More Bonnet Girl Embroidered Blocks

I've been working on more Bonnet Girl blocks...these are just so much fun! I've made this one delicately colorful! I really like how the French knots look going further up the skirt-it reminds me of dotted Swiss fabric from when I was a girl! (I had a red dress with white dots.) I couldn't resist-I had to google dotted Swiss fabric-it was first made in Switzerland! :) in 1756 and is usually a light/pastel cotton fabric (batiste) and the dots are either woven or flocked on. You can see some pictures of dotted Swiss fabric here. (I remember my dress was flocked. Remember when flocking was really popular?-my mother had flocked wall paper in our hallway.)

This girl's dress is an all over floral-maybe nasturiums and her bloomers are a very delicate gray blue "lace". She is all ready to go for a walk in the park to look at the changing leaves-dressed in her Fall finery!

This is really fun, now I don't just get to dress up my "dolls", I can make up stories about them too!

Remember, if you'd like to make some Bonnet Girl blocks-the free pattern is on my sideboard.

Vintage Thursday Thingie: Jewish New Year's Card

This is a vintage Israeli New Year's Card from 1948-the year of the War of Independence. The Hebrew says "A Year of Peace and Victory".

The artist's name is Maachal, but even after I sent DS on the trail, we could find nothing more about him/her.

This was given to me, framed, by my brother-in-law and sister-in =law: I'd say they know I like vintage!

For more vintage treasures, hop on over to Coloradolady...I'm sure you'll enjoy what you see!

(BTW, after a week of computer troubles, I finally posted the pattern from the vintage Bonnet Girl coverlet-its the post just below this one.)

Embroidered Bonnet Girl Free Pattern

On Tuesday, our computer went kaput! Fortunately, it gave us some warning-it kept restarting itself-so our resident IT Guy was able to save all our files before it died completely. His diagnosis: the motherboard was shot! We took it in and the shop agreed-turned out they were able to get us a new motherboard and since it was 1/3 the price of a new tower, we went with that option. DS spent yesterday getting our files reinstalled...actually it is still on-going-I'll want to do something and he has to come and install whatever it is he forgot to do (like hook-up the scanner!)


Remember I said I'd show the blocks I've started embroidering and upload the pattern that I traced from my vintage Embroidered Bonnet Girl Quilt...

Here are the two blocks that I've completed...I'm really having a good time "dressing" the girls! They're all done with outline stitch, French knots and Lazy Daisy stitches.

I've used two different background fabrics...a beige and a pale pink. You can see I've added some extra decoration to the girls' dresses , their umbrellas, and even their bloomers! This is so much fun!

You can download the pattern here. Please let me know if you do embroider one or more-a whole quilt's worth like I'm going to do!-it will be so much fun to see and share our "fashion" ideas.

Here's a pix from the original vintage quilt-just so you can compare and see the wonderful possibilities in dressing these girls...I'm telling you-this is as much fun as playing with dolls!

The Quilt Center and the Beach

On Thursday we went as planned to drop off the class samples at the shop where I teach and I thought you might like a peak at my " local" quilt shop! Local is in quotes because its a 45 minute drive and I cross the country from east to west to the shop-The Quilt Center.

Its in an old little house and when you walk in the door-you're right in the kitchen!-a great place for students to meet and for everyone to have a cup of coffee and a cookie, look over the class samples and the wonderful assortment of threads and silk ribbons! Classes aren't on now so its being used for a little bit of storage-the cardboard fruit boxes are filled with fat quarters! This is one of the two rooms filled with fabric, tools and books.

This is the classroom-now being put to use organizing the latest shipment of fabric-there's lots more out of camera range.

Oops, I forgot to take a picture of the fabrics that I bought...yes, I couldn't control myself-I'll share later.

Then it was off to the beach! We always go to the same beach-Banana Beach at Achziv-its just north of Nahariya.

There's a nice restaurant-I love their frozen ice coffee...

right next door is Club Med Israel-its those buildings on the rise with the tall palm trees.

Its was a beautiful day...and the water was great!

Here's my sweety enjoying the late afternoon sun...it was getting a bit cooler but we just couldn't leave...

Vintage Thursday Thingie: Embroidered Bonnet Girl Quilt

I purchased this outline embroidered Bonnet Girl summer coverlet on E-bay a few years ago…yes, it was a bargain-it cost me all of $10.00! I’m not sure when its from but I would guess the 1960s, mainly because of the brown fabric…course the orange could mean the 1970s. Its technically not a quilt as there is no batting.

Bonnet Girl quilts became very popular in the 1920s and have lots of different names...there's Umbrella Girl (my girl has both an umbrella and a bonnet!), Southern Belle , and Crinoline Lady !

I wish I could have photographed it better but here's a close-up of one of the blocks from the center row. The center row of blocks are the lightest and were done with orange to yellow graduated floss. This row also shows the most wear and there is even one block with half the umbrella/parasol missing.

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The outer rows are partially done with the graduated floss and then finished with brown.

( Wondering about what's peaking through? I'll get to that soon.)

This coverlet is tied-another one of the reasons that I love owning it! The ties were done with 100% wool so when the "quilt" was washed the yarn shrank up and formed these balls. The only quilty memory I have from childhood is sleeping at my Aunt Anne's and she had covers with these wonderful little balls on them!

This entire coverlet is made from sugar sacks! She used the best parts-with no printing-for the front.

The back is made up with sugar sacks turned so that the writing is inside the coverlet but it is still noticeable. Since there is no batting, it is quite easy to read. All of the sacks were 10 lbs. and were from two companies: The Amalgamated Sugar Company and the Utah Idaho Company.

With a little time spent with Google I discovered some fascinating things. These were both sugar beet companies. The Ogden, Utah plant was founded in 1898 and merged with other plants to become the Amalgamated Sugar Co. in 1915. A sugar beet processing plant was built in Garland in 1903 by the LDS Church and was merged with others from Idaho to form the Utah Idaho Sugar Company in 1907.

One of the bags says Chinook, Montana…a little research here informed me that there had been a large sugar beet processing plant serving the area, a large sugar beet growing center until “business collapsed among manipulations of the commodities market back in the early 1950’s”!
You can read here about sugar hoarding (over 5 million pounds!) in this NY Times article from 1919… I’m telling you the sugar business was not sweet!

I really love the back of this quilt-I love these sugar sacks! I love that they say “ A Product of American Farms” and “Pure Granulated” and “Fine Granulated Table and Preserving Sugar”.

I love this quilt…I love the woman who made it! She took sugar sacks and a bit of floss and made a summer spread-I like to think- to dress up her daughter’s bedroom.

I like this Bonnet Girl so much that I have traced the design and started embroidering my own blocks-I’ll show you two later this week and I’ll share the tracing so if you like Bonnet Girls as much as me-stop back!

Be sure to hop on over to Coloradolady and see all the other vintage treasures being shared today on Vintage Thursday Thingie!!

Poppy Applique quilt update

Things are slowly getting back to normal around here. There's something about school starting (even though my kids are way past school starting age) that says to me-summer's over.
Even with the kids here, all the other guests, the commission quilt, etc. I've found time to work on the poppy applique quilt...a very little bit each time but it does add up and hand applique really does relax me. I've finished all the stems and I'm now working on the center leaves.

Something is a little wonky there but I'm not going to redo it. (I say that with a very "in your face" to myself! :) I really do need to think of it as a natural leaf cluster.

I've been busy this week finishing up the rest of my class samples-one more is already at the shop as it was exhibited in a show at the neighboring gallery.

We're going to drop them off tomorrow and then head over to the beach! See summer really isn't over yet!

If you like give-aways, I've stumbled across a site that lists fabric give-aways-you can enter there and there are also links to the give-awayers so even if you don't like to enter, you can discover new shops and bloggy places to "hang out". Its called Needle Little Inspiration.