Sunday October 22nd...

Participants:

• Rozzilyn
• Susan
• Sadira

We almost went on a little field trip to Sedona and Flagstaff...almost, and then realized we'd have to be travelling in the car to and from the place, and were so overwhelmed by that thought, we stayed in town (Another one of those weeks!)

I started out the day by making some Halloween cards...no real pictures though, because I will be sending these to some of my blog readers, and I don't want to ruin the surprise...so, just an extreme closeup for now!



And then finally bowing to peer pressure, I made the rest of the vintage dress that I made this skirt from...into a top. I absolutely love this pattern, and I was thinking of using all the left-over material to make a little holiday banner, but everyone who has actually seen this top was telling me that it must remain a top...so a top it remains.





As a two piece outfit, it is lovely...as an entire dress...not so much. For some strange reason, I cut it just perfect while cutting out the skirt with all the curves and the length of a top...so, all it needed was a little hemming (this does not explain, however, why it was laying around waiting so long to be finished!)...my mother especially loves it because the entire pattern shows up on the back...and on the front fastening it together, is little black glass buttons. It's really wonderful!




And, at a yard sale this weekend, I spotted this lovely material in a box someone was unpacking...I quickly put down the green tassels I was looking at (and later bought for the tops of my living room curtains) and ran over to the box...








I discovered that the floral material was the backing to this lovely velvet crazy quilt. The nice lady made sure that I knew that the velvet side was a bit worn in some places before she would sell it to me for $3. I was just really happy about the floral material...then I noticed that in the places where the velvet had entirely worn away, I could see ticking. I love ticking. Love it. The sideboard in the "who I am" section should be getting longer...





Now, I decided to get this floral material soaking today. As I snuggled down to the floor to get to work, I realized that this material was only tacked on to the back of this quilt and came off quite easily. Originally I thought that the ticking was sewn onto the floral stuff...so, imagine my surprise when I realized that the backing had been replaced (the other backing was sweet roses, but had completely deteriorated at some point, there were traces of it) and the velvet had been sewed to these scraps of material.


Well, I knew what I needed to do...save that ticking! (I need another duvet cover for the extra feather comforter I use for winter after all) First though, my mother had me document the back of the quilt before we ripped into it. There is the most wonderful blocks of blue denim looking material that my mother gets to take home...you can see the white worn lines in it where it was faded from whatever it was in it's previous life. There were long hand done stitches in it making us think that whatever it had been, a dress or a shirt, someone had hand made it rather than using a machine (which makes us both think that the material is quite old) and then worn it and worn it...I love this stuff. I loved digging into this quilt and taking the pieces apart so I can use them again...we were discussing the fact that the women who made this quilt were probably looking down and smiling (or laughing because we were covered in dust and velvet crumbs...all the while the thought, "you're going to get some horrible disease and die" the thing my grandmother used to say to my mother when she drug home stuff from the thrift in the 60's) We also thought that maybe we should try to put all the pieces together again but would probably end up with a shirt with one arm missing, a pair of pants without half a leg and a dress with no top. I also loved sitting on the floor with my mother and taking this apart...the time we spend together is really special, and the shared love of rescuing textiles (and anything old) makes for wonderful memories. Plus she got to go home with a bag of velvet pieces (lucky her)

And her continuing project for today (this deconstruction of a quilt took quite a while) and in keeping with the theme of, "boy we hate to throw anything away" was to take the mummy material that had all but disintegrated (look at the whitish stuff in the previous picture) shred it a bit more, and drape it over my new feather tree. Now the tree looks complete and a bit spooky as the mummy material flutters anytime anyone walks by...












For our afternoon tea um...coffee, after our walk (and to clear our lungs from the inhalation of 100 year old quilt dust) we had these lovely chocolate kitty scones made by Dina, while watching Curious George. Dina and Niko came by the shop on Saturday to drop off the chocolate scones and the egg, cheese and bacon muffins in the sweet little Halloween basket! Thank you so much you guys...they are wonderful treats! The muffins were fresh out of the oven on Saturday, and smelled divine.

Rozzilyn also made 2 little Halloween pins and a door hanger...and gosh darned it, she got out of the house without any pictures taken. I was so involved in the quilt...I forgot...Sorry, all my fault!