Sew, What's New?

 I've been trying to do a bit of sewing in the mornings, lately. I had this lovely blue fabric for a couple of years and finally decided that it was going to turn into an apron. Yes, another apron! I can't help myself! I wear them for work every day and they cheer up the drab, bleach-stained clothes I have to wear for the grunge duty.

It does seem like a lovely Robin's Egg Blue for the first day of spring, after all!

Water Bucket Purse for a Rainy Day

I’ve always been smitten with the shape and size of canvas water buckets. I always intended to get one and carry it as a purse.

A few years ago I made one out of striped pillow ticking and really enjoyed the way it turned out. I carried it until it got some kind of indelible stain on it and I’ve always wanted to make another one.

It’s been raining for two days solid and it just seemed like the perfect time to start a purse project.

Mackie obviously thought so, too.

Of course I want pockets and more pockets in anything I sew and intend for practical use. This is a key pocket. Strictly for keys. No digging around in the bottom of the feed bag for my keys!

I used some old floral upholstery fabric and then this found-object tablecloth from the thrift store to give it a little pop!


Here is the finished project right next to the old one. (stain not shown.) Of course like all things imagined, the reality is absolutely NOTHING like the original canvas water bucket! Amazing how that turns out!

Secret Projects

I've been working on a secret project. I've had a lot of help, as usual!

I've never seen a cat as helpful as mine.

Even at the cutting table you can see the telltale sign of his tail...helping.

MOM! I'm HELPING!

A Winter's Tale

Time, energy, dexterity, patience...all these factors go into making a quilt. And lately I've been short on those qualities!

But I've still wanted to do a little sewing and quilting...so decided to use up some of my stash making 'Big Block Quilts' that just showcase the fabrics I have and love.

Not too labour intensive and yet still visually pleasing when they are finished.

Here is one I made for a birthday gift! I was so pleased to see she put it on the wall!

I used my antebellum fabric stash as well as some from my Civil War collection. Fabrics were so visually appealing back in the day!

Now I'm ready to whip up a few more of these quilts because it was fun to make and only took a weekend to finish!

Red and White, snow and hollyberries

Still feel like I don't have enough RED and WHITE stuff! I am just loving the red and white this Christmas season. So I decided to whip up a little throw for the back of the sofa. My challenge was to use just what I had on hand and not buy ONE THING for this project.  Heaven knows I've got enough in my fabric stash to make many a quilt...but there is always just one thing you want to add to it and the next thing you know you are at the fabric store buying lots more fabric!

So here it is. It took 2 days.

I really whipped it together. It's 8 inch squares, with  machine zig-zagging all around...including the binding! I had no idea how that would work or look but I like the effect. I would like to do this with deep browns and greens, next! Use up some of that fabric stash!

Out with the Old In With the New!

 
Oh I love it when I get to salvage something and fix it up and make it brand new again!

Last year I managed to get bleach on my Christmas PJ's! 

Out Damned Spot, OUT I say!

But they are barely worn and still so cute and the colors are bright and merry...

So I cut the good part out of the t-shirt and sewed it onto a new t-shirt and VIOLA!! I have re-made, re-tread Christmas PJ's!

Winter Blues

Yes, I've got a case of the Winter blues!  Or maybe I should say the Silver and Blues!

I have been dealing with a big flare-up of my fibromyalgia, and with that comes a good deal of depression. Work is slow right now, I'm always on the verge of homelessness anyway, and it all starts to pile up on me in ways that dry up my creativity and make me feel very, very blue.

And yet, I love these dark days of winter! I do not mind the grey, grey skies or the rainy nights. I don't mind the cold or the dreary drip-drip-drip of water falling off the trees. All that seems minor if you've grown up in the Midwest and know what REAL cold weather, gloom and winter feel like! HA!

Occasionally I like to close my eyes and imagine I am  back home again in Indiana, walking the icicle streets on one of those silverthaw mornings. So I guess that is what inspired these new blue cards, which I will be using for my New Years Greeting Cards! Which is just around the corner, isn't it? New years.

Anybody want some unmounted rubber stamps? The theme is Victorian clip art. They are very cool! They are already mounted on cushion. I used these with a plastic block and double sticky tape for stamping. I'm selling the whole grab bag for 20 bucks. It's at least 40 stamps, very good quality, too! It's just time to ring out the old, ring in the new! And this year I want to pare down my 'stuff' to even more minimal stature. I've just got TOO MUCH STUFF!



I have had some fun lately: it hasn't all been pain and plodding! I got to meet a blogging heroine of mine: Kimberly Morales of "Poor Girl Eats Well" She is a local woman who creates her own recipes on the tightest of shoe-string budgets and comes up with some wonderful edibles. She lives only about 8 blocks from me and had a garage sale this last weekend. So I tracked her down and introduced myself and it was really neat and fun. Go check out her blog (on the sidebar) and she is also on Facebook.

I hope you are all having a wonderful, blessed, light and love filled pre-Christmas pre-solstice Holiday Season everybody!

Left Holding the Bag!

 I just had a few precious days visit from my cousin full of WAY too much really good food. (silly remark! There can never be way too much good food!) and not NEARLY enough thrift store shopping!

In the course of eating way too much good food vis a vis some butternut squash soup and focaccia bread with cornmeal at Ettore Cafe, we spotted a sign that said Consigner Designer, or Designer Consigner and decided to check it out.

It is the coolest little shop filled to the gills with barely used top designer brand clothing, shoes, purses and jewelry. And nobody in there was snobbish. I find it so thought-provoking, though, to imagine a lifestyle in which a woman buys a designer t-shirt for $250.00 and then never wears it. Designer Price Tag still in place, she throws it into the 'take to the consignment shop' pile and goes on her merry way to shop some more.

I'm in the 'if it's not under $5.00 with a big stain and some holes under the armpit I can't possibly afford to even LOOK at it' variety of shopper!

Well, there is no use bemoaning the fact that Poverty knocks on my door far more often than Opportunity, and what can I do but invite it in for Tea?

What I did notice at this cute shop and all around the town as we dined and lunched, is that women are carrying the HUGEST HANDBAGS I've ever seen. They dwarf the old fashioned gigantic diaper bags by quite a mile! The bags I saw women carrying were large enough to obliterate entire bodies from view.

Now I thought my last year's Nan Satchel was a really Big Bag but after seeing what I saw, I decided it was time to make myself a REALLY BIG BAG!!!!

So I grabbed a couple of pieces of my feed sack fabric and whipped up this adorable Big Bag!

And then I made it fully reversable!

With lots of pockets of course!

Chicken Innards

 The Innards of the Chicken!

What to do, what to do? It's time to start the conveyor belts and start cranking out some Christmas presents! Early, I know, but I've learned in the past that if I want this to be FUN, I have to do it when I feel like it. And I have been feeling like it, like crazy! I just don't have enough FABRIC I need MORE and MORE.

A while ago I found some fun patterns while out thrifting, and among them was a pattern for some animal theme teapot cozies. I'd show you but I can't find the picture.

I made the chicken one today.

Now, the thing about a tea cozy is that in my world, it has to be functional! Once you have that, you can be as serious, whimsical, silly, architectural, floral, etc; as you want to be.  But the thing must function as a working tea cozy!

And that means be able to hold in the heat of the teapot. So a person can sit around with a teapot at their elbow and a cup needing refilled in her hands and can get a hot cup of tea without budging from her big, lazy, comfy easy chair.

NOTE: If you drink tea from a mug using a teabag, this entire informative section is moot.

Now, this little adorable tea cozy pattern was a cinch to whip up but I noticed instantly it had a fatal design flaw! Namely, it was not INSULATED in any way! It was just meant to be decorative. Who needs a decorative tea cozy in the shape of a chicken just lying around? Well, I do,but that's not the point. The point is, I quickly had to re-engineer this little chicken so that it had some stuffing in it's innards!

I am not going to post any pictures of the final, final product because I don't want to spoil anybody's surprise or anything, but if I don't blog about my crafts between now and Christmas I'll go mad! MAD I tell you! So here is the binding being stitched onto the chicken body.

 And finally, here is a LONG DISTANCE shot of the tea cozy, awaiting some eyes and a beak and the final hand-stitching of the binding.

Identity of this chicken has been disguised in order to protect the innocent.

Paper Pleasures A-Plenty

Ah, mucking about with paper! I do love it!

Lately I've noticed I just cannot sit down to the television unless I have something else to do at the same time. It's like it's just not enough to hold my attention; plus I feel like it's a waste of time so I'd better be multi-tasking. After all, idle hands are the Devil's Workshop.

Earlier this week I got out my scraps of cardstock and cut them to size for fun gift tags and wee notes. I made sure that the darker papers had a nice white lining.

Then last night I sat and made oodles of decorative hand-made gift cards. Mind you, I don't use them myself on gifts, I GIVE them as gifts.

Because, as a gift-giver, who wouldn't love a stack of ready-made labels on hand to put on a present?

In this way I get to use up tons of scraps AND make something creative that doesn't take a huge amount of planning or fussing.

Fortunately, Mackie was asleep or outdoors or something during this crafting mela, because he just HAS to stick his nose in stuff and whatever it is, try and LAY on it!

He's so damn cute!

HOWEVER,  I had to give up on making this apron for a friend because, obviously, he kept lying on the fabric anytime I tried to lay it out and pin the pattern to it. This is why I never had a 2 year old!  All my imaginary children were adorable infants and then instantly 3 years old and talking.

Strawberry Fields Forever

Everyone asked what I'd done over the Labor day weekend and I had to say I didn't do much: no funds for such amusements as the local R&B festival or Pioneer Days down in Old Sac.

In fact all I had funds for gasoline for my car. And it's a happy thing that I did go out and do just that because standing across from me at the pumps was a kindly gentleman who just finished his morning selling strawberries at the farmer's market...

Which he just GAVE me out of the back of his truck!

And when life gives you strawberries, you make jam!

All cleaned up and ready to go.

Bile them strawberries down, gals, bile them strawberries down!

Testing with an ice cube for consistancy. I never let it cook long enough, though! I always end up with runny jam.

Three jars at a time in my handy dandy too-small pot!

Never too early to get started on home-made Christmas presents.

However, I seriously doubt if anyone is going to want my pickled cauliflower. Guess I'll just have to keep it for myself.

And afterwards: Grilled Tuna in ginger sauce and a freshly-shaved parmeson cheese Caesar salad.

A Thrifty Surprise

I finally put up the plates I  got at the thrift store the last time I was there.

I love that blend of creamy white on white.

And today I had to go to the DMV for a licence renewal and since it's only a few blocks over from the thrift store I went again! This time I spent under a dollar. I just saw two patterns I could use so I got them.  

29 cents for a pattern, I just love it! If only fabric was as inexpensive!

But WAIT! There's MORE!

When I got home and  peeked inside the envelope to see if the pieces were all there (something I usually do before I buy them but for some reason I just didn't bother today) I noticed that the previous owner had left some of her work behind!

The yoke had been pinned cut out of  this cute blue with white daisies and red ladybugs fabric! And then carefully folded and stuck back into the pattern envelope. It was just a neat surprise, I thought.

Thrift Store Finds!

I know that it's time for spring fever when I hit the thrift stores and come home with table napkins, bed linens and fabrics to make summer skirts!

The first thing was this awesome pink floral bedspread. I know, I know, it's no longer chic to be shabby, but I had to have it: the colors were so soft and muted and it just looked like a cottage summer to me. Okay, nothing else in the room matches, but that's just because I threw it on the bed really quickly so I could snap the picture.

Here is the close-up. AND! It only cost $2.99.

Here are the rest of my finds. SOME of these things were purchased with future birthday presents in mind. However, I love all of it too much to part with any of it, so I know that the intended recipients know that I love them SO much, I just had to keep these for myself because I know they would WANT me to have them, because they love ME so much.

Ha ha!

On the left is a set of perfect, pristine table napkins and one place mat with the Cost Plus sticker still on them; my favorite store. The place mat was .99 and the napkins were $1.99 for all 4.  Next is the awesome animal tea cozy pattern for a mere  27 cents. And behind it a gorgeous set of pillowcases soon to be made into a skirt for a friend. 25 cents!

Next a king sized pink sheet, brand new, for .99 which I will use for linings and such for various sewing projects.

You can never have too much pink. Pink is my sign! 

Next, a set of pillow shams in a rich upholstery fabric, very good quality for 69 cents for the pair. SCORE!  The deeper double pink fabric to the bottom right is another set of pillow cases, to be made into a skirt for me for 69 cents.

I also picked up this GIANT pillow sham in Hawaiian Fabric. I don't know what I will do with it, but the fabric is very good quality and who knows?

Maybe I'll make myself a muumuu.

Finally, when I got home from all this fun thrifting, I saw that the neighbors across the street were having a yard sale so I popped over there and picked up that butterscotch purse. It's real leather, still had the original paper wadding inside, and had never been used. The girl said she liked it in the store but there are always more purses to be had, so she was selling it. For $5.00! That's right five bucks! 

So my entire thrifting day cost me less than 10 bucks.

And I'm all lined up with sewing projects galore!

O Pioneer!

There is an old John Denver song called, "Late Winter, Early Spring (When Everyone Goes to Mexico)" that I have always particularly loved. Because it reminds me of that gap of time between the end of the holidays and the springing forth of the Spring. Which, where Im from in Indiana, can take as much as 5 months.

So  a person must find something to DO. A nice long PROJECT of some sort.

And thus you find me attempting to assemble, at last, the quilt frame I was given last summer, and getting a quilt into the frame.

NOT a one-man project by any means.

Unless you are a pro wrestler of giant, tall, skinny stick-men.

I just envisioned myself, sitting before the bright light of the window, in these early months of the year, quilting away to my hearts content, happy at last to be working on the quilt that it has taken me 10 years to complete.

But it appears that Fate has intervened.

This nifty little knob assembly that keeps the quilt tightly in it's frame happens to be missing on the 4th end of the quilt frame. Rendering it utterly useless.

Yes, I shall order the replacement knob, perhaps. But the frame has other issues, mainly that the rods are not long enough and I'm going to have to rig up some extensions. And thats' just a lot of hard work. So I guess I'll have to let it go, the idea of quilting before the window like a Pioneer of Old, and resort instead to my oval lap frame. 

Which is fine with me. I just wish I could have gone to Mexico, instead.

Finished!

First, I felt like my bedroom was dingy and dull and boring. So a quick swap-out of quilts and here's the before and after:

Much warmer for this long winter, I think.

And I finally finished up my Christmas quilt. It definitely looks like I hurried. I had all kinds of trouble with it and I'm just glad it's done.  I took it to work to show my 98 year old today and she liked it very much...however, she said, "All these chimneys and not a Santa in sight!"

And I had to agree. So as soon as I find some appropriate Santa Fabric I will be appliqueing one or two on a rooftop here and there.

I also happen to think the back looks as good as the front! Fun, anyway!  Happy January, folks, from we here at the "Still celebrating Christmas" Cafe!

*Oh, and PS: Anonymous in the Brown Coat: Of course I knew who it was right away! Are you still dog-sledding in Alaska? Drop me an email sometime and tell me how you found my blog!