I had a chance to visit the Morris Museum in NJ and was wandering around
their extensive collection of vintage music boxes and automatons when I
discovered these two musical sewing boxes. You can see the gorgeous
sewing tools in the open one, but the information on the closed one said
that it contained scissors, a thimble, a needle, and an EAR SPOON for
collecting earwax to rub on the thread to make it go through the eye of
the needle easier! (There was also a quilt exhibit, but, honestly, this
trumped that in my mind.)
 |
I love the beautiful golden tools. Wonder what the bottle is for. Medicinal spirits?? |
 |
I so wanted to be able to open this to see the earwax spoon! |
The
Christmas house mini is finally finished. I think it's cheerful and
hope that lots of people try to win it in the upcoming raffle at our
guild quilt show. Since I just finished it, I am very aware of its
imperfections. Looking at the photo, I see that it isn't square. How
can that be?? I squared it just before I added the binding, and
carefully stitched the binding on with a quarter inch seam. I think
I'll have to fool with it a bit more. Darn!
Victorians used a lot of body items that make us cringe today like hair jewelry or memorial wreaths made from the deceased persons hair.
ReplyDeleteYour Christmas mini is so cute. Everyone is going to want a chance to win it. Handling it while binding may have distorted it a bit. Maybe all it needs is to be blocked.
That's true, Diane, and using earwax fits right into our modern view of reuse/recycle. But ich.
ReplyDeleteI'm not hoping to dip the whole mini quilt in water. Do you think I could just dip the edges and pull them out a bit? Do you pin your quilts down to something when you block them? I've never gotten a picture of how I would block a bed-size quilt. (I live in a house with old, lovely wooden floors.) Any suggestions would be appreciated.