A LITTLE FAMILY SEWING HISTORY

I’ve been doing a little family genealogy research on my Grandmother’s side of the family and guess what?  I found out that my great-great-grandmother from Scotland moved to London and was a seamstress for a while, then moved to San Antonio, Texas where she made hats.    That’s where my sewing gene came from!

Vintage Sewing Machine Trade Card

The other day while reading Collector With a Needle’s interesting blog entry about her Martha Washington Sewing Cabinet, my oak sewing cabinet jumped to mind.  I bought this cabinet at an auction in North Fort Worth 10 or 15 years ago when Sweetie and I had a booth at the local antique mall.  However, this purchase was not for the antique mall booth – it was completely for me!  It has no labels but I believe it is from the 1910 era, plus of minus 10 years.

It is nestled between an antique steamer trunk topped with quilts and
a chair draped with an antique quilt.  Please ignore the dust and
the basket of cat toys under the chair (if you can).

Cabinet with top and drawer open



Close up of sewing cabinet front

My Friendship Triangle Exchange quilt is coming along.  I’m adding two more rows at the top and one row at the bottom then I’ll sew all the sections together and see if I want to add more.

Barn Raising HST in sections

I had to make more half-square triangles to add those additional rows – maybe 50 or 60 more.  Of course, there are two HS triangles out of each block of fabric sewn together.  I’ve just been digging through my scrap drawers and anything that is big enough to cut 3” square went into the HST mix.

Last but not least, the Texas Rangers won Thursday’s game in the 9th inning 2-1, but lost it on Wednesday 3-2.  They are on their way back to the home field in Arlington tied 1 and 1 in the best of 7 games World Series.  They’ve been close both nights, which makes it hard to hand quilt because I’m so tense watching the close call, outs, swings, and misses. 

After the game on Wednesday, I stitched 4 needles worth.  I load my needles all on the spool of thread, then separate each needle to cut the thread about 18” long, then tie the knot on the ends.  That saves more frequent interruptions of stopping to thread one needle at a time so I can stitch just long enough that it’s time to take a break at the end of the last needle.

Guess that’s all for now.