Scraps of Cadet Blue

Does this look tempting to you?  It did to me!  This is the contents of a scrap bag I bought at Ye Olde Schoolhouse quilt shop in Cedarburg, WI, a couple of weeks ago.  Believe it or not, all this reproduction fabric was crammed into a gallon ziplock bag.

This is where I stashed the scraps when I got home--my scrap processing center aka bushel basket.

And here's what it looks like this morning on my sewing room floor.  I am combing through the mess, looking for reproduction cadet blue pieces.

If you love antique quilts and/or like making reproductions, you probably already know about this book, Clues in the Calico by Barbara Brackman.  She defines cadet blue as a lighter blue,  popular from around 1890 to 1925.  The reason we call it cadet blue is because that's how it was described in the Sears catalogs of that era.

The Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog was the Amazon.com of their day.  But can you imagine ordering items based on black and white drawings, like this one for fabric?

The text tells us the colors and the type of fabric (cotton, silk, flannel, etc.).

This add caught my eye when I bought this catalog several years ago.  It's for a Minnesota A sewing machine in a fancy cabinet.

And here's a very similar machine in my dining room.  Somebody, over a hundred years ago, ordered this machine from Sears, I'm sure.  It passed through several hands before a friend and I picked it up in northern Illinois.  By the way, it still works perfectly.

But I digress.  What was I going to do with the cadet blue scraps?

Roscoe stars!  (Click HERE for my first post on this project.)  I am reproducing a quilt I saw in an antique mall in Beloit.  Many of the blocks were made from dark indigo blue prints, but some of them were light blue.  I don't have enough of most cadet blues to make the whole star, but I like the scrappy look anyway.

So far, I have 3 of these light blue blocks done.
This is definitely the month to make these.  The Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for August is light or bright blue.
As long as I was sorting out these blues for the Roscoe stars, I got started on my spiky stars for the month.

Two out of three ain't bad, right?  (Hey, Meatloaf said so!)
Last Saturday at this time, I was flying over the Atlantic, heading back from Paris.  I promise, I will post about that soon.  But today, I'm just so happy to be home, digging through the scraps.

I'm wishing inspiration and relaxation for you all this week.
Cheers for reading this,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:
Angela at Soscrappy
Myra at Busy Hands Quilts
Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Cynthia at Oh Scrap