eBay Box

I'll post pictures later when I get it all sorted out ...

But I pulled a "Vicky" and bought a gigantic box of miscellaneous blocks and scraps on eBay. These kinds of treasures are just so appealing to me.

There are over 150 blocks and partial blocks, and lots of scraps. They look to be from the '30s and '40s era.

This quilter had labeled everything so carefully. There were little scraps of paper pinned to some of the sets of blocks that said things like, "Need 3 more pink blocks," or "First row, top right."

I have purchased other lots like this before, and I love and treasure all of them. I will carefully iron out all the scrap pieces. There is a plastic bag in there with all the fabric scraps from one of the block projects that was in the box. I had to chuckle because the printing on the bag says, "100% Virgin Acrylic, Hand Loomed."

There are pieces hand basted to newspaper. I haven't looked at all of them, but I found an advertisement on one from Sulphur Springs, Texas.

Some of them are hand pieced with a very heavy thread - almost like floss. There are some blocks with machine piecing, but very few. I prefer to think she was a purist; she liked the process of hand piecing.

There are two sugar bags in there. The faint printing on one -- and I'll have to go back and look at it again -- says the Hershey Company in Cuba. My brother might be able to fill me in on some of that history.

Also, a couple of cardboard templates, hexies, with handwriting on them of how many she needed in certain colors. There are also paper templates that had obviously been used because there were pin marks in them.

I don't know. It's kind of sad, isn't it? I think she planned on finishing these projects but couldn't for one reason or another. She surely wouldn't have willingly abandoned projects that she had so carefully labeled.

Will our UFOs end up like this?

Will someone, years from now, lovingly buy them and take care of them, maybe try to finish some of the projects? Or are our quilting patterns now so mass produced that no one will care?

I'll add these to the others that I have collected, and make a promise to myself that when I retire I'm going to try to get a few completed.

I think she would smile down at that point knowing that maybe her work hadn't gone to waste. That some quilter cares.