Vintage Velvet Japanese Millinery Rosebuds

Vintage Velvet Japanese Millinery Rosebuds, originally uploaded by confections.

I found these at a vendor's booth at the Road to California quilt show in Ontario, California, close to a decade ago. They are a precious part of my stash of notions and trims. I was thinking of incorporating them into an art yarn, but haven't spun it up yet.

Handmade Straw Hat

Handmade Straw Hat, originally uploaded by confections.

A dozen years ago my sister and I took a straw hat class with Diana Cavagnaro of Designer Millinery in a loft in the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego, California. This is the mad-hatter style hat I designed on an ancient wooden hat block.

The class was excellent and I enjoyed the process of sewing the braid with raffia to create the hat, and steaming it into shape. It's a little snug for my head, but I display it proudly on its hat stand. I may decorate it with one of my needlefelted flowers and wear it to tea with my girlfriends next time.

My Victorian Grand-Aunts Galbraith

My Victorian Grand-Aunts Galbraith, originally uploaded by confections.

These stylish ladies are the sisters of my maternal grandfather. I love their Victorian grandeur. Several of them were schoolteachers and never married; they tatted and painted on china and traveled abroad. My mother remembers playing dress-up with her sister from a trunk full of their cast-off dresses. Their mother was a dressmaker before she married my great-grandfather.

I recently began to do some serious genealogy on-line and found a long-lost cousin in North Carolina who had this photo and several dozen others from my mother's family that we had never seen. What a treasure!