Wednesday, April 12, 2017

A Wonderful Gift

I am such a dog lover! Over the holidays, a friend gave me six cross-stitch dogs that she made when she was in her early twenties. Thank you, Wilda, I love them!


Here are four . . .


. . . the other two I just had framed at Michaels. Lassie was my childhood dog. 


I got her when I was 11 years old.  She was AKC registered and her official name was Barstan's Princess Lassie. Barstan was a combination of my name and my brother's--Barbara and Stan--but we called her Lassie.


Not surprising because one of my favorite TV shows was the 1954 Lassie series I entered a Campbell Soup contest by sending in a "list of names for the Lassie puppies" and received this 'autographed' picture of the real Lassie as a thank you.


When I was 13 my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and we could no longer keep Lassie. So she went to live with my Aunt Midge and Uncle Warren and I visited often :)


We were newlyweds living in Fort Benning, GA, when we got our first dog. She was a beautiful German Shepherd that we named Shepuppie (she-puppy). 


How cute


One thing I remember about living in GA were all the ticks I had to remove on a daily basis. Yuck!


A family portrait in 1963 :)


When my husband was discharged from the Army we moved to Suffern, NY . . .


. . . where Shepuppie had a litter of 8 pups :)  We sold them for $25 ea. Another aunt took one and we kept one.


We named him Fella. We waited and waited for his ears to straighten but they never did. After moving to Middletown, NJ, he disappeared. We think he was dog-napped as there were reports of such incidents circulating in town. 

 
But getting back to the entire set of cross-stitch dogs. I was going through some old McCall's Needlework magazines and came across this issue with the dogs on the cover! How crazy is that?? It was dated Fall-Winter 1952-53. The group was referred to as Dog Show and featured six of the country's most popular dogs. The blue transfer pattern cost 50-cents. I may frame the other 4 together. We'll see


I've been busy quilting Flags, making more minis, and now I have Gypsy to bind. Moving right along . . . :)




__________
Copyright 2017, Barbara Schaffer

4 comments:

  1. What wonderful dog stories! All but one (she is a cat person) of my quilting buddies is also a dog lover. It must somehow go with quilts and fabric. I love the fact that you found the McCall's patterns. I love it when that happens!

    ReplyDelete
  2. The cross stitch are wonderful! Love hearing about your pups too!

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a wonderful posts sharing your delightful stories of your family. I can't believe you had the magazine! How cool is that! I've never had a dog, but Lassie was a favorite TV show.

    ReplyDelete
  4. what a dog-a-licious post! It was so fun to see photos of your German Shepherds. I love that breed and would have loved a puppy.
    The cross stitch portraits sure found their way to the perfect person!

    ReplyDelete