Lucked into treasures...

One of my research students is in the process of "downsizing" a bit. (Her eventual plan is to take a Corps of Engineers position where she will be moving about a good bit - she has bought a large "self-contained" travel trailer and plans to move into that. That's not the life I'd want, but she seems to be excited by the prospect, so...)

Anyway, she's shedding a few things that she either bought over the years or that came down to her. She was asking my advice on getting rid of some of the items and I suggested seeing if some of the antique shops (many of them are vintage kitchen items) would take them. She replied that she'd rather find someone she knew who would use and/or treasure the items, and just pass them on.

So she gave me a glass rolling pin she had had as a decoration in her kitchen. These are cool old things: you can fill them with ice (this pin has a zinc (? I think) screw cap on one end, so you can open it up, put ice in it: all the better for making delicate dough). Do I ever make pie crust? Not really, but I've kind of wanted a glass rolling pin for a while, so I said I'd take it when she offered it.

Well, one day last week when we were driving back from a field site I was talking about having gone to the quilt show here in town and about how I did some quilting. She didn't say anything at the moment but came in this morning with a good-sized bag of items her grandmother had left - some finished blocks, some pieces cut for blocks (some look like feedsack prints), lots of patterns, some designs drawn out on stationery from the M-K-T Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. (I don't know how old it is, but it's probably not super old, as there are ZIP codes on the stationery, and I think those started up in the 60s). There's even a large old embroidery-transfer design for a peacock with a sort of Asian-style background. (If I want to use it I will probably wind up needing to trace it, as the transfer dye has bled to blank areas of the paper over the years).

I will have to go through all of it and look at it (and possibly air it out a bit; my student is a smoker) but it looks like there's some wonderful stuff there.

I was exclaiming over it and thanking her and she kind of shrugged and said, "There's no one in my family who would be even interested in it. And I don't really sew myself, and I won't have much room..." So I'm now the steward of yet another person's quilt history. I don't mind that at all. I might try to finish up (hand sewing; her grandmother had hand-sewn the blocks that are together) the unfinished blocks.

Another thing I'm contemplating: taking one of the finished blocks, handquilting it, making it into a throw-pillow top, and giving it to her as a graduation present (she is supposed to graduate in December). I don't know if she'd want something like that in her new smaller quarters, but it might be a nice memento of her grandmother. I already see one block in there that would be nice for that.

I'll post photos of some of the blocks once I've gone through them. Some look like 60s-era fabric, some look earlier. (The block I'm thinking of doing up into a pillow for my student looks like earlier fabric.)