Nostalgic Images on Mid-Century Handkerchiefs

Burmel Gay 90s Hanky

The Twentieth Century nostalgia for Early America and the Gay 90s was manifested in handkerchief design in the 50s and 60s.  Technology and social changes were happening so quickly that people's thoughts hearkened back to perceived 'simpler times.' 

Some of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes have persons longing for the olden days, like "A Stop At Willoughby" in which a "Mad Man" ad man feels such stress he fantasizes about a train stop to an 1888 town.



My family all decorated in the Colonial Revival style, not the Modern which is in revival today. A great article on the Americana revival in the 70 s can be found  here:
http://retrorenovation.com/2014/07/07/bicentennial-chic/

Here are some examples from my collection.

Pat Prichard used Early American signs in these hanky designs.

In another series Prichard used turn-of-the century kitchen images, like the cast iron stove in the hanky below.

 Old clocks and time pieces are also found on handkerchiefs of this time period.

Jeanne Miller

We were nostalgic for old forms of transportation. 

Pat Prichard

Pat Prichard

Pat Prichard

Quaint baby buggies from yesteryear by Pat Prichard.

Tammis Keefe was a prolific designer in the 1960s. 

Tammis Keefe

Tammis Keefe

Erin O'Dell's design with antique furniture was not far different from what Tammis Keefe was doing ten years earlier.

 High button boots and an old time cash register on another Pat Prichard hanky.

Old fashioned keys were another motif found in several designs like this one by Faith Austen.

 I love this nostalgic kitchen scene series.

 I made a wall hanging with a hanky from this series.

Farm and small town life was another favorite theme.

Betty Anderson

Tammis Keefe's wooden Indians salute a ship's masthead woman.

I love this Tammis Keefe hanky with sailors in the rigging of an old sailing ship.

And here the sailors are dancing the Hornpipe.

Learn more about Tammis Keefe here.

July 1964 Woman's Day: Make an Embroidered Denim Coverlet

Has it been fifty years? Now 1964 styles and decor are so old they are all the rage. Thanks to Mad Men and nostalgia for the past. Our son wants Mid-Century Modern inspired furniture. Renovating not remodeling Mid-Century ranch homes is a fad.

Women's magazines at the grocery store check out line offered crash courses in consumer education.  Magazines alway taught women about style and decor, going back to Lady Godey's and other Victorian magazines that came available then. More people could read and the printing press offered cheap reading material. But the huge color ads and pics were a post-war luxury.

They look so small by today's standards. Love that gold fridge!

Big innovation! Moms no longer needed to add the sugar. What a time saver.

Debbie Reynolds was in The Unsinkable Molly Brown at this time, a novel about a woman who survived the sinking of the Titanic 

Hair and makeup advice based on skin tone. Notice the absence of women of color?

Egad! Is that Don Draper at the phone? Pay phones! When did you last see one?

I never asked to go to Disneyland, but I did ask about going to the New York World's Fair. I had friends who went. We lived in Western New York State. I mean we were in the same state after all. To my kid's mind it was like going to the Hamburg Fair. Only bigger. And a little farther.

The great thing in this magazine was the coverlet quilt! it is pretty cool. 

Denim quilt with embroidery embellishments!

Instructions for the quilt:

Blue Denim Quilt
56" x 72"
Each square is 4"

Materials: The original quilt was made from scraps of overalls and jeans. Or buy 4 yards of 36" wide denim materials. Scraps of printed and plain cotton fabric, rickrack, and embroidery floss. Lining requires 4 yards of 36" percale. You also needed 'bedspread cotton' in assorted colors and black to crochet around each square and a steel crochet hook No. 6

Squares: cut 252 each 4 1/2" squares from denim material. Trim as desired with appliqué, rick rack, etc. The appliqué is edged or trimmed with embroidery. Stitches included buttonhole, herringbone, feather stitch, lazy daisy, French know, and outline stitched worked with s strands of 6-ply floss.

Edges: turn under edges of the trimmed squares 1/8". With colored bedspread cotton, work single crochet sc around each square. Space stitches close together and work 3 sc in each corner. Break off. Attach black and work sc in each sc around, working 3 sc in each corner. Break off.

Finishing: Arrange and then sew squares together at edge of crochet to form a rectangle 14 squares wide by 18 squares long. Cut and piece lining to fit top, allowing 1/2" for seams and turn under. Turn under 1/2" all around outer edge and sew to top. Tack through both layers in several place to hold lining in place or tack at corners of each square.
THE END

"White Noise" Thirty Years Later. Remembering 1984.

"It's about fear, death, and technology. A comedy, of course." DeLillo, 1984.

When Don DeLillo's 1984 novel White Noise won the National Book Award I bought and read it. Thirty years later I bought a copy in a library sale and have read it a second time. (The first copy was sacrificed at one of our dozen moves.)

Thirty years ago I was barely 30 and was not yet a mother. I had taken a course on Black Humor at Adrian College. So I am sure I understood the clever dark humor of the book, but little of the nuances of family life and parenting. And certainly I did not resonate to the fear of death that pervades the characters in the novel. 

The numerous references to American culture places the novel in a specific time, which thirty years later is a real time travel experience. Sansabelt slacks? Princess phones? Kids being driven to college in station wagons loaded with phonograph players and records?  1984 was an age of shopping malls and consumerism. Just this week a Detroit Free Press article covered the demise of the shopping malls. This was another time for sure. A time when the Middle Class was in it's hey-day, spending to create the American Dream.

It was also a time when people worried about the Cold War and Nuclear Winter, the end of the world as we know it. 

I was compelled to turn pages even when nothing really was happening, plot wise at least. The first section Waves and Radiation introduces the family. The husband, Professor Jack Gladney, has created a Hitler Center at the university, but agonizes over not being able to read German. His attractive third--or fourth wife depending if you label marrying the same woman twice one or two marriages--Babette reads tabloids to the blind and teaches the elderly proper posture. Kids of all ages, from previous and current marriages, perplex their folks as kids are wont to do. They are your typical American family. 

The second section The Airborne Toxic Event finds the family in crisis. An accident releases an airborne toxin into the air and the community is evacuated for nine days. Part Three, Dylarama, shows us how far Babette will go to escape her fear of dying. When Jack finds out her secret he waffles between wanting to follow her lead or turn to violence and vengeance.

The writing abounds with memorable lines.

"..the irony of human existence, that we are the highest form of life on earth and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die."

"We have these deep and terribly lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function."

Which recalled to mind Emily Dickinson's poem "I tie my hat....to keep my senses on" with its final lines "Therefore--we do life's labor--Though life's Reward--Be Done-- With Scrupulous exactness--to hold our senses-- on--"

Jack is asked, "Isn't death the boundary we need? Doesn't it give a precious texture to life, a sense of definition? You have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry of a final line, a border or limit."

And his friend Murray tells him "That's what it all comes down to in the end...A person spends his life saying good-bye to other people How does he say good-bye to himself?"

All this death talk, so Woody Allen-ish, would become tedious and heavy if it were not for the comic insights that also abound. 

After the Airborne Toxic Event the community goes through drills to prepare for another such event. Just after a drill for an airborne toxic event  people notice a strange irritating order, a copper taste on the tongue. But the authorities are silent and the people avoid thinking or talking about what they experience. Finally it goes away. All that preparedness, and yet no one responds! This kind of irony pervades the novel

But wait, that just happened to me. We were celebrating our anniversary at a nice restaurant when the fire alarm went off. The diners all sat in their seats, sniffing the air and looking at the staff for orders. Everyone was placid, there was no sense of danger. The staff stood confused and silent. After a minute or so the owner came and told the staff to lead everyone outside. Some patrons left with wine glasses in their hands. We filed out in an orderly style and at a slow pace, and stood just outside the doorway eager to return to our meals. After some minutes we were told there was a water leak that set off the alarm. The fire department decided it was safe and everyone pushed back in to their meals. 

We did not get a discount or even a freebie.

I can only think that the lack of smoke or smoky odor kept us from taking the alarm seriously. Remember the fire drills held in school days? We did not learn a thing.

Towards the end of the novel Jack Gladney ends up in a hospital staffed by nuns. The nun attending him becomes irritated that he expects her to embody the faith that he himself lacks. She chides him. 

''Your dedication is a pretense?''[Jack asked]

''Our presence is a dedication,'' she responds. ''As belief shrinks from the world, people find it more necessary than ever that someone believe . . . Nuns in black. . . . Fools, children. We surrender our lives to make your non-belief possible."

The back cover blip from Jayne Anne Philips of the New York Times Book review says it all: "One of the most ironic, grimly funny voices to comment on life in present-day America..."

At least America in 1984.  

And what was going on in 1984?

President Reagen called it "Morning in America," referring to the rise of optimism American were feeling, especially in regards to financial security.
Early in December toxic gas released in Bhopol, India killed 2,000 and injured 150,000 people.
Crack hit the LA streets.
Mackintosh Apple computers were introduced.
The USSR, U.S., China, and even France were conducting nuclear tests. Lots of tests.
Saddam Hussein of Iraq of used poison gas against Iran and the Kurds.
The AIDS virus was identified.
The IRA bombed a British Hotel where Margaret Thatcher was staying.
Jet hijackings were going on.

There was famine in Ethiopia. And the Band Aid concert raised funds for the famine.
The U.S. Embassy in Beirut was bombed.
The Space Shuttle was making flights.
Indira Ghandi was assassinated.
Exercise was a fad with its own fashions.

Stonewashed jeans were introduced. And Big Hair was big. So where the shoulder pads.

http://myyearoffabulous.com/2013/01/the-history-of-rock-and-roll-fashion-part-four/

The first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comic went on sale as well as Transformer toys and we loved Cabbage Patch dolls.
Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen was released.
Ghostbusters and Sixteen Candles were released.



A heady mix of pervasive dread tempered by a healthy dose of feel good consumer delights. We got the novel we deserved.

Michigan 101: Rivers and Lakes

In the summer everyone goes to the water. In Michigan weekends are quiet because everyone has gone to their cabin or is camping, but you can bet they are at the water's edge.

 The escarpment that created Niagara Falls, near where I grew up, also creates falls in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some Michigan water scenes.

We moved into our retirement house on Tuesday. It is going to take a long time to settle in. I miss my quilt projects so much! But there are several months of hard work ahead first.