on a tabletop. I'll hang the embroidered towels, like the one shown here, on the rungs and pile the simpler towels (the ones with fabric and rickrack) on the table below.



This design is called Vegetable Polka and has a cute green pepper and tomato dancing. Don't you love her ruffley lettuce leaf skirt? Yes, those are tiny tomatoes in the feedsack fabric along the bottom!



I have the original of this pattern that I won on Ebay a couple of years ago. You can purchase a reprint of the design, along with Garden Waltz (featuring a carrot and beet) and various other musical motifs at Patternbee here. Really cute for tea towels!

Sorry for disappearing last week. I spent ten hour days in my studio sewing products for the upcoming show. I have no idea how much product to bring but I figure, better to have too much than too little!

colorways

Finding nice vintage fabrics is a challenge. Finding two of the same pattern in different colorways is a miracle!


Gray, green, red, black and white


Red, yellow, blue, navy and white

And, no, I didn't find them together. One was an Ebay purchase and I can't remember where I found the other. I thought at first it might be feedsack but the fabric is much too light in weight—definitely not sturdy enough to have been filled with grain or flour.

pods from outer space

Can anyone help me out with identifying this plant?



I found lots of them growing on the edges of my yard. The plant is a single very thin vine with corkscrew tendrils that wrap around anything near it—trees, blackberry bushes, tall weeds. And the seed pods look like something from a science fiction movie. They're quite heavy for the size of the plant's stem and hang straight down. And they look fuzzy from a distance but are covered with green spikes. The seeds inside are suspended in a greenish goo and are about the size and shape of pumpkin seeds. In the young pods they're white; in the more mature ones they're brown like this:



I'm quite sure they're something I don't want growing in my yard because I can see them taking over (that science fiction movie thing again). I just want to know what they are. Anyone?



Thanks to K who identified this as Wild Cucumber (Echinocystis lobata). You can see more photos here.

not quite chicken scratch

This is the last of my finds from last weekend's trip to Kutztown.



The seller who I bought this from had two and the first was traditional chicken scratch made into a pillow top (another idea for using this style of embroidery) with a ruffled edge. Nice but nothing you hadn't seen before. The one I bought had that little something extra. More like a lot extra!



The small crosses have a twisted thread which is a great variation of the traditional double cross stitch. To do this variation, make your cross first, then the straight line from left to right. Then, when making the final stitch from top to bottom, loop your thread over the center of the crossed threads and the left-to-right thread.



There are also great examples of the ribbed spider's web stitch using twenty threads and skewed into a spiral. This is done a little differently than the spider web stitch. Instead of simply passing under and over the cross threads, the threads get wrapped over each cross thread, forming a raised tube. It could be straight but, in this example, it's twisted to form a spiral. Will have to try this to figure out exactly how it was done.



The spiral designs alternate with woven crosses, also done over twenty base threads. In this design the thread is woven in four sections back and forth over the five threads in each corner.



All done in ivory-colored lightweight wool on a heavyweight red gingham background. It looks just like lace from a distance. I can't even imagine how long it took to make this—the work is flawless. I'll probably frame this piece because it really does deserve to be preserved and, because the threads sit on the surface, it could easily get snagged.

Updated to add the size of this piece, which I should have stated before because it has so much going on in a not-very-large space. It's just 18 inches square and each spiral block is 1.75 inches across!

unusual apron pocket

The apron itself is very simple—just plain solid yellow cotton—but the pockets are amazing.



Blue and yellow binding strips form a lattice. Yellow binding holds it all together along the outside edges where it's sewn to the apron body.



I can't quite figure out how this was sewn since the stitching runs over areas that are open underneath. Any thoughts, dear readers? Would it help to see the back side of it? No matter how it was sewn, it's really pretty and unusual.

You could use the same basic idea to sew the strips onto a background fabric—creating a three-dimensional lattice. And then add appliqued or fabric flowers on top. I'm envisioning a pillow here if you couldn't tell :)

Updated to add a link to a photo of the back side.

more feedsacks

It's been a feedsack kind of summer for me. I keep finding really pretty ones in patterns I haven't seen before and for reasonable prices, too. These are from my trip to Kutztown on Saturday.


The dark lines on this are actually a very dark blue, not black as I originally thought.


So much going on with this one; I love the contrast between the geometric background and the bright red-orange daisies on top.


I love the bright colors on this but the pattern is kind of a mess; it's a smallish piece and I'll cut it up for bags or tissue cozies.

Otherwise it was a pretty miserable day. It rained all the way there and most of the way back and my eyes were so stressed from driving in all that mist and water that I had to take a nap when I got home. But it was fun being back in Kutztown again and visiting some of the same vendors who were selling at the farmer's market when I went to college there many years ago. Most things were different on the main street, although a few shops were still there. A friend's house at the top of the hill is now a used book store which is sort of funny. She and her roommates were all big readers and their rooms sort of resembled a used book store when they lived there. Overflowing shelves and books piled up here and there. Hee :)

I found a few very cool needlework/sewing-related things that I'll show you in the next couple of posts. Stay tuned!

crazy for carrots

My latest pillow, just added to the website—



This uses, as it's central motif, one of the quilt blocks from that batch I won on Ebay this spring. I already had the carrot fabric left over from an earlier project so I embroidered the bunny in colors to match. And added a few details to jazz it up a little—orange and white polka dot fabric and four vintage white flower-shaped buttons in the corners, and some lime green rick rack around the edges of the block. Isn't he cute with his little plaid jacket and bunch of carrots?



I have a few more of these blocks but no more carrot fabric so the next usage will be entirely different. And that's OK. I'd get bored doing the same thing over and over.

I found some great fabrics, including a few feedsacks, yesterday in Kutztown and will show you pictures after I get them ironed and photographed.

summer coat

When we find vintage things in our travels we don't often get to know who owned them or their history or even anything about them. Once in a while there's something to give us a clue.



I found this at a local antique shop the other day. I didn't buy it because I loved the buttons—they're only ordinary gray coat buttons—but for the note that was attached. The woman who owned them took the time to add a hand-written note when she tied the buttons together with black thread. We don't know if she then put it into her sewing box or button jar or whether it was passed down to her child or grandchild. Or how it found it's way to this particular shop. But we do know that she had a gray summer coat that she took apart. And was probably one of those super organized people that drive us crazy :)

I'm heading out in a short while to spend the day flea marketing in Kutztown. Who knows what treasures I'll find?

chicken scratch sunsuit

Rebecca sent me this photo of her daughter Elizabeth in a sunsuit that she made from purple gingham and embroidered with white chicken scratch embroidery (using my Stitch School lesson found here) all around the collar. Most people seem to use chicken scratch designs on aprons and I wanted to show you how pretty it looks on other items, too. She said it took a long time to cover the area but it was pretty simple to do otherwise. And she was pleased enough with the results to use it again in the future.

I apologize if you were looking for the link to this stitch in my sidebar. Not sure how it happened but it disappeared from the list. It's back now and thanks Rebecca for letting me know it wasn't there. And for sharing the photo of your finished project with us!

success

Some photos from Hello Bluebird's grand opening yesterday evening. I had to leave around seven because I had a two-hour drive home but there was a line at the checkout when I left. And lots of happy faces.



That's Alex ringing up one of the many sales that occurred during the opening. In spite of major internet problems all day and countless hours on the phone with support, it miraculously came back online in time for the opening. Good thing I arrived early so I could help with hanging artwork and arranging flowers!



The shop is full of major cuteness and I overheard lots of customers talking about how much there was to see. Seriously, I could have bought one of everything! I thought these stuffed penguins were especially cute. They're made by Emily Davis of MIAOW from tweeds and wools and she makes little birds and whales, too.



This is the wall of cards, prints, and framed artwork next to the front door. I love the contrast of red door against blue wall, don't you?



And I had to buy this cute little bag made by Brooke Harlan of Brookiellen Designs. Because who could resist the fabric—little fruit trees—love it!

There are more photos on my Flickr page here. Congratulations to Alex on her new venture!

Updated to add a link for the fabrics—Timeless Treasures Apple. There's even one called Orchard Owls!

summer's gone

For the second morning in a row it's been in the low 40s when I got up. It's really starting to feel like fall. Although it isn't officially fall until later in the month, Labor Day weekend seems to signal the start. Where did the summer go? That's the worst thing, I think, about getting older—time just keeps speeding up. And it becomes clearer that you'll never do everything you want to in your lifetime. Did I also mention that I get a little depressed this time of year :)

Remember the fawn who was hidden in our yard this spring? I saw her this morning and she's grown up into a beautiful deer. Her mother's color has changed completely to brown but she's still lighter in color with some spots present. A large number of fawns never make it to adulthood so I'm happy that she did. Although I'll still complain when they're munching on my vegetable garden and perennials!

The vegetable garden is winding down. We had to destroy all our tomato plants due to blight—a highly infectious fungal infection and cause of the infamous Irish Potato Famine. Yes, it also attacks tomatoes. It was just too wet this year and the problem spread like crazy throughout our whole area so it's hard to find tomatoes, even at the farmers market. That probably means I won't be doing any canning unless I can buy some out of area. It's probably a miracle but our potatoes seem to be unaffected.

We still have gorgeous baby cantaloupes but, unless it warms up again, they're not going to mature. Again, too much rain, not enough heat. Gardening can be very frustrating—if you don't already know that.

I'm cleaning up my studio today, doing some ironing, and finishing up a batch of hanky sachets. Here's one from the previous batch that you'll find at GreenBeing in Scranton.

the best for last

My best find from last weekend isn't quite as spectacular as the quilt top I found last year but still pretty cool.



It's a Progress No. 2623-4 unbleached muslin apron with colorful binding stripes in yellow, orange, and brown and featuring stamping for embroidered flowers on the waistband corners and body. It's very clean and crisp and someone stored it carefully since it's creation in 1938!



It includes the original instruction sheet (that's how I know the date) and the flowers are to be embroidered in yellows, oranges, and browns (to match the stripes) with a little green thrown in for the leaves and stems.


You can click on this picture to see a larger version on my Flickr page. I've also included the colors that correspond to the numbers in case you want to reproduce the flowers for one of your own projects.

See the long stitches at the end of the flower petals? These are to be worked in a different color than the petals so they'll look like the two-tone flowers shown near the end of my Stitch School lazy daisy post. I'm going to try making the long stitches first, then looping the second color through like I mentioned here.



I bought this apron for an unbelievable $6! I spotted it underneath a pile of other things and it wasn't marked with a price. Luckily I had some other things already picked out and they totalled $14. The seller looked at it for a minute, then rounded my total up to $20. Sold!



I might have to do this project next, right after the set of baby bibs I'm finishing up now.

more feedsacks

A couple more finds from the show—


Blue floral—big roses? mums? I'm not sure what they are!


This feedsack has the best colors ever! I've also seen it in another colorway—hot pink, periwinkle blue, and lime green butterflies on a light blue patterned background.


A close up view