Ever heard of needle punch embroidery?

Today’s another show-and-tell, this time from Jeff’s grandmother. It seems that Dolly was like many a crafter - she collected stuff, and she held onto what she didn’t use. A couple of weekends ago his mom and I went through the boxes of things she had collected to see what was what. I love other people’s collections of crafting paraphernalia, particularly when some of it is rather old. You never know what kinds of designs and crafts you’re going to find.

So here’s a few things from her collection, a collection not unlike many crafters. It’s not huge (well, her button collection is) but it’s representative of someone with many interests, and it’s representative of several decades, too. It’s it many ways a typical stash, one that brings back memories for the people who know it. My husband remembers his grandmother embroidering with that thread, and she made him a shirt from that blue plaid material with pearl buttons.

I think maybe I like this picture the best, because it has memory for me, even though I wasn’t around for this … Those yarn potholder-type-hotpads are something that Jeff and I got from his grandmother’s friend Lola for our wedding. The fabric is still neatly packaged, very much a project for a busy woman. The type of embroidery hoops there tell me when they were purchased - they don’t actually hold fabric that well, but I’ll tell you, they’re going to make awesome frames. And the Star Trek pin is pure grandson - Dolly saved three of his Star Trek pins

Tools are always great - crafting mostly takes tools of some sort, and so you can really tell what sorta things somebody did by their tools. What they were interested in, what they used a lot, what they thought about and never did. Painting, crochet, beading, tatting, knitting … I’m definitely going to have to learn to tat now.

My favorite of the bunch is definitely this bonnet. Jeff’s mom actually found 2 different bonnets.

This bonnet is the one that still has color in the fabric, obviously a nice, ruffled bonnet for good use. I find it interesting that you can totally take it apart with the buttons. When I tried it on, the brim was so huge that if fell down over my nose.
But you can see the strength of the sun in these babies. The other one has almost no color left.

Each has a wide brim and a long collar to keep the sun off. The other one actually has about 15 little pockets in the brim for cardboard pieces! The cardboard is replaceable, and it keeps the big floppy brim off your face! Ingenious!

These are truly fabulous. Maybe I just used to like Little House on the Prairie a lot, but … it’s a bonnet!

Oh, oh, and needle punch embroidery? I’d never heard of it before, but here it is. I even have a needle and some fabric and designs. I have no idea what this really is, but apparently there’s still a lot of people doing it. You never know, maybe it will be the Next Big Thing.