Some new goodies were delivered this week. (See the link in the right-hand column for my etsy shop)

First off I picked out a few of my favorites from Lila Tueller’s newest line, Santorini.


(Note that the olive print with the creamy yellow background is backordered)
I lovelovelove these prints! The colors match my kitchen and living room and I’m dying to get my sewing machines out finally to make some pillows out of these.

Next up is the newest from Tula Pink, Hushabye.

(Note there are two other small scale prints available in all the colors, they are listed in my etsy shop.)

This is such a fresh line for babies. My niece is expecting her second baby next spring and I’m excited to make something special for him or her out of fabrics from this line. I just love all the little hidden animals and surprises to be found in the details.

This is probably my favorite of all quilts in my collection. It was a wedding gift to Steve and I 20 years ago from his childhood baby sitter, Tressie Garner. Tressie was a widow with no children of her own when she started watching Steve and his brother Paul back in the late 60s when they moved from Saginaw to the farm in Mayville. By the time we were married in 1989 she was in her 90s but still mentally quick and as spirited as ever. We aren’t sure about the real story behind this quilt. I don’t know if it is something she made or something she bought along the way. We are pretty sure it wasn’t purchased specifically for us and is definitely an antique made with real vintage fabrics. It was most assuredly hand pieced and hand quilted. The details and precision are amazing. I believe the pattern is called Around the World and each piece is only 2 inches square.

The sawtooth binding edge is meticulous.

I used to use this as a quilt on our bed and also on the guest room bed. I also used it as a wall quilt above our bed briefly at our vacation house. Now I try to keep it in storage so the delicate fabrics and colors don’t fade and wear and more. But it is too pretty to keep hidden away so I pull it out every winter to bring some much needed color and freshness to our long bleak winters here in the midwest. It is the one thing in my house that none of the animals are EVER allowed on! (But I do have a picture in my wedding album of our old cat Penelope resting on it and my wedding dress at my Mom’s while we were on our honeymoon.)

Since I haven’t been doing much sewing or other fresh crafting lately I decided to take this opportunity to share some of my oldies but goodies. I was going to call it, “Flashback Friday” or “Time Warp Tuesday” or “Way Back Wednesday.” But it is Monday and I couldn’t come up with any clever alliteration for today so I’m just calling it what it is.

When Sarah was ready to move out of the fantasy that she actually ever slept in her crib and give a big girl bed a try I made her this quilt. I guess I thought if I made her something really special and made a big deal out of it she’d actually SLEEP IN HER OWN BED! (ha!) I just loved all of these vintage 30’s style fabrics and had collected a few of them. When it was time to make the quilt I added more in the purples and teals to go with the color scheme I was working with at the time.

I pieced the squares in a fairly random pattern trying to avoid any weird color blocks or repeated patterns. The batting is an organic cotton (hard to find way back then but well worth it). I then spent months hand-quilting the thing. The first and last time I hand quilted anything. Not my thing. At the time I was still sewing everything on my old Singer and it just didn’t have the cajones to handle a large quilt.

I don’t specifically recall if the quilt worked magic and kept Sarah in bed all night. (It must have worked a little because Emma came along about a year later.) When we moved to this house I used it as a color palette for their shared room with a Noah’s Ark theme. Now it just lives in a big wicker chest in the guest room with other quilts (that I will share soon) and gets pulled out for sleep overs.

It has a few marker stains from the nights when Sarah would stay up to all hours drawing and doodling. When it first happened I was upset that she had “ruined” it. But as time has gone on I now cherish those stains as much as the quilt itself. They bring back a memory of a special time and activity she really loved.

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So readers, do you have a special handmade item from your childhood? Did you make your child (or grandchild, niece, nephew, godchild, etc.) something special that brings back memories of their childhood?