Seen at Auction (But Not Purchased)

In person this quilt looked more red or red/orange than pink.  The yellow and green seem to have photographed more accurately.  I don't have a guess as to its age.

If it had a batting at all it was very thin, maybe a flannel sheet or something even lighter. Definitely a summer quilt.

The back of the quilt was brown and natural striped.

I think the quilting was what people call utility quilting.  The stitches were neither small nor even.  On the back were the quilter's initials in chain stitch.  The little red patch on the lower left of the photo below is a truer to the red on the front.

Auctions these days seem to have several auction circles going at the same time.  It's difficult to hop from one to the other to keep track of what's being sold, especially when they are spread between the back yard, the front yard, and the basement, etc.  I missed the sale of the above quilt but I probably would not have purchased it anyway.

A few other quilts:

Those 1930s, '40s, and '50s prints capture my heart!  Grandmothers' dresses.

 And a few unquilted tops:

Auctions are a bad idea for my husband and me.  We're at the age where we should begin finding homes for some of our own things (or they'll go to auction after we die!) but we enjoy seeing what's being sold at  auctions.  (What is that fascination with other people's possessions?)

This auction was the result of an older lady moving in with one of her children.  We wondered how everything being sold had fit into her home, there were so many things.  There were many old books and photographs without names.  It seems that she was of German descent from Pennsylvania.  Many of her things were from the late 1800s and early 1900s.  (There were several pairs of ladies' hand-stitched cotton "drawers" that I didn't photograph and now wished I had.  I've never seen anything like them, even in books about old clothing.)  I always feel sad to see possessions of older people being sold.  It seems so mercenary when you know that they probably loved and used the very things that are being sold for a pittance.  I guess it's the cycle of life that we buy what we need to live -- to create, to communicate, to entertain -- and when we're done with it, well, it has to go somewhere.  (The family historian in me wishes someone in the family had identified the photographs and that someone else in the family wanted to save and preserve them.)

I bought several boxes of sewing notions and old linens.  There is a set of two beautiful linen sheets and four pillowcases with exquisite lace decoration along the tops of the sheets and sides of the pillowcases.  No one else wanted them!  

I have a few more auction photos which I'll post later.

I hope you're loving and enjoying life, even with whatever challenges you face.

--Nancy.
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