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



Fall Flea Market....

Hello! The weather is still quite warm, a more reasonable 70's though!
With a wonderful big "changes" wind blowing and bright sunshine...so...off to the flea market today.
And I did some early autumn home decorating when I got home....

Years ago I had a small but nice collection of 19th century stoneware crocks and fruit jars. They didn't "go" with my beachy look at the time so I lent the best  ones (extensive cobalt blue decorations) to my parents who also collected stoneware. And when my parents passed away and their collections were auctioned up on Cape Cod, my crock collection got sold along with. Hmmmm....

Anyway I still like the primitive look of stoneware, especially in the fall. So I've been buying a few very very very inexpensive modern pieces at the flea markets now and then.

This is my newest item, a salt glaze pitcher, from Germany. Again, my parents had lovely antique German crocks that I believe were from my grandparents' or great-grandparents' homes.

This is the same sort of style, but modern. You can see how the American potters of the 1800s brought their craft from Germany and Switzerland just as their wives brought their colorful ''Pennsylvaina Dutch" [ie German] quilting styles.

This small squat pitcher resonated with my memories and the price was right at  $5.oo!

This is perhaps the first crock/ jar I ever bought. It is from the Kane County Flea Market in Illinois.

It was too plain for my dad's taste so I kept it and it did not get sold.  

Now it holds my  sunflower crop that I am drying for my little winter birds who visit.

A newish piece, from Salmon Falls Pottery. I love the chickens!

Filled with beach grasses until I get my pumpkin set out.

And the tall pitcher from a few  weeks ago. It to is waiting, for me to go out to the marsh and cut an armload of invasive but so pretty (I am careful with it) bittersweet.

This was my mother's favorite plain crock or small churn. It was a souvenir from Steamboat Springs, Colorado. She liked to imagine it travelling west in a covered wagon...

And she filled it with hydrangeas every fall.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend....Did you buy your pumpkins!? Some candy corn or Indian corn?

We were too lazy but we did buy our fall bulbs and also our forcing bulbs for next January. Now is the time, plan ahead!

love
  
             lizzy

gone to the beach....