It's Pink Saturday

Little girls in Pink Dresses

For Pink Saturday I am sharing some of my vintage dress patterns.  Each features a little girl's dress in pink. I love the images on these old pattern envelopes.  It's hard to resist then when I see then in the thrift stores.  I have a collection of vintage patterns that my sister and I use in our craft projects.  Our most recent project is our Family in Fabric book.  You can see one of the pages here.  I have compiled the items for three more pages and hope to work on them this weekend.

Thanks to Beverly at How Sweet the Sound for organizing Pink Saturday.  Check her blog for a list of participants in this weeks Pink Saturday.

LIFE'S A STITCH

A Fabric Accordian Book

I made this little fabric book for the Mini Scrap Book Trade on FAT (Fiber Art Traders).  Wanda the hostess posted a link to Teesha Moore's website where she demonstrated these stitched covers.  The instructions for the trade were that we could fill the entire scrap book or leave some space for our partner to embellish.  I decided to leave a few spaces for my partner.  After studying various mini-books, I decided to make an accordian book with fabric pages. I used Pel-Tex as a base for the pages.  The title "Life's a Stitch" is stamped on the first page.  Since it is a "scrap" book, I used scraps from my studio to embellish the pages.  The fabrics are actually leftover quilt bindings that are stitches to the pages.  The stamps are from the Sew Special collection by Clear Art Stamps.  I made the butterfly on the front cover a few years ago with my embroidery machine.  A button and silk flower complete the fabric book.   This trade enabled me to again "use my stash".  One of my goals for the year.  Thanks to Wanda for a great trade. 

Family in Fabric Cousins

This is my third Family in Fabric page.  This is a photo of my oldest cousins, Bobby and Joyce.  The picture had the date of May 11, 1944 written on the back by my Aunt Ruby.  I just love their little outfits.  I had this vintage pattern that is very similar to their outfits.  The pattern is dated 1943.  The little applique pattern was still in the pattern envelope.  I decided to do tailor tacks through the holes (just like my Aunt Ruby would have done when making the pattern).  The old patterns had no writing on the tissue pattern pieces.  To make the patterns, the seamstress would use tailor's tacks.   The blue background fabric is from a vintage apron and I added the middy braid.

Embellishments on this page include vintage Oh Baby pearl buttons, hooks and eyes that had a price tag of 15 cents, a vintage button, safety pins, and a red felt applique bunny.  I also included a transparency of part of the instruction sheet.  These are such fun.  I will be binding the edges with seam binding when I have more pages completed.

Another Family in Fabric Page

This is my second page for my Family in Fabric book.  This page shown my Grandma.  She always wore button front dresses.  I'm showing two photos of her with a button front dress.  They aren't exactly like the pattern but very similar.  She also always had a belt as does this pattern.  The vintage Butterick pattern is from the 1940's and so are these pictures of Grandma.  The other pattern envelope is one for a pattern she ordered  from the newspaper.  The address is in her handwriting.  My aunt gave me this envelope when I told her I was making the fabric book.

The fabric is from a vintage brown and white polka dot apron.  If you look closely in the bottom left you can see the edge of the pocket with lace edging.  The laces and vintage buttons are from my stash.  I have a box of vintage jewelry and a page dedicated to my Grandma wouldn't be complete unless it had a necklace.  You can see her wearing one in the photo with my grandpa.

I will bind the edges of the page but haven't yet figured out how I will bind them together.  For now I'm just turning under the edge where the book binding will be.   You can see my first page here.

Western Themed Fabric Pages

I had a request for a Western themed quiltie recently. She was searching with Google and found my "C" is for Cowgirl quiltie here on my blog and would like me to make a western themed quiltie. I scanned a few of my fabric pages to send as examples. I decided to also post them here. The pages are from my Cowboy and Cowgirl fabric books. Hope you enjoy seeing them. I'll try to post others later.

Vintage Du Barry Patterns

Here are two vintage patterns that I purchased at the World's Longest Yard Sale. They have a copyright of 1943. My sister and I have a collection of vintage sewing patterns. We use them in our altered fabric art projects. This month we will be working on a altered fabric book with family photos, fabric, vintage notions, and vintage sewing patterns. We are collecting our ephemera and photos.

Camisole Top

Isn't this a great sketch. It's from Easy Ways to Pretty Frocks by Clark's O.N.T. Threads Copyright 1929. I purchased this booklet at a lovely little antique store in KY. It's full of great sketches.

My sister and I are collecting images for a altered fabric book that we plan to begin in a few weeks. We've made fabric books in the past and they have been wonderful. This one will have a sewing theme. We will use vintage pattern envelopes, vintage fabric, and vintage sewing notions. I thought we might be able to use some of these images. We have a great photo of our grandmother with a hair style similar to this one.

I'll keep you posted on the progress of our altered fabric book. I'm currently scanning vintage pattern envelopes and other vintage ephemera. Next up is to select family photos and scan them. Our goal is to have a disk of images that we can print onto ink jet printable fabric.