Tuesday 14 September 2010

Nursery Rhymes and Picture Books

I love vintage children's books and here are two I found in the bookshops of Hay-on-Wye last week. The first one is charming - I especially like the little girl's dress with its pale blue flower print fabric and puffball style. I absolutely love the handwritten text in this old book and the mixture of full colour prints and one colour line drawings (done for economy reasons, yet I think it adds variety and richness to the book design).
The second book caught my eye for it's nostalgic cover but then it interested me for another reason too. This copy had been used by a long ago editor to revise and update the edition.

Pictures which were considered too old fashioned were crossed out and annotated with the word 'replace'. Even children's names were being updated too (though if it was to be updated again now they would be putting a lot of the old names back!)







I love this little piece of bookish history, quite a find for me, and I'll treasure it because of its torn cover and crossings out!




The photo below is of a Picture Book quilt, made for the grandbabies to snuggle under when they have a nap at our house - with lots of nursery print fabrics to soothe them as they drift off into the Land of Nod.




Hope your week is a happy one! x






4 comments:

barbara said...

Hello Helen,
Great to see your Hydrangea quilt being used and loved and those amazing old picture books, your blog always looks so fresh ...

Marigold Jam said...

What a trip down memory lane for me these books were! Love your quilt and am sure the grandchildren will too.

Thanks for visiting my blog and if you check out the comments to my previous post you may find the answers to your line spacing problems or on the other hand you may, like me, decide it's all too much hassle and leave it as it is with some spaces bigger or smaller than you might choose - after all in the great scheme of things I dare say it doesn't matter too much! I like what I see having popped over to yours and will be adding your blog to my list (good job I discovered how to delete some eh?!)

Jane

Wendy said...

Seeing your quilt got me all inspired to dig out my hexagons again. Every now and then I do a bit more preparation. My table is currently home to fabric and papers in various stages of readiness to be sewn together. I'm just grateful my kids are old enough now to leave them be!

sandra said...

Helen, seeing those books made me all nostalgic! They're gorgeous and a great source of design inspiration for children's applique and embroidery. Love the hexagon quilt. Lucky grandchildren!