Rotary Telephones and Bunting

I used rotary phones all through my teen and young adult years. I still occasionally have those dream/nightmares about mis-dialing or not dialing fast enough to get through before whatever dreaded dream monster showed up. Dialing was tough on the finger to move that circle around, each number made a click and speed dialing was not all that fast with these black beauties. 

(the bunting is at the end of this post)

I remember using pencil eraser for dialing. I looked up a bit of history about Automatic Electric telephones

from: CollectorsWeekly "Electric was founded as Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange Co. by Kansas City resident Almon Strowger, who invented the first automatic (dial) telephone switch in 1889. For decades AE was a leading supplier of telephone equipment to independent (non-Bell) telephone companies across the U.S. Many vintage Automatic Electric telephone models have a small sticker on the bottom which reads 'Monophone'."

I remember using this type of black rotary phone in the 1960's. In the early 50's our phone was an original oak crank phone (couldn't find a picture to add, but it resides with my brother so it is still 'in the family').

The back has a hand grip area (hollow space) for convenience of lifting/moving.

The next Automatic Electric I found (below) is the Wall Phone.

This one is circa 1950/1960's. It has its own wall display board and was being used as a wall decoration when I found it. We had one like this in the kitchen of the parental home and we had added the 15 foot curly cord so a small amount of privacy (moving away from the kitchen) could be had.

My latest rotary (added this month) appears to have had a turquoise receiver that was painted? black. It was tempting to scrape away the black but I left the receiver as I found it. The phone works.

Always interesting to see what memories are retrieved when searching for collectibles.

and now the bunting...

In one of DH's recent thrifting buys I found (in the trunk) a pile of velvet. I had recently read a post from Sally Ann on making bunting. She wrote a very clear and easy to follow tutorial (and her blog is filled with sewing wonders). Could not resist, tried, did my best and learned.

I made 9 double sided purple/pink velvet triangles (that was all the pink I found) and a purple velvet 'rope' to attach them, spaced each triangle 8 inches from the next, alternating purple and pink. Next time I am going to use cotton fabric and wide bias tape.

Thanks for visiting. 

Will be posting again March 27th, at 7:00 am

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