sewing: round purse

Remember I wanted to make a matching purse for my 1920s sun hat but didn’t know what a matching purse should look like? I was looking through dress patterns on ebay, and noticed a lady in the 1950s holding a round purse like this. I thought it possible someone in the 1920s might have had [...]

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1-day-projects: finished sun hat

Yay, this hat pattern worked much better this time, my third attempt. It’s as cute as I knew it could be. Last time the crown had too much fabric for the head/brim opening, which I cleverly disguised hid in plain sight with a pleat at the back. I wasn’t happy. This time when I sewed [...]

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sewing: finished 1930s quilt

Finally done! I did the hand-quilting in rows 10-inches apart, so it’s not as closely quilted as maybe it should be. I think it took about 12 hours to do that much, and that was all the time I was willing to put into it. I used a layer of fleece instead of cotton, having [...]

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This year’s resolution already broken (almost)

Yes, I did resolve to not buy supplies for new projects. We all knew that was not really going to happen, right? I’ve got a bee in my bonnet about new curtains for the bedroom, and new curtains means new accessories. I already mentioned I had this big over-haul project in mind, and I’ve been [...]

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sewing: 1930s print quilt

Have I been busy sewing in the background? You have no idea. I collected fabric for this quilt for a long time, first starting on ebay by buying pre-cut 3-inch squares. Then I realized it was going to take an awful lot of squares to make a quilt, so I started buying 5-inch squares, too. [...]

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watching: Love Me Tonight (1932)

I mentioned this movie a while ago, but hadn’t really tuned into youtube back then so was not able to add the magic of demonstration clips. Does the web just keep getting better? I am tempted to start a new movie subset tag of Best Opening Sequences. There are so few movies that meet this…well, [...]

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photos of time gone by

Here is a link to a page of color photos from 1939 – 1941. It’s hard not to look at the photos and imagine the least among us being very grateful to have so much today. And I wonder if the people in the photos were grateful, as they looked around and also felt they [...]

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sewing: sun hat

I have also been fooling around sewing this hat pattern. I tried to make the small-brimmed version and it did not work at all, although someone else left a comment and said it worked fine. So it must have been me not understanding the (very sparse) instructions. Then I gave the wide-brimmed version a couple [...]

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