Our last stop on Monday was this shop. I'd picked up a pamphlet at the Visitor Center that indicated quilt fabric could be had here.
From the outside, it looked like this:
It was really an antique store. What passes for "antique" always amuses me, but often, things are interesting, even if not technically "antique." There was a lot to see, but I was focused mainly on quilty things. There were a few vintage quilts.
Some were not-so-vintage.
This one was hanging on a wall.
This one had a tag attached, indicating that it was signed by Nancy Green. I'd never heard of Nancy Green, and so I Googled her just now and discovered that Nancy Green was born into slavery in 1834. She was also a storyteller, cook, activist, and the first of several African-American models hired to promote a corporate trademark as "Aunt Jemima." She died in 1923, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say she didn't make this quilted table runner.
So then I Googled "Nancy Green quilter," and came up with a business called Pink Sand Beach Designs. That Nancy Green appears to be a designer of tote patterns. So...I don't know...this is the problem with antique stores in my book. I always walk away astonished at my level of ignorance when it comes to value.
On the other hand, I was sorely tempted by this little doll cradle. I've seen some of you displaying doll quilts on little doll beds, and I've often wondered if a doll bed would make my life complete. My wondering never extends beyond the confines of my tiny brain, but then I see something like this.
It was cute and priced at $36...and then marked down 20%! I think the inability to resist something that's been marked down is a genetic trait I inherited from my dear mother. Nevertheless, on this particular day, in this particular store, sanity prevailed. There is no way I have room to carry this around in the RV for the next several months, and shipping it home would have increased its cost significantly. So...no...bye-bye cute little doll cradle. It was nice knowing you, if only for this brief moment.
Also, I saw this.
My mother had a set of these Pyrex containers. This one was a small one...perhaps a cup's worth of volume. Family "issues" meant that I inherited almost nothing that belonged to my mother. Whenever I see something like this, I want to buy it and pretend it came from her. This was priced at $18, and too expensive for what it was. My mother would never have approved of that price, and so I passed it by as well.
What I was really interested in was the fabric. This was a large antique store, filled to the brim and spilling over with antiques. Still, they'd made room for quite a bit of quilt fabric.
Also, they had some vintage skeins of DMC embroidery floss and lots of books and patterns. Those were tempting, but I passed them by. Instead, I picked up a fat quarter of this as my regional print. It reminded me of the shells we'd seen on the beach the day before.
Also...I fell in love with this rippling sand print, and so I picked up a yard of that. I can think of a lot of ways to use this, most likely, as a background for one of the "shadow self" quilt blocks I want to make some day.
How many of you are not going to live long enough to make all the quilts you want to make? Certainly, you and I are kindred spirits.
So it wasn't technically a quilt shop, but it was still fun to wander around looking and touching.
7 comments:
Just the kind of store I love to wander thru. Most of the stuff I have is vintage and there's enough to fill a store too. Great shell print and you are right. We will never make all the quilts we envision. But we try!
Antique shops are fun places to spend an afternoon. You found some great fabrics. As far as making all the quilts I've got planned, I'm going have to live to 200 to manage that I think.
I love these kinds of stores - you can spend a long time just looking. The shell print was perfect - and no, we won't get to all those planned quilts.
Fun little shop. I would have been sorely tempted by that cradle too, and would probably have stuffed it in the trunk somehow. It looked much nicer than most I've seen. Great fabrics, you will no doubt wish you had more of that sand print, looks so versatile.
It may not have been a quilt shop, but it has a lot of interesting things. I agree that some things in antique shops may not qualify as true antiques, especially when they are things I owned or had in my home. Surely We are not antiques!
I'm always finding new items in antique stores. There is no way I'll ever finish all the quilts I want to make. Even if I was Samantha, from Bewitched, and could just wiggle my nose, I don't think I could finish them.
That was a neat shop - a "junk store" kind of place with lots of different kinds of things. The doll bed was cute - maybe the Resident (retired) Engineer could make one for you when you're back home?
Great fabric picks!
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