Fall Flea Market

What a gorgeous perfect day!
Sunday was just what a person pictures in a fantasy of flea market fun---sunny, crisp, brisk breeze. Abig cheerful crowd.
And well, yes, somewhat surly dealers packing up early despite the happy throngs offering money and smiles.

You'll look at my treasures and think, Same old, same old...I guess I like what I like.
A fun rusty tin primitive scoop for my autumn bowl of woodland-y pods and berries.

I'd prefer  rosehips, but I haven't had time to order from my Cape Cod vendor of lavender and other dried botanicals...

The inspiration gathering had a grungy flicker candle too and maybe something else. I can never quite achieve what my favorite eBay seller, Michelle at Oldefarmhousesimples does in her Maine home...here

Then, I got some crystals...

One of these rainy days I'll sit down with my silver wire and my rusty hooks and make a big batch of Christmas icicles for my etsy shop...

These were unusual...love the round drops, they're for my old bottles on my window sill. They'll cast tiny rainbows for me all winter. (They can't cause a fire, can they? You know, like "earth science 101 in Middle school", start a fire with a magnifier thing? Are they safe? Anyone know?)...And the unusal smooth oval lozenges will have collages of old photographs perhaps.

And this star! Beautiful...all are heavy old lead crystal from dismantled chandeliers.

I must take a second to point out the linen backdrop in my photos. This is a homespun towel gifted to me by one of my etsy customers! So generous. She thought for my lavender hearts...but maybe it's too nice to chop up? It shold be a throw pillow? Look at the careful, wonderful old buttons/ buttonholes.

And what's a flea market day without a box of buttons!?

I love the old green box, looked like a bandbox type of paper, though it certainly has a prominent mid-2oth century Made in China label. I'm seeing it filled with greens at Christmas or as a stand for a Santa figure...

The buttons have great potential, though I didn't sort or wash them yet...

Lovely old carved mother of pearls (which I keep for  myself!)...And an interesting finely crocheted covered button, a fancy floral too...

Neat art deco..

fun "Peggy" pastels, maybe 1940s?

And the real reason I bought the box: it had all these lovely little spools of 100% cotton thread.

Has anyone noticed how truly ghastly the sewing thread we buy is nowadays? So thin and icky and polyester, yuck. So I was hoping. I think though they are too deteriortaed, the old cotton has "crashed"/ rotted.

Last, I bought an exceptional linen tablecloth....I'll post it separately.  I'm still researching it.

so...more soon!

love

   lizzy

             gone to the beach..............

October Sunsets

Autumn sunsets...

                

I think if, like Snow White, someone woke up on the beach after months of sleeping, they'd immediately know it is October.

The sun sets far south, beyond New Jersey...

.... off towards the big tanker ships.

But it's the light that tells me it's autumn.

The oranges, the purple, the black streaks on a turquoise sky.

No longer the soft pink glow of spring and summer or the cold yellow of winter...

These are Halloween banners, trailing gleefully across my sky.

I love to walk on the beach at sunset...earlier each day...but still perfect.

self portrait7: shorts, October

 love

           lizzy

gone to the beach

Tropical Storm?

Look at this calm and beautiful beach day!
Like a perfect pearl of a day, right?

Is it the calm before the storm? The weather guy says a tropical, no-name storm may come to the beach tomorrow. Hard to believe (if indeed we still had any faith left at all in the Weather Channel, lol!)...

I have lots of projects to keep me happy indoors, including a new doll quilt/ mini-quilt.

Years ago I made doll quilts and then I decided they were fairly useless and a waste of time. My family definitely doesn't like fussy displays of little draped quilty things, or heaven forbid...dolls!
But I had so much fun making Lori's quilt along doll quilt (Humble Quilts) that , when a friend gave me a strip of antique patchwork, I decided to make another.

The strip is very neat! Thousand Pyramids? Birds in the Air? Ocean Waves? Who knows....

Quite old, I'd guess 1880s using fabrics as early as 1850.....

Worth rescuing and making into a small "stripy" or Bars quilt. Notice how the small triangles are grouped and pieced to form larger triangles; they were pieced in these pyramid-type sections.

This old brown "coral" pattern (repro) and double pink I had out on my table gave me the idea for the miniature Bars quilt...

But I actually like this cocoa brown "vermicelli" calico better in person, it has tiny turquoise dots and more importantly makes the tiny triangles "pop"...?

Some parts are in very bad shape, made worse by washing. (Yes but it was so dirty!)...

And more work than it will be worth in the end. I used these antique blocks to make replacement triangle sections...

Interestingly this set of 16 Patch blocks is whipstitched not running stitched/pieced. Which I believe implies an older date of construction? Probably an expert like Barbara Brackman could tell me....These fabrics though seem similar in age to the triangles strip, 1850-80, so...fine.

Probably it would be more time efficient to just make an entirely new quilt. But I love saving these old pieces, imperfect as they are, imperfect as  my efforts are....

It's gonna be, like many of my antique quilt rescues, more redo work than original. But a small hand project for a rainy day and a broken sewing machine...

love

lizzy

~~~~gone to the beach



self portrait 6, with wire trash barrel