Monday, October 1, 2012

Some Very Old Things

I mentioned that I'd been the lucky recipient of Grandma's sewing kit, and showed you a picture of it and some of its contents several posts back. If you are interested, you can click here to go to the post.


Grandma is intent on cleaning out as much of her stuff as she can, and when she gets the notion that something is going to be done, then, by gosh, we must get busy! At 95, she is as feisty as ever, bless her heart.

So here are some close up pics of items in this sewing box - some of the things that fascinated me, anyway.


This is a quilting template that has been used often from the looks of the softened edges. Grandma showed me how she would make a cable design out of this by overlapping it when she traced it, usually on a border. Isn't that great? I bet I could go through some of the family's old quilts and find one or two that would have border quilting that would match this template.


This somewhat blurred pic is my attempt at getting a close-up of this thimble. I mentioned it in the earlier post. It has engravings on the bottom - a strand of flowers and the initials GS. Now, we have a GS in our heritage: Grace Shipman. She was "Granny" to everyone in Mom's generation. She would be my mother's paternal grandmother, my great-grandmother. Isn't that cool? It is made of silver, and if you are thinking it looks a bit misshapen, you would be correct. The thimble has a decidedly oval shape to it, sort of resembling the finger it would have been protecting, I imagine. It is worn smooth in some places, and is in need of a good cleaning, but I don't want to remove any of the engravings, so I will take care in how I handle it. Talk about a treasure! Even if Granny weren't Grandma's ideal mother-in-law, I have pleasant memories of her through my mother, so I want this thimble to be well-cared for!


This is just a couple of the many cards of buttons I found in the kit. Will you look at the price of these? A whopping 15 cents each! Gracious, how times have changed.

Here are a few more pics of various contents.



 






I love looking at these older packages of sewing notions. I will never have to buy a needle ever again! These have been especially fun to study as most of the needles were made in England back in the day.

Such fun to see these old items, the  prices, the packaging, and Grandma's extreme care to avoid wasting anything.

Happy Quilting, Friends!
 

2 comments:

  1. What a treasure trove. So,jealous of all those needles, have been bending mine doing hand quilting and need to go buy something sturdier that what I've been using. I found a box like that at the thrift store only no legs, glad to see what they should look like, now I can get DH to make new ones

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  2. You should put a few items in a shadow box with a picture of you and your grandma and hang it in your sewing room!

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