new pillow, new plate!

my new $1 plate from the Wellsville China Co. in Wellsville, Ohio

 There's a shop off of Main Street in Madison called 'The Feed Store'.  It used to be a feed store.  And now instead of being home to bags of cracked corn and trail ration, it's full of antiques and old junk... baskets hanging from the ceiling, unruly piles of dusty paintings and photographs, teetering stacks of chairs, tins of buttons and wooden spools, and busted-up suitcases full of beautiful old flour sacking material.  This is where I've found some of the fabric I'm using on the backs of some of my pillows.  I could spend hours looking around in this shop... but the only down side is that it is rather expensive.  Most of the things aren't marked, you just ask the grandmotherly proprietress how much.  Sometimes you can get a great bargain, but a lot of the things, as Nora said as we were descending the stairs leaving the shop earlier this week, have New York City prices.  I did find a new plate though, to add to my collection.  And it was only a dollar!

Nora inquired about a weather vane that was $350 and an old feed sack that was $75.  Those prices are unbearable after you've gotten used to finding really good deals.  For example, I found the beautiful blue and white linen hand towel above rumpled up in the bottom of a cardboard box at another antique shop a few miles up the road.  It was only 50 cents!  And I got three antique chairs like the one above at the Goodwill for only $2.49 each!!  I covered the seat in one of my new fabrics - a pattern I made using one of the paintings I did of Madame Gaillais' roses in France.  And I made the pillow with another one of my new fabrics with my watercolor of an owl butterfly from South America.  Their defense mechanism is to open their wings, which look to predators like the intimidating face of an owl.  And then there are the little yellow and orange Cleopatra butterflies in between.