Back Then Part Two

Back with more pics of what I found in my thrifted time capsule handmade sewing box. This matchbox was filled with straight pins and tiny buttons, also something my grandmother used to do with hers. It makes me wonder if the box could date back to the forties, and was inherited by the next generation.

I found fine steel crochet hooks (one was a double-0 with a cap for the hook, which I've never seen before) and a very slender, slightly bent awl-type tool that may be a thread picker.

I've only seen reproduction wooden needle cases. This one is the real deal.

And it still had needles inside.

It's always fun to guess what the original owner did with their tools and notions. The box's contents were a bit disordered, but from everything I saw I think this was a working sewer's box, probably primarily used mostly for clothes making and mending (there was a pattern wheel tracer tool and a well-used bit of tailor's chalk in the box.) Yet she definitely crocheted, too.

There were some mysteries, too. I've never seen a razor knife like this. Could it be an ancient ancestor of the rotary cutter?

I reorganized everything as I went through it; here are all the spools of thread that came in the box. Some I recognize as coming from the seventies; others are wooden and quite old. I love finding spools with just a yard or two of thread saved on them. That always touches my frugal little heart, as I do the same. :)

Anyway, I will preserve this time capsule and hope that the next generation in my family finds it just as interesting.

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