He Sowed She Sewed

I may have just scored the thrift of a lifetime.  For me at least =)

We had been in Wisconsin for less than a week and decided to go shopping at the local thrift stores.  More likely than not we find nothing at these stores and head home empty handed.  But this time I scored big time.

I was browsing through the crafting section of the store as Aleah tried on all the shoes and Sophi climbed in and out and in and back out again of a bassinet placed on the floor.  I was half browsing and half cracking up at the things they were finding and doing with them.  And then I spotted it.  A ziplock bag with this:

At first I didn’t know what it was.  I turned it over a few times trying to figure out what it was.  I opened up the back and took out one of the quilting blocks.  It was hand stitched and made with the cutest fabric.  Wow, this must have taken someone forever to make, I thought.  After falling in love with it, I nervously looked for a price tag.  It must be quite expensive since the person who made this must have spent months on it.  I turned the bag over and spotted the price tag:

Are they serious…fifty cents?  I was so pumped!  I tried to hold my extreme enthusiasm and excitement down a bit in fear that they had placed it on the self accidently.  Or perhaps they would want more money for it if they knew how pumped I was about my newfound treasure.

I paid the 50 cents and snuck out the door with the rest of the family.

Drove home and showed it to my mom and she said, “Wow- is this for me?” (umm…we’ll work out those details later.)

She told me that it was an old time way to make a quilt called, Grandma’s Flower Garden.  You take a hexagon and surround it with six other hexagons of another color, and then add onto those six hexagons with yet another color of 12 hexagons.  They were popular in the 1930’s. They were pieced  by hand in the time consuming  method called english paper piecing.

I can’t decide if I should put them all together or put some of them in picture frames.  They are all so beautiful I just want to simply look at them and wonder about the crafty woman who spent so much effort making these gorgeous creations.

Here are a couple great links for more information on the quilt:

 http://www.patternsfromhistory.com/colonial_revival/flower_garden.htm

or

http://www.rikrakstudio.blogspot.com/2010/06/quilt-catalogue-grandmothers-flower.html