I'm still trying to decide what sort of ornament to make for Merrick. I pulled out some of our homemade ornaments for inspiration.
The solider is c.1979
Recycled Christmas cards and a painted wooden blank.
The ballerina and soldier were a Nutcracker-themed set. I love her eyelashes.
Remember these from MSL? They were a group project, everyone gathered around the dining room table. That year was so much fun.
This is one of my favorite clip art books. I found it in the university library while I was in school, then I found it again in the Dover catalog. I'm so glad Dover reprints books, I think what I had found was an original edition. It would have been too expensive and too difficult to find pre-Alibris.
I've used it in two projects so far.
A mirror image goldfish on a crazy quilt block I made. I think it's done with couching and stem stitches.
A rabbit teething toy for Merrick. This was done with a punch needle. I worked the pattern from the front and the back of the cloth and the loops in the body are trimmed.
It's a little worse for the wear, he really likes it.
...again.
Another cutting table vignette. The red ladders are quilt tacks, which I don't recommend.
I can't remember who sent these or why, yikes. Flowers are a rare occurrence around here and I still can't remember.
Garden stuff from our old house.
The October issue of Vogue has a review of a new biography of Alice Roosevelt, daughter of Teddy Roosevelt. She's described as "eating asparagus with her gloves on, jumping fully clothed into a swimming pool, betting in public, and shooting her pistol off the back platform of a train." She also went out with men unchaperoned, was one of the first American women to smoke openly in Washington, DC, and she had a green snake named Emily Spinach. Wow!
I've never had a good answer for the "what dead person would you like to meet" question, I think now that I do. I'd like to meet Alice. She sounds like a lot of fun, and these quotes make me question some of the assumptions I have about the lives of women at the turn of the century. I bet she could tell a story or two as well.
The full title of the biography is Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker by Stacy A. Cordery.
I was going through IPhoto today and noticed that I keep coming back to a certain color combination. I've even used it in a quilt. I guess it's still not out of my system.
Thrifted stuff.
More thrift.
A fabric combo I wanted to remember. Now, where did I put that fabric?
A baby quilt for a dear friend.
My IPod and it's case. The bag is an old Clinique give-away.
Maybe a little. I made these books a few years ago when embroidery was so popular. I collected every magazine or catalog image that appealed to me, then I took them to Kinkos and had them bound. Well actually, they punched the holes and I threaded the coil, the slippery pages were too much for the binding equipment.
I don't do projects like this anymore, or at least I try not to. I spent more time collecting and sorting images than I did embroidering. I'm trying to let go of my perfectionism, it doesn't make me happy and it's pointless. Having said that I am glad to have these, they're the ultimate picture book.
I collected fashion stuff and interior stuff, whatever looked good. I also like that the photos are a little blown out, it reflects the weather here. I think the high today was 76! Nice, but it's November.
Handwork is about all I'm good for right now.
This sleeper and hoodie are from Target so the patches they came with weren't hideous but they weren't thrilling either. The circle is done with the blanket stitch on my machine, the rhino is cut out of a piece of printed fabric. Its blanket stitching is backwards, oops. My stitching is not quite up to par either but I'll blame that on my puffy fingers.
I have a file box full of embroidery supplies but of course I couldn't find it anywhere. This little snack bag is from a lot of sewing notions I won on Ebay about 2 years ago. At least I could find something!
These have been very satisfying to work on, more than I realized. I like that I've added something unique to store bought clothes.
Last week while I was in Target for some normal Target things like baggies and laundry detergent I passed the baby aisle and a light bulb flickered on. Onesies + freezer paper stencils = cute and fun. Why didn't I think of this sooner?
It's so odd to think that I'll have a little person to fill these onesies around Christmas. I suppose every pregnant lady says this kind of stuff, it truly is a journey.
On to more technical things. I was astonished by how much detail the freezer paper would show. The strings in the pea pods are just barely slivers of paper. I can't remember where I read this tip but ironing a piece of paper to the inside of the shirt really does help.
My tools: very old Pebeo Setacolor and a $1 bristle brush. I think the paints are about 5 years old.
I wanted to be sure you noticed the floating piece of the stencil. The fish and peapods are both from Dover clip art books. I've embroidered this fish in the past but I'm darned if I can find a picture.
We got a new bed this weekend. The old one was cheap and literally falling apart. I had to take down the photos I framed but you're not supposed to hang stuff over your bed in earthquake country anyway. The layout is from a MSL magazine. The photos are from a photography book that I took to Kinko's and enlarged on a color photocopier.
Before.
After. I still need to take down a few things and move the bedside lamps. I love it, it's so tall I feel like the princess and the pea. It's also a large bed so it suits the scale of the room nicely.
I had a reader request (woo!) over here . This was a bit more difficult than I imagined but I think that is a result of some of my choices. It might be nice to add a tail, eyes, and nose, but I'm waffling on that.
The fabric in the body is an upholstery sample, the face and ears are a wool suiting sample. The fabric in the background is one of my absolute favorites and it's so plain...I only have two fat quarters, that's all that was left in the store.
The upholstery sample is from Mary, I mentioned it in my last post.
Before starting I had to get the paper off of the sample. I mentioned this project to my mom who had the answer of course. I used a dry iron and set it on the backing for a bit longer than I was comfortable with and the paper peeled off pretty cleanly.
If you try this be careful not to scorch your fabric or your fingers. The paper has to be peeled off while the glue is hot so you might want to try using tweezers. Try to avoid leaving shredded pieces, I found it almost impossible to peel up if the paper didn't have a clean edge.
Here are the cut pieces. I enlarged them to make a 3" mouse rather than the 6" specified in the pattern.
I accidentally put my chopstick through the end of the ear while I was turning it.
The wool pieces needed to be fused or fray blocked and fray block was closest to hand. I try to stick with needle and thread but I'll use fuseables etc when necessary.
The mouse body finally sewn right sides together. I sewed the ear on backwards and picked that out, then I sewed two right sides instead of a right and left and picked that out too.
Don't forget to clip your curves! I usually do.
Stuffed with bottom attached. I had to leave the back open this way so I could slip in a cardboard support for the bottom. It would have been easier to sew if this had been on the side rather than the curved rear but I didn't think I could get the cardboard in that way. I ironed the seam allowance on the bottom and needle turned the top and it came out ok.
My grandmother's sewing box. I'm trying to make a space to display it along with some others. I pulled it out of the closet last weekend and was surprised to find stuff in it, I forgot I'd put anything in there.
The closed box inside the tin, it's in the upper right. I really like this photo.
So I was pulling some stuff off of my design wall yesterday and I thought I should share how I made mine. I wanted a design wall for ages but a. we rented and b. our car was not the right shape to get an 8'x4' sheet of insulation to fit inside. Oh and c. I didn't want to have sheets of insulation cut by the guys at Home Despot. Don't ask me why, I had some good reason at the time.
I was in HD one day mooning about in the insulation aisle when I spotted garage door insulation in a bag. It was just the size to fit in our trunk! It was a kit with 8 panels, each panel was about 20"x48".
When I got home I cut the panels lengthwise to fit on my wall and used clear duct tape to stick them together. I sprayed the panels with spray glue and covered them with off white polar fleece from Jo-Ann. Don't forget your 40% off coupon and make sure they have enough yardage before you let them cut. After that I attached them to the wall with drywall screws. If I could do it over again I would put screws through the top and bottom of each panel rather than just at the top and bottom of the wall, the panels bow out a bit where they're stuck together with tape. I managed to do most of this without help, it was more cumbersome than heavy.
I was worried that the vertical joints would bother me but I don't even notice them now. I only have trouble keeping things stuck to the polar fleece when I open the window and a stiff breeze comes through or when I'm using a folded chunk of fabric. In both cases I just add a few pins.
Here's my design wall. You can kind of see the bow in the bottom of the first photo. The second shows where the panels join.
The back of the insulation. I kept a square piece to use as a smaller design surface.
I love having a design wall. If I run out of space I pin up a cheap plastic table cloth with a flocked back, fuzzy side out, and use that space to keep working. Jess + design wall = BFF
A DS quilt in the most recent Sundance home catalog. If you haven't seen this catalog it has inspiring jewelry, clothes, and quilts.
Some ideas for tags for sewn things. I had more photos I wanted to upload tonight but wow, I have to find a faster way than one at a time. Plus I need to figure out how to hold a book flat without getting my fingers in the photo.
I finished the woven cuff today and I like the body but the clasp is meh. I should have tried a few more things before committing to this particular clasp arrangement.
The clasp was supposed to look like this but I wanted something wider.
I'm also a little nervous about wearing this because it feels fragile. The wire is 28ga and I'm the type of person who would catch it on something and not realize until I heard beads bouncing on the floor.
Do I clip this apart to reuse the beads or not? I probably won't wear it and I have no ideas for re-purposing it, I'm much better re-purposing textiles. A little stitch here, a seam ripped there, and voila, a silk purse from a sow's ear.
I need to try this again, I still really like the pattern.
