Antique Spectacular

I just returned from the Antique Spectacular in Des Moines, held Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 13-15 at the State Fairgrounds. While in Des Moines, I stopped by the 2 big antique malls just off I-80, the Brass Armadillo and the Majestic Lion. I still love these shops and the quality they are maintaining.

I looked for feed sacks, printed flour sacks and old burlap bags while shopping. They are out there! But they are priced from $8.50 to $25.00 and a few even higher. None seem to be pre-washed or ironed. There is not a lot of rhyme or reason to the pricing, but it seems the more printing there is, the higher the price. As for the flour sack prints from the 1930-40's, they seem to just get higher and higher all the time with some priced as low as $9 each, but most at $12.50-$15.

While I thought there would be a lot of sales and lower price tags because of the economy, it was only true in a few instances! At the Antique Spectacular show, the dealers who carried a general assortment of antiques were doing very well and keeping very busy. There were too many jewelry dealers at this show so they were all complaining about low or no sales. And to you quilt lovers, any reasonably priced antique quilt was selling quickly, especially if it was special in any way. The faded and ugly ones seem to be priced by people who did not know a quality quilt, priced as high if not higher than the good old quilts. Then there are those perfect and recently done new quilts which should not be at an antique show or hanging for sale at an antique mall, and they were priced even higher (because fabric costs so much now) but they are never going to sell at $450-$650 like I'm seeing around Iowa - unless they are marketed somewhere besides an antique mall!

The weekend was beautiful with sun every day and no new snow. We stayed with our daughter who is the director of the Perry Public Library and we got a very nice tour of the library, the Carnige Library Museum next door, and the beautiful Perry Hotel across the street. We ate breakfast at the hotel and, my, what an elegant setting and wonderful food!

Home again, it's time for taxes and catching up on a few loose ends before starting on our estate sales again for this year. I hope to make a scrappy/raggy rug and take some pictures while making it. Then I'll let Chris set up a tutorial because she is much better at it than I am! Anyone can make this rug whether you can sew or not! ~Pam