 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Saturday, Quilts, quilts, quilts It's amazing what you can find if you dig deep enough. There's a monthly flea market that bills itself as an antique fair at the Texas State fairgrounds just east of the city (Burnham's, I think). We discovered it the weekend Lyndon was here -- unfortunately, he's not really big on flea markets that don't include large swathes of technical junk, so I planned on coming back to the next one on my own so that I could browse leisurely for quilts, quilt tops, etc. Oh, my. Lots and lots and LOTS of quilts this time. Most of them were either out of my price range or not particularly attractive, but I did find a nice Round the World quilt top in bright colors that will make a decent single quilt when I put a border on it for fifteen bucks. The best part of it, though was having a nice chat with the vendor (who was repairing this gorgeous Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt in rusts and golds) about the ins and outs of patching and repairing old quilts. I figure any tips I can pick up about the most effective way to patch in new material is fine with me. On my way out, I noticed a set of tables piled high with old linens, tableclothes, and quilts that were being sold by the pound -- whee! Once again none of the quilts really called my name, but I did find this sweet tied wallhanging in muslin with purple and white fourpatches. It was stained and fairly dirty, but I thought some Shout and a good cleaning would fix that, so I bought it for four dollars. Let me preface this next bit by saying that I didn't really notice the pattern when I first looked at the wallhanging -- the griminess meant that the white parts of the fourpatches kind of faded into the purple parts, to the point where I thought each square was one piece of material. So I got the wallhanging home, liberally doused it with Shout and popped it in the wash with the rest of the whites. Once the spin cycle was done I took it out and quickly checked the spots that were badly stained -- all the stains were gone, whee! Into the dryer it went for a nice fluff. Finally, I took it out and really looked at it, clean and dry, for the first time. And went, "Oh, shit!" The fourpatches weren't solid pieces of fabric, after all-- each square was composed of three stripes, the outer ones of purple and the inner ones of white. The top row had the squares lined up vertically-horizontally, and the bottom row horizontally-vertically. Which made the resulting pattern. . .a swastika. Yeah, yeah, I know it's also an American Indian symbol, and some of them were definitely going clockwise (Anasazi style), but some of them were also going counterclockwise (hakenkruz style), and the symbol was blatantly obvious. So I'm now the dubious owner of a Little Purple Nazi quilt. I was originally going to hang it in the entranceway, but I can just imagine someone like Susan Schwartz coming over and WHAPing me to death with the Salmon of Correction out of sheer disgust. I just have to wonder what the original maker was thinking when they started sewing this one together -- something makes me suspect that the realization of what they'd just made is one of the reasons why this piece of fiber art wound up in a flea market. Still, it is kinda pretty, and I may use it to practice my hand quilting. Wonder if I can patch something in to make the design a little less offensive. . .
|
|
Welcome | Lewis
Carroll | Speculative Fiction | Cool Canadian Bands
|
