I went shopping with a friend last week & we talked about spending a weekend in St Jacob which has a big Mennonite community so she could buy a quilt. Two weeks ago another friend and I drove to a barbecue in my car and afterwards we realized that she had left her chair in my car.
Saturday, Ken and I decided to attend an auction where a bunch of radios were advertised. The auction turned out to be filled with junk and of the radios there was no sign. We left but because we were so near by, we decided to return the chair that had remained in my car all this time. When our friends mentioned about the Creemore Copper Kettle Festival being held that same day, we all thought it'd be a fun outing.
Creemore is one of those tiny towns common all around here; its only distinction is the micro brewery located in the middle of town ...that still uses a copper kettle, hence the name of the festival.
The entire main street had vintage cars parked on either side. Just amazing to see some of the cars from the 50s and 60s!
You'd need a double parking spot for them in today's parking lots and the insides, OMG!
Some have back seats larger than single beds today! It's always great fun talking to some of the owners too. I have so little interest in cars that I can't tell one model from another, but I do love looking at yesteryear's cars!
We stopped for lunch in a lovely little pub in the middle of town; the fact that we first had to wait for a table to become free and then "for the chef to catch the chicken" for our gobbler salads, hardly mattered. It gave us all the more time to enjoy a taste of the new Creemore Springs beer making its debut.
Eventually tho, we continued on down the street, stopping to sample honey ginger elixir and watch a demonstration of how honey is extracted from the combs. Then we took a brewery tour led by one of its founders and had another small sample of beer. We finally left with a ball cap for Ken and a T-shirt for me (both with the Creemore Springs logo) and a 6-pack sampler of beer. Guess that free sip of beer wasn't that free afterall. LOL
Just before heading into the beer tent to listen to some great entertainment, we toured the quilt area
and the quilters hard at work
Quite a wide variety of quilts were shown
In a lot of these little farm towns this is still a viable occupation. Along with the lovely demonstrations was the requisite quilt raffle to raise money
and I thought of my friend who so badly wants one.
Even I would have loved to have any one of these fine examples:
A pictorial quilt
This pattern is "Court House Steps"...
the quilt was made from old clothing by a 16 year old, "great, great aunt Jane", in approximately 1880; the lady died in her 80s and upon her death, the quilt was given to her brother who then used it until his death at age 87. From there another relative who inherited it, placed it, washed and wrapped, into a cedar chest where it remained for an additional 46 years. What an amazing story!
I don't know what most of the quilt pattern names are but that certainly didn't stop me admiring the wonderful colors
When I saw this "chicken coop" quilt, I had to restrain myself from reaching out to make sure there was no real wire on it.
Even the strips of cloth so accurately resembled feathers.
Then there were the stitches to admire
I got tired just thinking about doing them.
This quilt has been in the same family, since it was won 85 years ago; made by the ladies of the town's Baptist church who each paid 10 cents to have their name put on it. Then it was raffled off. Tickets apparently were sold for an additional 10 cents or 3 for a quarter.
When you consider the hundreds of dollars ...and in some case thousands of dollars that a quilt costs now, it was quite a bargain for 20cents!!
...and then came an even older hobby demonstration:
a walking wheel:
a wool winder
some tools of the trade and a few finished products
and the lady whose hobby it is
When I admired the lace on her blouse, she admitted to having owned it for 50 years!
After a fantastic time at the beer tent listening to the band and watching an amazing demonstration of how one gentleman drank a stein of beer while doing a hand stand (without touching the stein with his hands!), we left Creemore and ended our day with a huge steak supper. Even Luna, my furbaby, who received the remnants of my incredibly sized steak in a "doggie" bag when we arrived home, spent a long time devouring it.
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what wonderful photos and stories here Karin! I love the court house steps quilt, and the story. My husbands uncle..(now passed) had given me an old cedar chest full of hand quilted quilts just before he died..as it turned out, even though he had not told me, one quilt was made by his mother, her mother, and grandmother, in the early 1930's it had all three names embroidered into it..I gladly passed it on to my husbands sister, and she cherishes it to this day! Thanks for sharing the pics, the old cars were great! My husband would much rather drive an old 50"s era Ford than anything else...I tell him he was born in the wrong time.. xoxo Christel
ReplyDeleteThat's a day I'd love spending too! Thanks for sharing it Karin!
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Cate