Thrifty Acres: From The Barn Sale

Hello! Saw a listing for a barn/estate sale. Past experience has shown me this category of sales can be hit or miss. The ad's write-up usually promises all sorts of interesting and unique goods. But when I get to the sale it seems like I end up seeing a bunch of stuff that looks like it should have gone straight to the scrap heap. 

Still, I took the bait on this one since a wide variety of goods were listed. That piqued my curiousity, so off I went. 

And indeed, I spied all sorts of stuff spread out over several long folding tables. A few vintage goods were priced high, I thought, but prices were reasonable on some other oldies. 

Buyers and sellers alike were in a jovial mood; a couple of buyers  bantered for several minutes with one of the sellers. Made for a fun atmosphere. 

What wasn't fun, however, were the narrow aisles in between all those folding tables. There wasn't much room to go around other shoppers, and I certainly didn't want to block anyone's else way, so I didn't linger long at most of the tables. 

Was happy with what I found, though, like this:

This is a cigar box; I purchased it for several reasons: I liked the colors and the graphics, I used to live close to Berks County, PA (nice area) and - not visible in the photo - someone had written the year of my birth on the lid. Will use it for studio storage. 

Part of a set of playing pieces from a mid-1950's Clue game. 

A close-up of a couple of the ladies:

Miss Scarlett looks like quite the Glamour Girl, doesn't she? Or maybe a femme fatale, given the nature of the board game. 

Was pleased to find a few quilt blocks; the kind that are to be embroidered:

Both the dog and cat have the printed stitch marks colored over with some kind of paint or marker. I don't know if a person did this as a substitution for embroidery, or if it was meant as a sort of guide for what colors of embroidery floss to use (a few stitch marks remained uncolored on the dog block, which is how I know the coloration was added later). 

Another vintage quilt block for embroidery:

With my love of squirrels, I couldn't pass this up (though come to think of it, I love dogs and cats too). In this case, the colors you see on the design were printed that way. I was happy to see that - saves me the brain strain of trying to figure out what colors I should use to stitch up the piece! 

Once embroidered, I think that all three quilt blocks would look cute appliqued onto pillows, although the squirrel would make a cute wallhanging for the the fall season as well. 

In a different part of the barn, I spotted this:

More of those embroidered quilt blocks, turned into a crib quilt. Some of the stitched animals are adorable:

Well, okay, that squirrel looks a bit demonic, but wouldn't you agree the rest of the critters are pretty darn cute? 

However, some of the quilt blocks didn't turn out so well, like these two:

Not sure if the sloppiness is due to a different person doing the stitching, a different type of stitch being used (stitches are too long to lie neatly) or if the quilt block patterns were poorly designed. 

Maybe all three factors, who knows? Anyway, still a cute quilt, and only one quilt square was damaged. It's one of the pale yellow squares, but I didn't care because I was buying the quilt for the embroidered sections. 

Lastly, a deck of playing cards, with an interesting sail design on the backs. Thought I'd use these in some sort of summer project. Inside the deck was a reminder to buy War Stamps and War Bonds, so I'm assuming these playing cards date to WWII.

I sailed on home with my purchases, pleased I'd taken a chance on this particular barn sale. True, I still saw stuff that I felt belonged in a trash can, but I was glad to spare my goodies that fate!