When I would go to my grandmother’s house when I was younger, I was always fascinated by this box. I loved the shape and how the lid came off. When my grandmother passed away my mom gave me this box because she knew how much I always loved it. We were cleaning out the garage and it was in a box that we still hadn’t unpacked from when we moved in. Inside was full of various vintage sewing supplies, I wish so badly I had taken the time to ask about them all when my grandma was around. I didn’t get into crafting until I was older and I missed out on the opportunity to learn from her and my great-grandma.
It’s made of wood and hand painted. On the bottom my grandma wrote this –
“Made 1967
Uncle Oliver Peterson
Guttenberg, Iowa”
Apparently my love of scissors, especially embroidery scissors, was inherited from my grandma. The two pairs with black handles are pinking shears.
Then there is a huge variety of tools that I cannot even begin to identify. They are look extremely mysterious and dangerous.
This was also in there which makes me wonder if some of those are specialty embroidery tools?
There are ton of crochet hooks ranging from some big wooden ones to teeny tiny metal ones. Looks like I never need to worry about buying another crochet hook again!
I love this “Ideal Embroiderer” pamphlet that was in there.
There were also other various threads and some tatting shuttles. I’m actually doing some tatting for a book review I’ll be posting this week, so I was very excited to see those!
Have you inherited any craft supplies from family members? And do you have any idea what in the world those tools are?
What a lovely treasure! I think those are rug/embroidery punch needles (the fountain pen looking ones). I’ve been lucky enough myself to inherit a basket of vintage threads from a great aunt, and my mother is keeper of all heirloom knitting needles and crochet hooks, but in time I expect I’ll be the next in line.
There are some threads in the box too but they seem extremely brittle so I don’t think I’ll actually sew anything with them. The crochet hooks were exciting but I would have loved some knitting needles too!
Such a cool box. Those hooks bring back so many memories. 🙂
Wow, what a wonderful treasure to inherit. I’ve inherited a crochet needle case made either by my 2× or great grandmother 🙂
Tracey xx
Jess is right — those are variations on punch needle tools for rug making. They are threaded with yard, punched through fabric, and removed, leaving a loop of yarn behind. Purpose is to make a pile surface on the fabric. Come in all sizes of fineness, some are available which use finer threads and yarns to do punch needle embroidery. Sometimes the loops are clipped, sometimes not. Various wires and attachments control how deep the pile is and so forth.
What a wonderful treasure the box itself is. One can find the contents around, but you’ll never find another box like that one.
Thank you so much! I will definitely start researching rug making and reading up on it. The tools have my intrigued and I want to see them in action!
The rosemaling on that box is just beautiful! Such a treasure.
Oh thank you for that word! I didn’t realize there was a name for it, and I just googled “rosemaling” and the results are gorgeous! Now I want to do some sort of embroidery or cross stitch with it!
My great-grandmothers both died a few years ago. They both had quite a bit of crafting supplies, but hardly any of them made it down to me. (I’m not sure what happened to most of them. My mom got a fair amount from her grandmother. She got tired of storing some of the fabric, so I ended up with a reasonably large piece of what I think is un-dyed wool).