Something Old

It was a beautiful morning for a visit to the Portland Farmer's Market. It's always fun to shop with Erik and Mae and listen as they discuss their coming week's menu. They are both excellent and imaginative cooks. I found the tomatoes and tomatillos I was looking for. I'll be making a Tomatillo-Apple Salsa today, and so I picked up the rest of the ingredients I'll need for that. I had several errands to run before I came home, and so it was after 1:00 p.m. by the time I had lunch. Days with lots of getting in and out of the car and being polite to the strangers I encounter always wears me down, and so I had a nap after lunch. It left precious little time for sewing.

It seemed like a good opportunity to open up my mother's cedar chest and rifle through the vintage linens there. When I finished the quilt blocks for Jenny's Flower Garden,

it left an opening on my WIP's dance card. (I still need to sew these quilt blocks into a quilt. That will happen soon.) That slot has now been filled with plans for a quilt I've wanted to make for a very long time. I'll call it a "Vintage Linen Sampler."

It's so seldom I open my mother's cedar chest that it's as if I'm looking at everything for the first time. What I'm going to show you are hand embroidered and hand crocheted doilies, dresser scarves, pillow cases, bedsheets, and other assorted linens. I can recall that we used some of these things in our home as I was growing up, but there is so much of it that it has mostly been inside my mother's cedar chest since before I was born. 

As I was going through, I noticed that many of these pieces are larger than I remembered them. For my quilt, I'd always thought about cutting these into pentagon shapes, and then filling in crazy-quilt style until I had quilt blocks the size I wanted them. As I looked at them yesterday, I realized my quilt would need to be more of a sampler, which each block made to accommodate the size of the vintage piece I select. I took a lot of pictures of these, and I'll tell you a little about them. The thing to notice about this first one is the hand-crocheted edging. I think I'll try cutting these close to the stitching and then using them as a sort of flange between seams.

These next two are the edges of pillow cases. I can only think they must have had very large feather pillows because these pillow cases were huge.

This next one is one of the smaller pieces. I always had this one in my room growing up. I loved the design. As I look at it, I'm thinking she may have used a print fabric and then stitched around it as she wanted to. The flowers appear to have been her own idea. I'll probably keep this piece whole and just sew it to a background. The quilt blocks will probably be large ones to accommodate the size of some of the stitcheries.

This next one is a little hankie. The fabric is very thin and transparent. I'll probably stitch it to something white to give it a little more heft. But look at my grandmother's beautiful hand embroidery.

It's hard to tell the backs from the fronts. I can promise you my backs don't look as pretty as hers.

Some of the pieces are small and will be simple to use. I want to try to preserve some of the little stitched edges in different ways.

Here's one done with variegated crochet thread. There were no zig-zag stitches in her day, and so that stitching where the lace meets the fabric is all done by hand.

There were a few monogrammed pieces. The "M" stood for "Maust," my mother's maiden name.

For sure I'll use these in my grandmother's honor.

Apparently she did this little hankie for my mom when she married. Her married name (my maiden name) was "Nelson."

And I have no idea whose baby this was for. Since it's pink, we can assume it was for a girl.

Now here's something of a treasure. I'm sure I've seen this before, but I'd forgotten about it. She was talking about a handkerchief both she and I carried in our weddings. I'm not sure when she married my grandfather, but we can do some figuring. My mother was their third child, and she was born in 1922. I'm guessing she probably married my grandfather somewhere in the 19teens. The handkerchief was a gift to her mother (my great-grandmother) from a Mrs. Rexroad(?)...not sure about that spelling.

Mrs. Rexroad gave it to my great-grandmother when my grandmother was 11. She only used it as her "wedding handkerchief" and then put it away. At some point she gave it to my mother for my use when I married. (My mom and dad eloped...always a sore spot between my mom and her parents.) My grandmother died in 1973, and Mike and I were only dating then. In any case, she passed it along for me to hold at my wedding. It is easily more than 100 years old, and possibly very, very old since I don't know any more about Mrs. Rexroad and how she happened to have it. Here is the lace she's referring to. It's much too precious to cut it up, and so this one will be put away for some future person to discover.

Here's the other side of the note. I don't know anything about the "horse piece," and it is not among these linens.

Here are a few more I pulled to use in my quilt.

Some of these are very small, like this one, which seems about the right size for a coaster.

Since I'll be cutting these from some large pieces, I'll end up with some larges pieces of white linen, and I'll use those in the quilt as well.

There is a Facebook group for Vintage Linen Quilts, and I've spent some time perusing Pinterest. The Facebook group makes it clear from the get-go that they don't cut these linens, but use them as whole pieces. I'm not going to do that. I'll cut the portions I want. There is going to be no one to hand these down too beyond my own adult children. I feel confident they have no interest in these things. In any case, how many centuries should they sit in my mother's cedar chest before they are brought out into the light to be enjoyed? It ends here. I think my grandmother would approve.

And then there's my all-too-common embroidery with its messy back. I've stitched all the leaves on my latest piece, and just the barn and tree branches are left before I move along.

This seems an especially good day to link up to 

There are some things to do today...making salsa for one thing. Also, the flower pots need watering. It's time for Sunday morning blueberry oatmeal pancakes, and then I'll get back to my quilting. Here's where I left it.

I'm looking forward to a leisurely day. I hope your Sunday is relaxing and enjoyable.