White Elephant Treasures and a Mystery Item
Yesterday I went to the Brazos Valley Quilt Guild show. At these small local shows, I love to shop in the White Elephant area – people have cleaned out their closets, the guild gets the money for their scholarship fund, and I get to buy bargains!
These were my big finds yesterday.
Trip Around the World vintage top, probably 1930s
Detail.
Kaleidescope pattern quilt top, from the 1930s or 40s.
Kaleidescope detail. I love buying tops that are so much more intricate than anything I can do!
I also bought tons of big scraps of solid-color fabric, to use for practicing free motion quilting on. I have such a hard time cutting up big pieces of fabric for practice pieces, even if I only paid $2 a yard for it. I want to keep it for a project. But I know I need to just do practice pieces too, so hopefully with this big bag of scraps I will actually do some.
A few weeks ago, my husband went to an auction without me, and brought me back this lovely object.
Is it a footstool? A shoe polisher? A rack for freshly ironed newspapers?
Top view. The “rolling pin” comes out of the framework.
No one at the auction knew what it was, but he thought it looked textile-related. I have not been able to find anything like it on the internet. The center “rolling pin”- looking part is solid wood, covered with this thin scrap of carpet. The carpet edges have been left raw, so that doesn’t look particularly decorative, but the wood is finished so nicely, it can’t have been meant as just a functional item either. Can anyone help me out?
I think it might be an Antique Victorian Foot Stool. http://www.ebay.tv/sch/i.html?_sop=3&_nkw=victorian+foot+stool
Ooh, I checked it out and I think you are right! It looks like we got a bargain, too. Thank you!
My husband’s aunt had a footstool like that, but it was shorter. It was back in the 70s, when the “Early American” style was popular.
I am glad to know what it is!
I love that first quilt. If I didn’t have a wall to hang it on, I’d insist on adding a room to our house so I could! When I looked at the other object my first thought was that is was a place to put a little girl’s saddle on when she wasn’t riding. It must be a lot shorter than I thought. It’s very pretty.
Right now I have a double Irish chain hanging on the wall in our bedroom – maybe that new (to me) top will alternate with that one. Otherwise, I just don’t have wall space, so I will have to consider adding on.
Now that the footstool mystery is solved, what are you going to do with those quilt tops. I just love the vintage fabrics in them. What you call a kaleidoscope block must have been the dickens to piece with all those bias edges.
I would say I am going to hand quilt them, but I still have two other vintage tops I am working on, and also my “Pixilated” quilt. But I had to rescue them!
If I ever get done cataloging my cabinet cards, I am going to start on a database of 30s fabrics and they will be a good place to start.
Wow, I’d say you sure did get some bargains this time. Beautiful quilt tops and they have such a wild collection of fabrics. Enjoy your finds! P.S. Glad the mystery is solved and you have a new or shall we say “antique” foot stool!
SO glad you rescued the tops and that foot stool is way ‘crazy’ !
I know! Who would think of making a foot stool that looks like a rolling pin? I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the “conversational” fabrics from the 1890s – little monkeys riding safety pins, things like that – I think those designers might have had a substance abuse problem! They came up with some odd things.
Little Monkeys riding safety pins….I’ll have to think about that one………:)