Obies, the fabric hoarding store of your dreams
Posted: April 3, 2015 Filed under: Favorite shops, Fun Finds | Tags: fabric shopping, Lancaster, Obies Country Store, quilt fabric, Quilting, Sewing 8 CommentsGoodville, Pennsylvania is just a blip of a town. You drive through it before you realize you even arrived. Its biggest claim to fame is the legendary hoard of quilting fabric in Obies Country Store, an unassuming clapboard house with a 1960s sign over the porch.
A friend and I went fabric shopping there last week, like going to Fabric Mecca on Holiday. I was overwhelmed just by stepping inside. This is extreme hoarding without the bad smells or squashed cats.
Come on in! This is what you see when you open the door. Be brave! Keep going!
Seven smalls I saw at Sage
Posted: October 12, 2014 Filed under: Craft, Fun Finds, Sage Farm, Vintage pottery | Tags: McCoy pottery, Quilting, Sage Farm, yellow is a happy color 2 CommentsPart of the fun of going to Sage Farm is seeing how the best dealers merchandise their stuff. I always try to look at that. It’s a free education if you pay attention!
But a few smalls always catch my eye, too. Here are six of them from last weekend’s Sage Farm show. 
First, a McCoy iris vase displayed with other pottery. I don’t care that it’s McCoy, I just love the flutey shape, and the yellow. Because yellow is a happy color. (A vase identical to the green one behind the yellow McCoy is sitting on my mantel right now!) 
An almost-rusty steel window screen displays vintage postcards. Wouldn’t this be great in your kitchen for recipes and notes? Too bad rust isn’t my thing. Now if I found a white enameled steel version . . .
See the other goodies I found!
To quilt heaven and back: Lancaster PA
Posted: August 11, 2014 Filed under: Fun Finds, Home and Garden, Sewing Project | Tags: fabric shops, Lancaster PA, Quilting, vintage quilt tops 3 CommentsHave you ever splurged on something without a single regret? Earlier this summer I found a collection of vintage quilt tops for sale on Instagram. They’d been used to cover tables at a country wedding. (Lucky, lucky bride!) The handful of photos were itty-bitty but I could see the quilt tops were made of amazing old fabric. It was a now-or-never moment. So I bought all five of them!
Look at these colors! Look at these patterns! How could I choose just one?
Fast forward a few weeks, and two friends invited me to go fabric shopping in Lancaster. I took two of the vintage quilt tops along. Yes, there’s more!
Thinking like a [sane] quilter
Posted: June 1, 2014 Filed under: Craft, Sewing Project | Tags: Alice Brooks quilt pattern, applique birds quilt, feedsack prints, Quilting, quilts, Textile 2 CommentsMonths ago somebody handed me a bag full of quilt bits their grandmother or great-aunt had left them, because I like sewing and all, so maybe I could finish it and have a nice quilt. Why, thank you very much!
At home, I opened the bag and saw this.
Brown, red, green, and lavender-pink? Not my favorite color scheme.
And closed the bag and stuffed it away somewhere. Because, while that bit on top there is nicely done patchwork, it is flaming-’80s “country” colors in stiff fabrics that are heavy on the polyester.
First off, I don’t quilt. Yet.
But when I finally start, I don’t want to make something in colors that don’t appeal to me and in fabric that’s unpleasant to handle. There’s no way in tarnation I’d put that much work into polyester.
Well, that was then. I found the forgotten bag recently and decided to dump everything out and see how bad it really was. Turns out, there were just a few ugly pieces on top. Underneath . . . . . -See what I found!>
Iron *this*, Jane-Ray!
Posted: April 23, 2014 Filed under: Craft, Home and Garden, Laundry, Vintage tablecloths | Tags: Quilting, Reliable longboard ironing table, sewing room, Textile, vintage fabric care, vintage tablecloth 4 Comments
NOT my actual iron. If I had a cloth-covered cord, I could plug in this 6-pound, dry-heat GE Wolverine Hi-Speed Calrod iron, mist all my linens with a shaker bottle, roll them up, wait half a day till they’re evenly damp . . . oh, forget it.
Well, Janeray, I can’t compete with the sheer amazing number of vintage tablecloths you’ve got. I started collecting them years later than you did, after all.
And I can’t compete with your brand-spankin’-new super-steamo iron, either.
But the ironing board?
Oh yeah. I got you beat on that one!
When I got married, I had a rickety 1980s ironing board and Bluesray had a super sturdy 1960s ironing board. We kept his and took mine to the thrift shop.
My poor 1960s aqua ironing board, relegated to the basement where the walls aren’t even painted!
His board was aqua!
Twenty-some years later, a couple of the welds on that ancient aqua board finally failed. I couldn’t bear to trash it, though, so it’s down in the basement now, patiently waiting to be repurposed as a display piece for shows.
And then I went out and found the ironing board of my vintage tablecloth dreams: the Reliable Longboard.
Sounds like a surfboard, right? It isn’t!
luray
janeray
dish sisters vintage home and housewares 