Treasures under the Table

We've been having internet connectivity problems again this summer.  I think another tree will need to be sacrificed, and soon, so we can keep our line of sight to the tower across the valley.  So posting to the blog has been intermittent, at best.  And there's so much I want to show you!

For the past couple of years it seems that there has been a real lack of interesting estate/yard sales, you know the ones with no plastic toys or piles of kids clothes and boots heaped on the grass in front of the house.  But, ask and you shall receive - in the past three weeks there have been four terrific sales within 16 miles of our rural home, each one with wonderful treasures to be found, and even better all pretty reasonably priced, meaning really, really inexpensive!

I've learned from my friend Gail who's a yard-sale-aholic, that it sometimes pays to look under the tables of goodies for the seemingly forgotten stuff that the owner figures nobody will want anyway.  So, here's what I found  under a table today, stuffed into one of those plastic zippered blanket bags like you'd bring home from the department store, with this tag attached:

Now, all I could see was a bundle of muslin and batting, and one print blue square showing.  With my hands already full with a pile of vintage table linens, I figured I could wait until I got home to see exactly what I was walking away with.   Some acquaintances who happened to be at the sale just shook their heads that I would even bother hauling 'that old thing' away, figuring it would just find its way to the dump via our trash can.  OK, when I opened the bag and unfolded the muslin this is what was inside:

Wow!  Looking at these fabrics, I think they are vintage 1950s thru about the late 1980s but there may be a few that are earlier.  The quilt is entirely hand pieced, and the white pieces setting off the bowties are from what I think was a vintage tablecloth - the weave is much looser than the other fabrics and has begun to unravel a bit along the edges.  The batting is rather heavy, and the part already hand quilted is stitched at about 4-5 stitches per inch.  It is about 1/3 quilted at this point.  I think this one may be a keeper rather than resold, it doesn't seem like it will take terribly long to finish quilting and binding it and I love it!  It measures about 51 x 71 inches.  The muslin backing is all one piece, selvedge-to-selvedge measuring 80 inches or so.   A few close-ups of some of the fabrics:

So, this was a very good day!  Among my other finds were a pile of the small promotional vintage 1930s cookbooks priced at less than 10 cents apiece including Fleishmann's, Sunkist Lemons, Rennet "Junket" Custard, Knox Gelatin, etc.  And a sweet little 1941 spiral-bound book entitled "Parties for All Occasions for Grown-ups and Children."    All in all, a very good morning indeed!