Team Feedsack?

Love 'em or hate 'em - feedsacks don't have many quilters in the middle! If you are Team Feedsack, you love them! You want to see them, to own them, to use them in your quilts. I love vintage fabric, and one subset of that love is feedsacks. I have my favorites, which reflect my likes in current commercial fabrics. I like color and I like bright. I like novelty prints. I prefer geometric to floral. That said, I'll share some of my favorites & maybe even some of my not-so-favorites!

What's not to love about this Hawaiian print! Think vacation, relaxing, sitting on the beach!

Or maybe a vacation cruise is more your style? Sailboats anyone? I was excited to see this feedsack on Page 81 of Susan Miller's Vintage Feed Sacks! And again in a different colorway on Page 91.

My geometric favorites are plaids. I LOVE LOVE LOVE 1950s plaids! This yellow and black plaid feedsack makes me want to make a yellow and black quilt. Or maybe I should work on the yellow and gray quilt already started?

Here is another interesting geometric. I'm not too wild about the color scheme of Avacado Green and Harvest Gold, but the design is funky!

I'm not into floral fabrics - this sunflower feedsack is an exception. Probably that grid behind the flowers makes it more appealing to me!

I have to show you some floral feedsacks because they are really popular with everyone but me. I don't hate them, I just don't love them!

You can find most of these feedsacks and other vintage fabrics on my website. Feel free to browse, even if you are Team I Hate Feedsacks! I'm hoping I can make a few people think differently about feedsacks!

Aprons - What's Not To Love?

What's not to love about apron patterns? I love vintage apron patterns - they make me think of my grandmother, who almost always wore an apron.

If you can't find a vintage pattern, there are many current retro patterns:

And newer apron patterns make me drool with the wide array of styles available! There are Mother and Daughter Aprons:

Gardening Aprons:

His and Her Aprons:

And oh, the lovely patterns for aprons for little girls!

All these and more can be seen on my website DellaJane Cloth & Patterns. Please visit! I find lots of uncut apron patterns - if you are making aprons, I'd love to hear from you and see a photo of your creation!

A Month of Feedsacks

I often notice that snippets of my life have themes. Several years ago, I found feathers on my daily walk almost every day for a month. Not before or after! Another time, it was bone china teacups. My sister's collection grew a bit! This month the recurring theme is feedsacks - those love 'em or hate 'em fabrics from the 1930s and '40s. Some quilters remember wearing clothing made from feedsacks, some collect them, others use them because they love the fabric designs. My Feedsack Month started when I visited the Homestead Monument in Beatrice, Nebraska. I bought a copy of Vintage Feed Sacks by Susan Miller in the gift shop. It's a wonderful reference book, filled with photos and descriptions. If you are a collector or a user of feed sack fabrics, I recommend this book, if just for the drool value!


The feedsacks I've found this month have ranged from 5" squares to complete bags in wonderful designs! The first was this sunflower feed sack. The flowers are overlaid on a gray grid. It is still in bag form and in excellent condition.

Feedsack #2 is a yellow and orange plaid overlaid with a brown vine. The stitches were taken out, but the holes are still quite obvious.
And the most wonderful find this month was this Hawaiian print: I LOVE the hula dancer!

If it is September......

Halloween is just around the corner and it's time for costumes! I love adore costume patterns! I sewed lots of costumes for my kids as they were growing up. And lots of patterns have passed through my collection. Here are a few favorites...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My daughter's TMNT costumes weren't made from a pattern because there were no patterns. I combined a couple of patterns to get the look I wanted. One Halloween she was a TMNT; the next year, we added a long overcoat from the thrift store and she went trick-or-treating as a TMNT disguised as a man. One father, out with his son, didn't get her costume and made a snotty remark. His son, who DID get it, called Dad on it right away. "Dad, don't be so dumb. She's a Turtle disguised as a man. Duh." Making everyone but DD (Dumb Dad) happy. Butterick came out with a pattern for the Turtle costumes in 1990.

Clowns. I can't resist clown costume patterns. Even if I know I already own 3 copies, I have to buy every one I see. This 1965 Simplicity pattern for Happy the Clown, Bobo the Clown, Bubbles the Clown and Jingles the Clown is my favorite.

What Halloween is complete without a witch or two? I made this witch costume around 2000. Still love it! I may have a scrap or two of that black and silver fabric around somewhere!

Not only did I sew costumes for my girls, I also made matching costumes for their 18" dolls. I usually had to modify an existing doll pattern. This Pumpkin Costumes pattern for the entire family includes a costume for the 18" doll AND the family dog!

My last "favorite" costume pattern is another I made. Three girls, 3 M&M's. I still have at least one of these costumes in the Halloween tubs. Maybe someday, a grandchild will wear it.....

The last costume I sewed was for myself. I made two (if one is good, two is better!), one purple for "dress", one black for everyday. Simplicity 9887 is an easy pattern to make if you want to whip up a wizard's costume with a little pizzaz!

If it is September, Halloween is just around the corner. Time to find your favorite costume pattern and start sewing!

Ahhh.... the smell of line-dried laundry!

There are two kinds of people, those who LOVE the smell of line-dried clothes and those who HATE it. Put me on the "love that scent" side! I spent many hours doing the family laundry at my Grandmother's house. Yes, laundry was a chore, but it meant I got to go to Grandma's house and be ALONE! Not a minor thing when you come from a big family who lives in a small house!

On my recent trip to China, this house on the Grand Canal in Suzhou, Jiangsu, China, was just one of hundreds I saw with clothes hung out to dry.

Back to laundry! Hanging clothes on a line requires clothespins. And clothespins require storage and easy access.

My favorite is the Clothespin Apron. This pattern, McCall Kaumagraph No. 777 is from the early 1900's. It is fabulous! The clothespin designs are stamped onto fabric, then embroidered.

Clothespin aprons are back in vogue as many people are finding the scent of line-dried laundry to be irresistible and thrifty. Here is a link to a free Clothespin Apron pattern.

Make an apron, hang your laundry outside, inhale deeply!

1954 Fashion - David Crystal

This newspaper clipping, advertising a David Crystal suit, perfect for Easter, was tucked in the envelope of McCall's 9888 (1954). The store, Mindlins, was a Topeka, Kansas department store well known for their fashionable clothing. The suit being advertised looked almost exactly like the pattern illustration. Compare for yourself!

My immediate thought was that the original owner of this pattern must have chosen it so she could sew the latest style. When I checked the pattern pieces, the skirt was cut, but not the jacket! Just a straight, slim skirt, not even shown in the advertisement. Leaves me wondering..... Did she make the skirt and not like it? Why didn't she cut out/make the jacket? Why did she tuck this ad inside the pattern?

Read more about David Crystal on the Vintage Fashion Guild website. Interested in Mindlins Department Store? Read a bio of the founder, Rose Mindlin Jacobson .

See this and other 1950's patterns for sale on DellaJane Cloth and Patterns.

They're Cute, Right?

Disney wants us to think so! It would be unAmerican to dislike Meeko! Raccoons have been a big part of my life this summer. Our urban jungle has too many of them! We've seen as many as five adult raccoons hanging from our bird feeder. Yes, all at once. Yes, they destroyed it. The replacement bird feeder soon had this raccoon visitor.

Soft-hearted animal lovers, read no further. PETA, read no further. Spoiler: You won't like what you read. I rented a live animal trap and over the course of a week, caught 3 raccoons. They were picked up by the Nebraska Humane Society. I didn't ask what became of them. I'm pretty sure I know, and I'm ok with the world having 3 less raccoons. Anyone who is shocked and/or horrified: I TOLD you to quit reading. For the record: Casa de la Cruz does not have a catch and release policy for critters who a) come into the house or b) damage or destroy outside.

I posted a picture of one of the raccoons on Facebook, which generated lots of comments. There are two kinds of people in this world. People who think raccoons are "so cute and loveable and I want one" (think Meeko) and anyone who has encountered a real live raccoon and lived to tell about it. This picture shows why some of us are in the second group. Check out the teeth and claws on Raccoon #3:


And you are asking yourself, how does this relate to vintage anything? Thank goodness for fabric and patterns! When I found this cut and sew fabric panel (from the 1960s) this week, I decided to explore my stash of raccoon patterns.

I don't have a Care Bears Bright Heart Raccoon pattern. I did find Butterick 4779, Wrecker Raccoon, Kiddie Komforts 115 Raccoon Baby Quilt pattern and Simplicity 6053, Rick Raccoon from the Shirt Tales gang. All very cute, all very lovable, all very acceptable to both kinds of people in the world.





So if you must have a raccoon in your life, make it! BTW, we haven't seen any raccoons in the back yard for a few days. I don't think they are gone permanently, but I like them being scarce!