Feedsacks

Tags

Cuesta Doll & Study Club, Feedsack Secrets, feedsacks, Frank Buffington, frugal housewives, quilt projects, vintage fabrics, Vintage Feed Sacks: Fabric from the Farm

One of the programs Mom always wanted to do for the Cuesta Doll & Study Club was on feedsacks, their history and use as fabrics by frugal homemakers of the 1930s and 1940s.  I’m sitting here next to an old cardboard box labeled “Quilt Pieces for January Program”, getting myself ready to present that Feedsack program to both my doll clubs in the next month or so.

For me, part of the charm of feedsacks has long been because my Grandad Buffington (Mom’s step-dad who helped raise her) was a salesman for Capital Feed and Seed in Phoenix, Arizona.  I didn’t know until very recently that after starting out as a salesman, Grandad Buffington ended up buying Capital Feed and Seed outright.  Mom and Aunt Betty have shared stories about picking out their favorite prints and finding enough of the same bag to make dresses from…quite a challenge sometimes!

As well as the box full of quilt pieces and 1930s fabrics (including lots of yo-yos and cardboard piecing templates), I am fortunate to own a number of beautiful quilts made by my precious mother-in-law, Lois Carriker, during the Depression years and given to me before her death.  I also have the baby quilt she made for Grant and the one Mom made for me, each containing feedsack fabrics.

Today is a “hunting and gathering” day for me.  I will be looking through boxes of old family photographs for feedsack clothing (I know there is a lot), as well as heading back to Storage to pull quilts out of my cedar chest.  And if the thought of my cedar chest full of nearly-antique family quilts living in rented storage gives you pause, rest assured that it does me, too, but there is no space for it here.  I’ve tried.

Somewhere between here and Mom and Dad’s is a wonderful book called  Vintage Feed Sacks:  Fabric from the Farm that I hope to re-discover and use.  Just in case I don’t, however, I’ve ordered Feedsack Secrets from Amazon Prime, and it will be here in a couple of days.

Yo-yos and pieced strips from feedsack fabrics I found in Mom’s box.

On the road again

Tags

AmTrak, Arroyo Grande, beach, Central California Coast, Cuesta Doll & Study Club, Santa Barbara

I’m on the road again, heading back to the Central Coast (my local version of heaven on earth).  Here’s a picture I took from the train traveling from Anaheim to Grover Beach.  This was just north of Santa Barbara, I believe.

The beach north of Santa Barbara, as seen from the train window.

Full days

Tags

auction, back to school, Cuesta Doll & Study Club, end of summer, Pinkham School

Yesterday I pulled the sheets off my bed to wash them.  I stuck them in the dryer (no room on the clothesline) and headed off to Johnnie Mae’s memorial service.  Of course, when I got home they weren’t dry and I was well on my way to bed, so I slept on the couch.  It looks as though I will be there again tonight, as well.  This time they are dry, but I simply don’t have the energy to clear it off and make it!

I think I hit the wall, energy-wise.  I have always been fortunate enough to fall asleep easily (for the most part), stay asleep, and wake up refreshed.  My usual challenge is to simply let go and go to bed.  But today I woke up tired and creaky, an obvious result of having too much fun yesterday (some might say I was working too hard, but most of it really was fun).

I am anticipating a lovely, laid-back day tomorrow.  The girls and I will get to help our priest fill the rest of the backpacks that have been donated for us to give to Pinkham School, and then deliver them to the school.  And I will have an end-of-summer lunch with a good friend before she returns to her teaching job the next day.

But best of all, I will be driving to Daddy’s in the afternoon.  Our Cuesta Doll Club Auction will be Tuesday, and I will be the auctioneer.  I can’t hold a candle to the job Mom used to do as auctioneer, but I am honored to be her stand-in.  We will have fun, get rid of unnecessary “stuff”, possibly pick up some bargains, and raise enough money to run our club for the next two years.

I can hardly wait!

Convention, here I come!

Tags

adventure, Close To My Heart, CTMH Convention 2015, Cuesta Doll & Study Club, Disneyland, Disneyland Hotel

This is Day #1 of my 2015 Close To My Heart adventure.  My bags are packed and ready to go (but not by jet plane).  After work this afternoon I’ll be off to the Coast for an overnight stay with my dad and brother, and tomorrow’s meeting with the Cuesta Doll ladies.

And then the fun really begins…my first trip by train alone, cruising along the ocean through Santa Barbara via the Pacific Surfliner, ending up in Anaheim — a mere 1.5 miles from Disneyland!

I will be posting pictures and updates from the Disneyland Hotel and the surrounding territory all week, and of our 5K run/walk on Saturday benefiting Operation Smile.

Last year was such an amazing adventure, an “Artistic Adventure”.  This year’s theme is “Make it From Your Heart”, which is how our founder, Jeannette Lynton, ends all her correspondence to us.

See you later.

Perfection

Tags

Cuesta Doll & Study Club, doll parts, dolls, Hazel Pender, Mom's poetry, poetry

While going through enormous piles of paper today (and tossing quite a bit, thank goodness), I ran across another one of Mom’s doll poems that begged to be shared.  I always enjoy finding scraps of her writing, as it feels like a mini-visit with her.  Enjoy!

Perfection

The dolls that are pure and perfect and fine

Are the dolls some ladies have in mind

When they want a new one for their collection.

A head that is broken, half there, from a dump

Is what makes my hands itch to hold

And my heart to jump

At the thought of its “could be” perfection.

So dolls that are pure and perfect and fine

Stay on the shelf and out of my mind.

While the parts and pieces, orphans and waifs

Are gathered in boxes all over the place,

And so in honest reflection–

The dolls that are pure and perfect and fine

Are for others to buy, to love, to find.

As for me, I’m content with my collection,

(Well not quite — I always want more — another arm here,

A box of parts there, a small bisque head

Without its hair, and on and on)

Without exception the dear dump darlings

Are to me perfection.

By Hazel Pender, January 8, 1981

Six years later, I’m still going through boxes and drawers of Mom’s playthings (photo taken at Fresno Doll Sale, 2014).

Golden days

Tags

California Scenic Coast Doll Club, Cuesta Doll & Study Club

Every once in a while the stars all align “just so”, the weather is perfect, the friends are all compatible, and the day becomes golden.

Today was one of those days.  Beginning about 4:30 a.m. as Baby Brother came home from work and quietly shut my bedroom door (waking me up) and we visited a bit before I went back to sleep, continuing through the sales set-up at the Country Club (mostly done before I got there, thanks to a VERY slow street sweeper who slowed me down), a delightful meeting, and a trouble-free drive back to Visalia — today was one of those days!

I packed dolls for sale very carefully, knowing that we needed to maximize our sales table space and I needed to choose wisely.  With a few items, I marched boldly up to the intended recipient, placed it in her arms, and then watched the magic happen.

So many of the ladies that Mom and I played dolls with for years were there…and it was such fun to see them happily go home with dolls from her collection.  I fell in love with a big unmarked bisque girl with a hairline crack in her forehead; she was priced ridiculously low at $85.00, and I wrestled with myself for an hour or so.  But, ultimately, I realized that with that same $85.00 I could buy a round-trip train ticket from Grover Beach to Anaheim and back, thereby travelling to the Close To My Heart Convention in style and grace.  So the train tickets won!

I spent too much time visiting and selling to take very many pictures, so you will just need to imagine how much fun we had.  Many thanks for the June meeting date; to the staff and servers at the San Luis Obispo Country Club, and to the many ladies who shopped at the Cuesta sales table.  You were all absolutely lovely, and I salute you!  And to the California Scenic Coast club — today was such fun — may we do it again next year?

Prepping for SLO

Tags

California Scenic Coast Doll Club, Cuesta Doll & Study Club, doll friends, ice cream, San Luis Obispo Country Club, valentines

This afternoon and evening have been filled with doing what I should have done slowly over the past two weeks or so — deciding, sorting, pricing, and documenting the things I am taking to sell at the California Scenic Coast Doll Club Luncheon on Thursday.  We will be at the San Luis Obispo Country Club and, due to size constraints, each participating club will have a single sale table.  I’m trying not to be a piggy while choosing items to sell, not just schlep from place to place.  I truly admire merchandisers who make their living anticipating what their buyers will want and providing those things!

It is also time for what has become a semi-annual event:  Returning the dolls, etc., that I brought home from Daddy’s for the Fresno Doll Show & Sale that didn’t sell.  My storage room is not climate-controlled, and gets entirely too hot in the summer to store dolls.  So back to cool Arroyo Grande they go, and their storage boxes will be stacked in my bedroom there until their next outing.

I don’t see the stacks of boxes diminishing significantly, even though I know I have sold tons of “stuff” this past six years.  I’m actually considering having more dolls in the back seat of my Jeep on Thursday, in case a particular doll friend would like to “step outside” for a few minutes for some personal shopping of doll bodies that are too large for the table indoors.

I couldn’t do any of this without ice cream! The Valentine from 1891 is going, as well as the charming little doll body in the tub.

The coastal life

Tags

Cuesta Doll & Study Club, family, Pacific Ocean, Shell Beach - CA, stormy waters

My computer access is rather limited today, but this is where I have been (besides Doll Club, that is).

Shell Beach…one of my favorite places in the entire world.

Travel Day

Tags

Cuesta Doll & Study Club, family, Shell Beach - CA, vintage clothing, vintage lingerie

Today is a travel day (well, first it was a work day, so now I can travel).  I’m heading to the Central Coast to hang out with my Daddy, brother, and the Cuesta Doll & Study Club ladies.

I finally have the car loaded with a huge box of vintage underpinnings, a hatbox with Victorian hats, gloves, and jewelry, and an armload of exquisite dresses on fancy hangers.  Plus the usual backpack of “stuff”, of course.

I’ll check in tomorrow.

What I made today

Tags

"Divergent", cardmaking, Cuesta Doll & Study Club, Superbowl, Valentine's Day

Today marks the first day of our new NaBloPoMo for February, with the theme of “make”. So my plan was to get card ideas during the Superbowl game this afternoon, then move to the kitchen table and make Valentines for the ladies of the Cuesta Doll Club. Of course, like many of my great plans, this one got highjacked by Georgia.

I left the room briefly and she grabbed the remote (surprise!) and found the movie “Divergent”. Not only did she find it, but she told me I needed to watch it, now. I explained my plan for the evening, and was told I needed to watch it anyway! If you haven’t seen it, just let me tell you that I’m absolutely exhausted from helping the main character survive the movie — if you have, you will understand why! Not to mention that the subject matter wasn’t exactly conducive to creating romantic little fluffy cards.

But I persisted, and here are two Valentines I have to show for my movie watching experience (I actually finished six of the sixteen I need):

“Hands”

“Fashionable ladies”

Both cards were made on 5-1/2×4″ White Daisy cards from Close To My Heart, red cardstock from my stash, white embossed heart from Martha Stewart, Valentine’s novelty ribbons from Joann’s Fabrics, and toile illustrations taken the “Dear Jane” stack by DCWV.

(And if you get a chance, watch “Divergent”. It really is an excellent movie.)