More Finds

The Tuesday Quilters are a generous group, making items for charity and sharing goodies. The gals bring in fabric, yarn, patterns, or magazines to give away almost weekly. Today we had linens and fabric. I brought home some great stuff!

I loved this embroidered 1930s lady on a heart shaped doily embellished with lace. I can see her on one of my wall hangings.

These pansies were embroidered on the four corners of a table cloth. There is staining on the cloth, but I can see several ways to use it.

This Redwork is so cute! 

"What does the birdie say/In its nest at peep of day"

These preprinted cheater cloth panels marked "Charlotte" by Denise Beavers of The Violet Patch would look amazing hand quilted for a charity quilt!

This silk 1939 new York World's Fair handkerchief is in mint condition!

I love the different national costumes so colorfully illustrated

I also brought home a piece of ribbon and this piece of pretty fabric.

I had better clear out my stash and share with the gals!

My Weekend Haul: Hankies and Quilt Tops and Embroidery and 1927 Stamped Linens

The weather is finally beautiful in Michigan and I had a hankering to explore. On Saturday we went to Berkley and the Odd Fellow's Antique Mall, the Council Resale across the street, and The Rust Belt Market in Ferndale and Vintage Vogue in Pleasant Ridge.

On Sunday (after church and lunch with family) I ran down to the Royal Oak Flea Market. Something was calling my name.

It turned out the siren was a Depression era Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt top for $20.00! The lady, who was from Port Huron, also had some linens stamped for embroidery.

First up are two handkerchiefs I bought at the antique mall. They had loads of handkerchiefs, but so do I so I am particular

Next up are embroidered pieces I found at the thrift shop for $1 each.

 Above is the detail of a pair of matching dresser scarfs, nicely finished.

Above is a pillow cover with embroidery on linen. It was never used.

The flea market top is below. The setting is pale pink and Nile Green.

 As you can see, the top does not lay flat. I have preordered the Recycled Hexie Quilts book by Mary Kerr and hope I can use it in the way she shows in the book.

There are some interesting fabrics.

The stamped linen pieces are on a coarse, heavy weave ecru linen. The stamping is light blue. Two came with papers showing color placement and a color chart from Nun's Boil Fast Threads, and there were cut out samples of other items they offered. The patterns were dated 1927!

I can't find anything online about Nun's, except for a post at what-i-found blog: http://what-i-found.blogspot.com/2009/01/nuns-boilproof-thread-catalog-1923.html

UPDATE: I have found a wonderful history on the company written by Susan Wildemuth at
http://www.illinoisquilthistory.com/Buettner.html

 This is black and white image of the linen showing an Indian at his tepee; the chart is below.

The sample that was attached to the Indian pattern.

Another pattern was of sail boats.There were five samples attached.

 The color chart showing the threads.

 The little Dutch girl had no papers or charts.

I spent $29 on all of the above. And $14 for some tea blends at The Rust Belt Market. Lunch at Alex's of Berkley was a whooping $20.00: hubby had lasagna, soup, and desert and I had Greek salad and a gyro. It was a cheap mini-vacation in our own home town! Across the street from the restaurant is Guildcrafters Quilt Shop with great modern fabrics. 

I don't think I shared this eBay hanky find from a while back. There is a hole in the top center but if I use it in a hanging it can be dealt with.

We were trying out the lighting in the house for photographs. Not a great local, but it is the first "hanging" photo I have of my Prince's Feather! I will be showing it in the CAMEO Quilt Guilt show in June. We need to provide photos with the entry form.

The Children's Crusade by Anne Packer

Ann Packer's new novel The Children's Crusade will not disappoint fans of her previous novel The Dive From Clausen's Pier .

The Children's Crusade explores the private and corporate failures of the Blair family. Physician Bill returns from the Korean War tired of death; he decides to specialize as a pediatrician. Surrounded by children perhaps he could regain his optimism. First he buys a plot of California land surrounding a California Live Oak tree; he plans to build a home there some day.

He meets Penney, a woman who has never found herself. They fall in love. Penney dreams of having three children. They marry and seem destined for fulfillment and happiness.

The novel fast forwards. There are now four Blair children: Rebecca the analytic psychologist; Robert the dependable doctor; the romantic Ryan who teaches at his childhood school; and James, the 'problem' child, impetuous and emotional. Penney has discovered a career in art. Bill has died. Their childhood home is now in the 'Silicon Valley', rented out until Penney and one child decide to sell.

Packer allows us to discover each character in the first person, learning about their childhood memories and adult life. The characters are vivid and alive, complicated and flawed, sympathetic and likable.

Penny became overwhelmed by family needs, her self-expectations to be the perfect housewife, and especially by her youngest child James. He was the kid who soiled his pants and sat in a patch of poison oak while removing them; whose emotional outbursts could only be tamed by his father's calm presence. Penney turned a shed into a separate world where she immersed herself in art made of found objects. 'Prefect' Bill kept the family together in spite of his long hours as a pediatrician. With an absentee mother, the older children had to care for James. They are overwhelmed and fail. When their mother started to drift away Rebecca had come up with the idea of a 'crusade,' finding ways to involve their mother back in their lives.

Adult James returns to his family to take stock of his choices. After years of restlessness, he settles in Eugene, OR where he has become part of a community that accepts him and affirms his strengths. James now has to make a hard decision. He is in a relationship that threatens to destroy the community that has given him family. Instead of support he finds himself trapped in the 'loser' role of his childhood, his siblings still in the roles of caretakers, not friends. It has been years since he has spoken to the mother who emotionally abandoned him. It is time they met again.

These characters have stayed in my mind over a  week as I worked on my review. So many books fade away quickly. This family has become part of my own world, as if I knew them somewhere along the way. And that is about the best thing anyone can say about a book.

I received a free e-book from the publisher through NetGalley for a fair and unbiased review..

The Children's Crusade
Ann Packer
Scribner
Publication Date: April 7, 2015
ISBN: 9781476710457
$26.99 hard cover

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"How To Make Your Own Candies" Circa 1891

Pulling Taffy

The 1891 Home Remedies for Man and Beast includes information on all kinds of instructions, including candy making.

Here are the recipes:

Maple Sugar Candy
Boil maple sugar until it becomes sufficiently thick. Then add a teaspoon of vinegar for every two quarts of syrup; smaller amounts proportionately. When the candy has reached a sufficient consistency, pour out. Any kin of nuts may be dropped into it, or different flavors may be used, to make almost any kind of candy preparation.

Fig or Raisin Candy
1 pound of sugar
1 pint of water
Set over a slow fire. When done add a few drops of vinegar and a lump of butter, and pour into pans in which split figs/raisins are laid.

Scotch Butter Candy
1 pound of sugar
1 pint of water
Dissolve and boil. When done add 1 tablespoon of butter and enough lemon juice and oil of lemon to flavor.

Taffy
2 1/2 cups of brown sugar, 1/2 cup of butter, 4 tablespoons of molasses, 3 tablespoons of water, 2 tablespoons of vinegar. Boil 20 minutes.

Peppermint Drops
2 1/2 cups of sugar, one-half cut of water; boil 10 minutes. Flavor with a few drops of the essence of peppermint. Stir until quite thick, then drop on a buttered paper.

Caramels
1 cup of molasses, two of sugar. Boil ten minutes. Add one large Tablespoon of flour, butter the size of an egg, 1/2 lb. of chocolate. Boil twenty minutes.

Molasses Candy
2 1/2 cups sugar, 1 cu of molasses, 1 1/2 cups of water; after it begins to boil add 1/4 tsp cream tartar; cook in the usual way, but do not stir. Before taking from the fire, add butter half the size of an egg. Do not butter your hands while pulling.

Everton Toffee
1 1/4 lbs of powdered loaf sugar; 1 teacup water, 1/4 lb butter, 6 drops essence of lemon. Put the water and sugar in a brass pan on the stove. Beat the butter to a cream; when the sugar is dissolved add the butter and keep stirring the mixture over the fire until it sets. Just before the toffee is done add the lemon.

Cocoanut Drops
One pound of cocoanut, 1 pound of powdered sugar, quarter of a pound of flour, whites of six eggs. Bake in a hot oven.

Ice Cream Candy
Two cups of granulated sugar, one-half cup of water; add one-fourth teaspoon of cream tartar dissolved in hot water as soon as it boils. Boil about 15 minutes; don't stir. When done it will be brittle if dropped in cold water. Add butter half the size of an egg  just before taking off the stove; pour into a buttered tin to cool, and pull it as hot as possible. Flavor while pulling with vanilla, or any extract to suit the taste.

Pop the corn and leave it in the pan, rejecting all the unpopped kernels. Then sake sugar or molasses and boil it until it becomes sufficiently waxy when dropped in water, so it will adhere to the kernels of the popcorn. Pour it while still warm on the corn and stir throughly. Then lift out with a spoon in such quantities as may be desired to roll into balls. If the corn gets too dry it will not pop. Immerse the ear one-half minute in water and it will pop nicely.


When I was fourteen a girlfriend taught me how to make hard candy. I remember boiling the sugar, adding flavoring,  and placing it on buttered wax paper. After it cooled we'd break it into sharp pieces. The recipe is similar to the first one found here http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Old-Fashioned-Hard-Candy

Part Two of 1891 Home Remedies: Domestic Animals

Keeping chickens became popular for city and suburban dwellers a few years back. I knew a few ladies who had chickens in their large yards. In 1891 raising chickens was more than a fad. And Home Remedies had pages of illustrations and information on their care and treatment.

 No one wants me to write about the symptoms of chicken diseases! It is gross! But the treatments given include carbolic acid in water for cholera, sulfured butter for asthma, castor oil and burnt butter for fever, and brown sugar water for loss of feathers.

"Poultry Raisers' Egg Food Powder": Red pepper, powdered, 2 ounces; Allspice powdered, 4 ounces; Ginger powdered, 6 ounces. Mix by sifting. 1 tablespoon to be mixed with every pound of food, and fed 2 or 3 times a week. Also feed chopped-up fresh meat.

 "How to Doctor Sheep" included use of Epson salts, Jamaica ginger and peppermint for colic.

The most space was given for the care and treatment of horses. In 1891 horses were important and were causing environmental issues in urban areas. But within two decades they would be 'old technology.'

 "To man, whether as a civilized being or as a barbarian, no animal is more useful than the horse. The beauty, grace, and dignity of his noble creature, when in a properly developed state, are as marked as his utility. As an intelligent animal, he ranks next in scale to the dog, that other companion and fiend of man. Taking into consideration, then, his usefulness, his attractive appearance, and his intelligence, what is known of his history cannot prove unacceptable."

 How to Enliven an Old Horse.
1 ounce of oil of cloves
2 ounces oil of sassafras
1 ounce of oil of wintergreen
1 ounce tincture cantharides
5 ounces of alcohol
3 ounces of tincture of assfoetida
Mix well and give twelve drops daily in a pail of water

NOTE: I would not suggest actually using any of the home remedies presented in this book!

 "Remember that he who buys a horse needs a hundred eyes."

1891 Home Remedies

"The object of this volume is, to instruct every housekeeper and every owner of domestic animals in the use and applications of simple domestic remedies. It may be properly called a book of Self Instruction in the art of home doctoring. This work has been especially written to benefit and bless suffering humanity everywhere."

The Midwife's Revolt character Lizzie medicine bag held herbal cures, including Belladonna used in childbirth to dilate the cervix. But most medicinal herbs were less deadly.

I have a battered second edition of Home Remedies, passed down through my husband's family. It was first owned by James H. O'Dell and given to his son John H. O'Dell. Then it went to his daughter Laura and then to her son, my husband.
  

  

Sick room foods included chicken broth: Boil the dark meat of half a chicken in one quart of water with a little rice or barley Take off the fat and use as soon as the rice is well cooked. Add bits of brown toast.

Milk Porridge was made by boiling a quart of milk and adding one and a half tablespoons of flour, arrow root, or cornstarch wet in cold water. Salt to taste.

One recipe that has come down through my husband's family was Hot Lemonade! Lemonade was considered a sick room drink: Juice half a lemon, one teaspoon o sugar, one glass of water either hot or cold. Hot lemonade was used for colds.

"During the paroxysm dashing cold water in the face is a common remedy. To terminate the spasm and prevent its return give teaspoon doses of powdered alum. The syrup of squills is an old and tried remedy; give in 15 to 30 drops doses and repeat every 10 minutes until vomiting occurs. Seek out the cause if possible and remove it. It commonly lies in some dearrangement [sic] of the digestive organs."

According to A Modern Herbal, Squill "stimulates the bronchial mucous membrane and is given in bronchitis" and is used with other expectorants. It should not be over used, as it irritates the "gastro-intestinal mucous membrane" and can cause death in overdoses.

Alum was used to staunch bleeding, mixed with molasses to make cough syrup, mixed with water to relieve inflamed eyes, and used to cur pimples and prevent 'offensive sweating.'

Rules include "A Child should never be weaned during the warm weather in June, July or August." One wonders if that is because of a previous rule, "Not until a child is a year old should it be allowed any food except that of milk, and possibly a little cracker or bread, thoroughly soaked and softened." It was hard to keep milk from spoiling in warm weather.

Ginger tea was used to cure a cold or for bowel trouble, Sassafras tea was used to relieve dysentery and 'inflammation of the bladder. Peppermint oil on a lump of sugar or dissolved in water,was used for neuralgia, Cinnamon oil was applied to toothache. 

This little wonder book also has household tips and a section on keeping domestic animals healthy. That will be another post!