Uncovering Treasures - Part 2

As promised, here is part two of the continuing saga of the sewing treasure chest:

There were a few things that popped out of the box as interesting just historically.  When was the last time you saw a package of needles with gold leaf on bot the needles and the paper package?  Or how about the small rings used for curtains and dorset buttons made from "genuine bone" and priced at 10 cents?

Not sure what I'll actually do with either of these, but they are kinda fun to keep as interesting history tidbits.   

     

I mentioned the Belding & xx silk threads in the last post, here are all of them together.  I was really happy to pull out that Belding & Corticelli case, and even happier when I opened it to find little sampler spools of silk.  The buttonhole twist was another delightful find.  It's a very fun thread to stitch with, and kinda hard to find.

There was also a LOT of darning thread in every shade imaginable.  Somebody clearly planned on fixing a LOT of stockings.  Many of the spools seemed unused, so who knows how much darning ever actually got done though.

The real stars of this tale I have left for last;  the two tomato pincushions.

I already have a number of pincushions I use on a regular basis, and so I didn't need two more.  As a bit of an archaeological exercise, I decided to cut them open and see what pins and needles (if any) may have gotten lost within.  One one of the tomatoes I could see just the tips of a few needle eyes sticking out, so I thought maybe a few had gotten all the way in.


Here is the pair before I did any cutting or removal.  Each has a handful of pins, and you can see the needle eyes on the far one.  Not expecting to find much, I started with the near one.

I was really proud of myself for remembering to put something down under the pile of sawdust before dumping it.  I was less proud when it took me a few minutes of sifting before thinking to use a magnet to find the needles in said pile.  When all were extracted the total was 14 pins and 17 needles, more than I really expected.  As I moved on to the next tomato I thought, well maybe this one has a few more, since I can see a couple poking out.  I was still guessing in the realm of 20 or so needles.

This is what I saw when I cut open the second tomato.

WAY more than 20 needles.

I am at a bit of a loss as to how a person could lose SO MANY needles into a pincushion.  It's a little hard to see, but one of the ones sticking up is so large it is almost a yarn needle.  

Maybe they were all still sticking out and visible, and then the tomato got tossed in a box and all the needles got pushed in in the resulting jumble??

Also, whoever this box belonged to, they had a fondness for gold eye needles.  Besides the packet above, almost all the needles I retrieved from the tomatoes had gold eyes.  Was it just what was available?  or an actual preference?


So, how does one extract so much pointy metal from a pile of sawdust?  With a powerful magnet!  Unfortunate side effects may include flinging sawdust everywhere when the needles snap to the magnet, and having a giant pile of magnetized needles that are nigh impossible to separate...  

Well, I call it about a halfway good idea...











The final count was 16 pins and 124 needles from the second tomato.  Well, 123 and two halves.  There were two broken pointy halves that came tumbling out, but no matching eyes.  My mother called dibs on the yarn needle.