I Am A Busy Old Lady... fer sure...



I threw another sewing space together and I am working like an Elf to get Thanksgiving bingo prizes done. Plus I am working on my husband's bowtie quilt for Christmas, plus... I am doing machines up for eBay, plus... my sewing gig on Wednesday's with my homies.... whew! I am a busy old lady fer sure... And on top of all this I have been diagnosed with diabetes and have had a recent bout with shingles. Then to top it all off I about took my finger off with my rotary cutter. I bought those cheap blades that everybody was talking about at the "tool place hubby goes." Yeah well forget about those, they are really not what I think cuts good, unless its your finger you want to take off.  Take all that and then add in a few everyday chores  and a stack of medical bills from hubby's tumble from a tree this spring and its no wonder I have shingles.  But fabric makes me happy and when I look it at I forget about all those other things.  Frabric in large doses at least four times a day can really improve your health!

Then last but not least here are a couple of the machines I listed tonight on ebay, check out paulsdomestiques1 and you will find them and a couple of neat old vintage quilt tops.

Pfaff Tiptronic

 Singer 15-91

Blessings to one and all!

Getting to Know Gwen, the vintage seamstress...lol

A= A stands for apple and my grandbabies are the apples of my eyes.
B= Being on time is way better than being late I think.
C= Candy is my enemy but that does not stop me from lusting after it...
D= Dogs have followed me around my whole life.
E= Even though I don't have a lot of quilting skills I still love quilting.
F= Failure is not something that I take very well.
G= Gwendolyn sounds like the name of a mule with a straw hat on... thanks Dad for naming me that...
H= Hilarity is alright in my book at any given time.
I= I, myself and me are quite comfortable with each other.
J= Just because I dropped the pie does not mean that some of it can't be eaten.
K= Kisses are always good from the one you love.
L=Love makes my world go around, that and fabric.
M=Mamaw is my real name.
N=Nice really does matter if you are trying to get a raise.
O= Oiling your machine really can help your machine sound better...
P= Positive thinking helps me quilt the waves out of my borders.
Q= Q snap frames are way cool and I used to have one before I found out about FMQ...
R= Roses remind me of Mary, the Mother of Jesus.
S= Stands for the Singer Sewing Machines in my life, what else could it stand for?
T= Thoughts of rain makes me sleep better.
U= Uneven stitches make me nervous.
V= Vacations in antique towns are the very best medicine.
W= Warm and Natural batting is my favorite, I likes to see them cotton seeds...
X= X Cell Laun Tay.... yeah I said it...
Y= Yall is singular, all Yall is plural for yall..
Z= Zebra fabric is an abomination to cellulite...

So Much Fun "The Singer Sister Sewer Club"

Who knew that three spry gals getting together every Wednesday for their first quilts would be SEW MUCH FUN! We never laughed so hard as we have this rainy Wednesday. We even decided we would like to have a "threader boy." You know sorta like a pool boy only this guy would just thread machines and pop in fresh bobbins for us! lol oh and he would smell really good too!

Last time I introduced you to Marilyn, who had never learned to sew, she's doing great now and is the proud owner of a 201-2 which she much prefers over the sewing room 66's! Her sewing style is to put one foot in front of the other and sew sew SEW! 

Now meet Barb her cousin in law.  Barb had been wanting to start something but she didn't know what. She had a bad experience in high school with a home economy teacher and had never learned much about sewing. She thought she could not EVER make a quilt, well now she knows she can and it is such a blessing to watch her move forward with her quilt.  I am a lucky teacher for sure.

Today they started to see a real quilt top start to take shape and they are getting so excited and so am I. I was able today to place a vintage Singer in the hands of Barb, its in a Bent Wood case and has a little key. It's a  99-13 and she loves it and has named it "Emma" after a grandmother.  She took it home today and is probably still sewing away as I write this.  I just wanna say a big thank you to God who makes all good things possible!

Blessings! Gwen

3 More Sewing Machines Listed Tonight

Yep, I am back at work and have listed three more vintage sewing machines on eBay tonight (paulsdomestiques1). A Necchi from the mid 80's, a Singer Fiddle Base (I think its a class 15) and an old electrified New Home treadle. I loved sewing on that New Home this week, I really liked the way the things sounds when its makes its neat little stitiches. The Necchi sews really well and all the functions work on it. I don't think the Necci was used but once or twice. Wish I knew the name of the decals on the old Singer... anybody know?

Four More Sewing Machines To Play With...

First an old Singer 66 from about 1914 with Lotus details. I don't care how much age appropriate wear are on the Lotus decals they always look rich...

 Then we have a White 999, I would say 1980's maybe, sews good and not a whole lot different threading from Singers of that time I guess.

Then another Singer, part plastic gears and part metal. Model 5781, great sewing experience. We used on two days of a sewing marathon and it never missed a beat. Easy to thread and simple to use. Not sure but I am thinking mid 70's.

Then there is the Feather Weight's big sister, THE
301A, sews nicely and runs smooth.



Well they are all done now and eBay, Friday brings a few more to do and post.


Blessings. Gwen

My simple back porch fall decorations...

 I just finished making  a Sweet Annie witches broom, smells ah....well... sweet!

I painted an old wood ironing board to give a nice Harvest greeting so when my husband comes home it gives him a lift, he parks out back.

  I hung a few sunflowers to dry, they aren't very big, the birds will probably think, what was she thinking!

That's all I have out back!  I did harvest a ton of Sweet Annie today though.

Blessings! Gwen

1956 Apron Clip UNCOMMON ITEM with pattern

If you open the pictures up you can get a better look at the pattern. Simple yet way cool. I never knew they ever made such a thing.

I so love it when I find a date on old paper....

Blessing Everyone! Gwen

My Star Pupil... Marylynn

Marilyn had never sewn on a sewing machine before. Her Mother didn't sew but her Grandmother did. I met her through my husband who had been doing some work for her.  We became fast friends. She let me in on a little secret, she would give anything to learn to sew. She wants to make a quilt, she wants to make an apron, she wants to make some new curtains and she wants hot pads and tea cozies... She didn't know I had a secret. I scratched around and found her a good old Singer 201- and a cabinet. She got the works too, including a zigzagger and a free motion foot. She is sooooooooooooooooooo happy!   However we have also been sewing at my house and since we can't haul her 201-2 back and forth we have been using some plastic machines that are mobile. What was really cute was that she noticed right away how much better the 201 sounded than the plactic ones, she says it purrs...

 One thing that is so amazing about Marilyn is that she has cataracts on both eyes (she is having surgery soon though). But it has not stopped her. She spent one whole day just learning to make a straight half inch seam, over and over again and she loved every minute of it. I rigged up a magnifying lamp for her to thread her needle on her 201. She has now began piecing her first quilt, a 9 patch pattern. So far we have counted 100 units finished! And another fun note our little group has grown to 4 ladies, all new sewers.  Have a great week!

Notre Dame Apparition + Green Orb + Angels In Disquise...

About two years ago I went to Notre Dame here in N Indiana with my Grandchildren, their Mother and their other Grandmother. We went to mass and afterwards visited the grotto behind the church built like the one in France. I took several pictures and on the last photo I saw a flash of light come down in the picture. I have never before or since seen this happen with my camera. If you open the picture and look closely you can see an apparition with hands

clasped, and you can make out clothing like a nuns or bible time clothes. She appears to be looking down at my granddaughter who is lighting a candle. I will always treasure this picture and have made an eight by ten and have in on display in my lawyers cabinet. It was only one of the times in my life that I felt the presence of something Holy visiting me or my family...

When my oldest grandchild was about 4-5 months old she had spent the night with us so Mom and Dad could have some alone time. We had fixed up a little pink bedroom for her and found a really nice crib at a garage sale. I needed all this because I babysat her everyday.

We lived out in the country and it was a beautiful fall day. Baby had done just fine and had a wonderful evening being spoiled by Mamaw and Papaw. I got her ready for bed and it was to be her first time in the crib in a room by herself. I felt panicky but knew it would be better for all of us if she moved into her own little room for the night.

It was just about daylight and I jolted awake and sprang up and ran down the hall to the baby's room. Just as I entered her room the sun was just starting to light up the sky and there on the wall above the side of her crib was an emerald green orb. It was about the size of a small apple. She was awake and smiling and cooing at the orb and did not notice me at all. As I looked at the orb the most euphoric feeling came over me. It was the most joy I have ever experienced in my life. To this day I can't get past how wonderful I felt. Sadly the orb faded away and disappeared all the way. I looked all over that room to see what could have possible made the orb. Nothing could I ever find. Baby and I went on with our day and I never saw the orb again. 

 About two years after that she was finally starting to talk pretty good and I took her to the mall. As I put her in her stroller she wanted to know why I was belting her in. I told her I didn't want anybody to steal her. She told me she was alright because her lights were in front of her. I asked her tell me about her lights. She said, don't you see them? They are always there....

One day when I still worked as a nurse I was coming home from work and taking the back country roads home. I came up on a car with two elderly people driving about 20 miles an hour. No matter how hard I tried I could not get around them. The man driving would pull right out in front of me when I tried to go around.  I was getting pretty stressed but finally gave up, It was about a six mile ride at about 20 miles an hour... As I rode along I started to think about this and that. Up ahead I saw police lights and a tow truck. As I got closer I saw a car in a ditch and it was on my side of the road heading the wrong way. The police were not letting the cars go through till the car was pulled from the ditch. As I sat there I realized the car in front of me was gone, just gone, vanished... It had not turned off and it had been right in front of me. The first thing I thought of was that it had been angels, slowing me down so that the car would not hit me head on, it was not my time...

Can you say Ghost Dog?

As I have said I get a lot of vintage items that have gone through my house for years since selling on eBay but there was one box lot that is not easy to forget...

(just a stock picture of a Shriner)

The auction stated that it was the liquidation of an estate from a gentleman who was a Shriner and I thought well I have seen those sparkly fez's sell pretty good so away I went. I wound up buying quite a bit of this man's personal items such as hats and framed memorabilia. He had won quite a few awards being a Shriner and he must have been an officer because his fez was really fancy. I also wound up with a nice velvet hat of his like men used to wear during the 40's. I take lots of staged pictures and could use that hat as a prop.

It was late when we got home from the auction but I am a night owl so I went to my office to unload my loot.  After laying the items out on my work table and getting a closer look at the stuff I turned around and sat down at my computer to do some price research on eBay.I had been at it for about 15 minutes when from right behind me a loud whistle sounded, like somebody whistled for a dog! I about jumped out of my jeans! The hubbs had already went upstairs to bed but I yelled up the steps anyway and he was sleeping.... our dog was just standing in the middle of the floor staring at me.  I racked my brain trying to figure out what had just happened but I just could not figure it out.... eventually I went on to bed.

Our upstairs has two bedrooms, one in the front of the house and one on the backside. We sleep on the backside because it is larger and more quiet. The front room is small and does not have a heat vent or ac vent in it so we keep the door closed.  However in that room is a fancy little cabinet with a glass door that I was keeping my props in for photos. That next day I added a couple of the hats from the estate auction, closed the glass door and the bedroom door and had forgotten about the whistle I had heard and went on my merry way.

That next evening we came home from a dinner date and were getting ready to head upstairs for bed, I was finishing something up in the kitchen and all of a sudden my husband started yelling that it sounded like there was a little dog upstairs whining... He wanted me to come by the stairwell and listen, I could not hear it as well as him but did hear something faintly.  He went on to bed and I followed a few minutes later.  I finally made it upstairs and was standing in the hallway talking to him and I heard it much better this time. It was coming from the front bedroom.  Chills ran up and down my back and my hair stood on end but I managed to go over and and slowly open the door, the whining stopped but I saw no dog.  Although we were both rather freaked out we just didn't really talk about it, it was like we both knew it was other worldly and we were just going to ignore it as much as possible.

For about three days the whining continued, I finally decided to keep that bedroom door open and it seemed to stop. One evening my husband went up to take a bath and from downstairs it sounded almost like somebody was running around or stomping in the the bedroom closet. My husband was in the bathroom when I went up to see what the heck was going on, he had not even came out of the bathroom the whole time...


I had a sewing sleepover for my grand babies and their cousins, one of the cousins stated they didn't know we had a little dog... I said we don't and they swore one was just at the end of the dinning room table. At the time we only had a large Australian Shepherd. A couple of weeks later I was sitting in the living room facing the stairwell door, it was very late and I was thinking I should just go to bed when I heard dog toenails coming down the wooden stairs, plain as day. I thought our dog had been up there and was coming down when I looked over and realized he was laying two feet away from me. Looking back at the steps I saw the first full bodied apparition I have ever seen. It was a small dark dog, with long silky looking hair, like a sheltie mix. It paid no attention to me whatsoever and walked straight to the kitchen almost like it was on a mission. I got up dumbfounded from my chair and walked to the kitchen. There was no dog to be found. My dog did not seem to hear or see what I heard.

this is the staircase where I saw the dog..

(the dog looked something like this)

I was starting to get a little panic stricken. I tried to find something about seeing a dog apparition by researching online but all I found was a bunch of mumbo jumbo so I tried to think it through on my own. I prayed about it, and it stayed on my mind constantly. I wasn't exactly scared but very confused as to what the heck was going on. Then I thought about the whistle I had heard and I felt it connected right to the dog sounds and the dog ghost I had seen. What if it was the man whose estate items I had bought, he had passed away and his family had sold all his belongings.... so maybe he was kind of sticking with his stuff, maybe even his hats that I had in my cabinet!

That next day I removed his hats and laid them on the back porch. Not sure what to do with them I just kinda left them out there for a day or two.  I had left my dog out in the backyard one night and rested my arms on the railing watching him for a few minutes and it felt like someone touched my back, not slightly but like the real deal. I decided that I would pitch the hats and walked them out to the trash.  As I returned to the porch I heard the whine of a little dog, almost like a puppy but I could not tell from where it came.  I thought maybe that would take care of the situation, yeah right... There was the night I was up to use the facilities and I started to hear something clicking around in the hallway, like it was clicking up one wall and down the other. My husband even got up and was listening to it, just as we started to talk about it a dog howled from the bottom of the steps, we had never heard our dog howl before. My husband ran downstairs and our  Aussie dog was in the kitchen on his mat sound asleep and never reacted at all...

It was almost a year later and I was awoken by a dog on my bed digging my feet just as hard as it could, it actually hurt! But I saw nothing, it was broad daylight.  We still will feel a dog jump up on the side of the bed in the middle of the night and it can freak you out. But its getting fewer  and farther between now. Its been almost two years since the awful howling sound.

However... our new rescue dog (Bitsi Boo my little Jack Russell)  has taken to waking me up in the middle of the night growling at the ceiling... I hope she does not keep this up.

There are still one or two things to tell but they will come out another time...

It came from across the sewing room!

For years now I have been a seller on eBay. First I sold antique and vintage clothing buttons and then went to other vintage items that struck my fancy. Now I list for a partner who frequents the auction houses looking for domestic items for me to sell on paulsdomestiques1.  He does the leg work and I do the research and listing. So you can imagine I have a lot of domestic paraphernalia laying around. Two years ago I turned half of my basement into a sewing room. Complete with machines for the granddaughters and their friends to learn to sew.  When school started back up I decided I would sew down in the catacombs by myself.... yeah right....

For about a week I sat down there and sewed by myself. It seemed that every time I would go upstairs for a tea break and come back down to my machine the tension would be almost falling off my machine. I would fix it, sew for a couple of hours and it would do just fine. I thought maybe it was vibrating itself loose or something, but it wasn't, I checked.

One evening I was sewing away and stopped to check my underneath stitching to make sure my bobbin tension was alright. I was just staring at the stitching when from across the room a button flew, a little china calico button. It hit me on the cheek.  Now.. I  had another disturbance while upstairs but it had been awhile.  I have been told that energy or ghosts or whatever can stick with their possessions, especially possessions they loved while alive...

Well every  machine I own is at least my age or older and some way older. And I do have lots and lots of sewing machines, old antique sewing baskets filled to overflowing with old needle packets, threads and all manner of millinery items. I have found marbles, little trucks and cars and lots of little toy things in these baskets as well. Sewing machine drawers overflow with bits of antique laces and rick racks of every imaginable color. Stacks and stacks of vintage fabrics and unfinished quilt tops and blocks.  Now I don't know how others feel but I love any quilt block I manage to make with all my heart and treat it as something special but I hope I can let them go once I buy the farm, if ya know what I mean!

To get back to the button story you can imagine I was kind of freaked out. I slowly stood up from my Singer stool and walked to the staircase and ran up the steps! Although I work downstairs sometimes on machines and what not (when the hubbs is home) I have never sewn down there again.  Oh don't worry, I have machines upstairs too. I think something was trying to get my goat. Messing up my tension and trying to get my attention my flipping a button at me. I still have the button. Another interesting fact is that I would have never have left a calico china button laying around down in the basement in the first place, they are very collectible and I have quite a few. I have no idea how it got there in the first place.She t must have had it in her pocket I guess!

(not the button that was thrown)

I have several other spooky stories related to vintage items that have passed through my home, maybe I will jot them down for you in a day or two. It seems this time of year brings about chills, don't you think? Stay under the covers if you can!

Uncommon Singer 15-75 in black yet! Georgeous!

Looky what I just listed on ebay this evening, the uncommon, scarce and beautiful Singer 15-75. Its in great shape too, if you care to look at the listing it is item number 150663518751.  I just love this good old machine!