Historical Finds

DH and I have spent several days removing crumbling old plaster from the walls of the stairwell of the sheriff's residence. The house is a big mess, of course, but we made a few finds that have helped us learn more about this old building.
A closet had been added to the stairwell, just left of the front door, at some point late in the last century. The closet had a ceiling that was several feet lower than the stairwell ceiling, which is pretty high. When removing the closet, DH found an old Crane ammo box between the two ceilings. It was a time capsule, put there in May 1968 by a fellow from Mitchell named Ron Trueblood. My guess is that Mr. Trueblood is the person who built the closet and added the ubiquitous dark woody paneling to most of the rest of the house. I'm not going to say much about the time capsule just now, since the Times-Mail newspaper is in the process of writing a story, but it was very interesting to travel back to a time that I remember only vaguely from my childhood, when all the important businesses were around the Bedford square. I immediately called my friend and fellow history enthusiast Mary Margaret Stipp, who came over to go through the contents with me. What do you know--on the front page of one of the newspapers in the box was an article by Mary Margaret about the first Lawrence County jail, which was built in Palestine in 1818, before the county seat moved to Bedford.
Removing the plaster walls also revealed some evidence to support my theory that the red brick 1850's jail was at least partly incorporated into our limestone building. I had read that the "new" (i.e., 1904) building was built on the foundations of the old, but there are a number of walls on the first and second floors, and in the attic, that frankly wouldn't have been there had any normal architect designed the building from scratch. A photo and a sketch of the 1850's building in the Lawrence County History Museum confirmed this theory at least partially, and most people agree with me that our kitchen at least is older than the rest of the house.
DH's first find was a square hole, four bricks in size, in the brick wall over the attic stair landing. It seems pretty obvious to me that this hole held a beam of some kind, maybe a roof support given the two-story height of the first jail. What that would mean is that the entire north wall of the 1850's jail was built into the 1904 building.
The second find was even more exciting; a window in the wall between the kitchen and the stairwell, proving that the wall predates the house. The window is at an odd height--too high up for the first floor and too low for the second. I can't say why it is so exciting to find evidence of a 150-year-old window that has been hidden for over 100 yers, but it is, and I'm thinking hard about ways to finish the stairwell without hiding it again.
All the breaking and hauling of plaster (and cleaning of the resulting dust) has left me with little time to work on any of my other projects, unfortunately.

Pfaff City

In 1980, while I was serving with the U.S. Army in Frankfurt, Germany, I went to the PX and picked out the sewing machine of my dreams, a top-of-the-line Pfaff 1222E, all metal, made in Germany, with a switch to allow operation on U.S. 110-volt and European 220-volt electricity. It cost me somewhere between $600 and $700; I put it on layaway (a great thing in those pre-credit card days) and it was a few months before I could take it home.

This sewing machine has been my most beloved friend for almost 30 years, dragged from one side of the Atlantic to the other several times. For a while, unable to imagine living without it for even a day, I carried it on the plane with me, since it fit under the seat nicely. Occasionally a stewardess would argue with me as I tried to bring it in, but I generally won those arguments and used it as a footrest on countless transatlantic flights. I only abandoned that practice when I had to carry babies and diaper bags instead.

With my Pfaff I made a beautiful outfit that my handsome young husband wore in a fashion show, a wedding dress for my friend Pat, a raw silk suit for my mom, two suits for my mother-in-law, two sets of blue and white draperies for the bay window of our house in Maryland, bedding and curtains for the nursery, a whole queen-size quilt top and lots of other things too numerous to list. My Pfaff was more faithful than most friends and never let me down, until recently.

You could say it let DH down. While trying to patch his own clothes, he managed to break the machine. I don't really blame him; it IS 29 years old and he is normally the person who fixes things; he's not a breaker by nature. He tried hard to fix my machine, but it needed a part that a broad Internet search revealed to be no longer available.

I suppose I could have just bought a new machine, but you know how it is when an inanimate object becomes a member of the family? I couldn't bear to retire the old Pfaff. I also suspect that no new machine could be as good as the one I already own. Thus began our search for twin machines that could be used for parts. We had several false starts on eBay, but were finally successful in buying one whose motor supposedly didn't work. It arrived, much newer-looking than mine, and guess what? DH managed to fix it, more or less. Of course that meant we still needed spare parts for my machine, so we bought another one. This one was missing a lot of parts, but had the one we needed, plus a much nicer case than mine, which was itself a replacement bought after the original case got damaged in shipment back from Africa ten years ago.

So now I have two Pfaff 1222's, both more or less working, and an extra for spare parts, all sitting on the table in my sewing room. There's no room to actually do any sewing, but how great is that?

Free Tatted Edging Pattern!

My mom and I like to make day trips into the Indiana countryside, and on one of those trips, I found the antique white dresser scarf you see in the picture. I was struck by the way the designer of this edging stacked large ovals to form columns, reminiscent of classical architecture. I had never seen this particular design of tatted edging before, and the price was right, so I bought the scarf for my friend Stephen Bowman, lacemaker extraordinaire, who was having a birthday soon, as I recall.

Stephen is gifted in all the lacemaking arts. He is the founder of the Bedford College of Lacemaking, our first tenant at the Old Jail Art Center, and he was/is my tatting and bobbin lacemaking teacher. Check out Stephen's website at www.bedfordcollegeoflacemaking.com for more information on lacemaking classes and other fun stuff. Stephen rose to the challenge of preserving this edging pattern for posterity by figuring out, stitch by stitch, how the original artist made it and documenting his findings. He worked it up in a blue size 20 thread (see the top photo), and checked his enormous library of tatting patterns (including about 40 years of Workbasket magazine) to ensure we wouldn't be violating any copyright laws in making the pattern available to you.

Here is the pattern for an antique edging that Stephen calls "Rowena's Tatted Edging" and I call "Tatted Columns." Enjoy.

Abbreviations:

R = (ring) Ch = (chain) Clr = (close ring) Rw = (reverse work) + = (joining of picots)
P = (picot) Rnd = (round) Tw = (twist stitch) Ds = (double stitch) Sep = (separated)



R 3ds, p, 3ds, p, 6ds, clr, rw

Ch 4ds, p, 4ds, rw


R 6ds, p, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 4ds, p, 4ds, rw


*


R 6ds, p, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 4ds, p, 4ds, rw


R 6ds, join, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 2ds, p, 2ds, p, 2ds, p, 2ds, p, 2ds, p, 2ds, p, 2ds, p, 2ds, rw


R 6ds, join, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 4ds, p, 4ds, rw


R 6ds, join, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 4ds, p, 4ds, rw


R 6ds, join, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 4ds, p, 4ds, rw


R 6ds, join, 3ds, p, 3ds, clr, DO NOT REVERSE WORK


Ch 4ds, p, 4ds, DO NOT REVERSE WORK


R 3ds, p, 3ds, p, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 4ds, join, 4ds, rw


R 6ds, p, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 4ds, join, 4ds, rw


R 6ds, p, 6ds, clr, rw


Ch 4ds, join, 4ds, rw


Repeat from * for desired length.

Ross's Stained Glass workshop was terrific!

Four of us Old Jail Art Center regulars took a preview class on February 28 of Ross Thackery's Stained Glass workshop, scheduled for this coming Saturday, March 7. What a great time we had, and how exciting to be learning a new art form! I've posted a photograph of my completed Easter basket, the project we worked on in class, and my mind is abuzz with the possibilities of new projects. Yesterday in church I studied the stained glass windows with renewed interest, imagining the artist at work creating the detail in a dove with about 20 tiny pieces of white glass. Of course mostly I paid attention to the service, but it was a sunny day outside and those beautiful windows glowed with color.

Anyway, if you were thinking of signing up for this class, I highly recommend it. Ross is wonderful and gives each student just the right amount of individual attention. If, like me, you generally leave the power tools to the man of the house, you might be surprised at how fun it is to shape glass with an electric grinder. Getting the right shape and size is harder than it looks, but all four of us managed to fit the pieces together to make a cute Easter decoration.