My camera is still away (hopefully being fixed) so I don't have any recent pictures. But I wanted to do a post for Bradley who misses driving in Britain. These are some clips from our holiday where we drove from Edinburgh north to Inverness, over to the Isle of Skye, around the Lake District, through a bit of Wales, Dartmoor, then ended up in London. I miss it too!
I almost forgot to tell you about this! I'm participating in this Craft Dinner craft sale. It's tomorrow. It's a combination of craft-related flea market type things and the usual handmade goods. It may tempt you to know I'm going to get ruthless with my fabric stash tonight and make up some of the popular scrappy packs of fabric.
Here are the details:
CRAFT DINNER on June 13, 2009 @ The Imperial Pub (noon-8pm), 54 Dundas Street E
This is a glimpse of my jewellery display. I used some pieces of lace to display the jewellery. But you can't see it too clearly because as you may have detected in this photo, my camera is slowly dying. In a suprisingly cheery way with a stripe of pink at the edge of every picture. The good news is that I found a service notice online about it, and it's a flaw that Canon knows about and is willing to fix for free. I just have to mail in my camera. Ahh, the internet. Before you we were in the dark.
Hope to see you tomorrow! The first person to visit and mention this blog gets a free present from me.
Thank you guys for all the nice comments about my last post. You really made my day! I have the best commenters ever.
Karyn from the workroom gave me this lovely pendant for a birthday present at the last craft sale. They're handmade little wooden discs that come in different shapes and have little holes punched in them so you can cross stitch a picture for decoration.
I had an odd little miniature performance anxiety about doing mine and couldn't decide what to do. Mainly as I've never done cross stitch so I wasn't sure exactly how it goes. I learned as I went along, and probably made up a few things.
I started by sketching out my design in pencil right onto the pendant. In case you're wondering, I used pearl cotton for mine, in size 8. Last time I went to Sunday Market I found a big bag of old pearl cottons for $20. It was very exciting.
My initial idea had been a bird, then I thought a bird was too obvious - something I draw and embroider all the time. Then I was inspired by Anabela's prettiest ever flower, and decided to get going. And still I somehow ended up doing a bird.
Here's a detail
I even updated the house... this is our old living room
Option A: I think this is my favourite, colours work very well with what's in the room, it has a nice traditional and pretty pattern but the colours don't contrast too much so it's subtle. This one will blend in with the dark floors in a nice way.
Option B: The colours in this one work as well and the pattern is really pretty
Option C: I like the simple two colour scheme in this one, the colours work perfectly with the rest of the room. The pattern is nice but a little "pointy", maybe not restful enough for a bedroom?
Option D: I love this one so much. The grey and white work pretty well with the rest of the room, and the pattern is my favourite. So pretty!!
Option E: Again, great colours for the room. I like the modern and geometric pattern, it's a bit more playful. Not that it matters too much, but this one goes nicely with our duvet cover which has ovals in dark brown and blue on a white background.
Option F: Good colours, and a nice simple graphic pattern. This one will look nice against the floors. It's feminine but not overly so.
Option G: Last but not least, this one has a nice gentle colour scheme. Bradley loves this one. But it is going on my side of the bed...
While Bradley was at home on his electrical working staycation I had my own big task. Not quite as big but still an ordeal.
The bedroom had some old wainscotting, which was a little wonky. The slats were varying widths, varying heights, and had some mismatched areas of tongue and groove in the corner where a radiator was removed.
So we decided the room would be much improved if we removed it. It was really the only thing that people criticized when visiting our house. The concensus being that it was more weird than charming.
Not being the most patient person in the world I couldn't wait to rip it out and see what was underneath. It wasn't too bad - the walls were intact underneath aside from numerous nail holes, a little strip of old wallpaper and some wiggly lines of adhesive.
Ok, as you can see above it was pretty bad... but not as bad as I had imagined it might be!
Now that I've done the first coat of paint I can see some more flaws I need to fix. But the walls look much better. I chose a pale neutral gray Benjamin Moore colour called Gray Mist. It's very subtle, quite warm, and just enough colour to contrast with the trim. I like the trim in our new house so I wanted it to show.
Phew! It's been a very busy few weeks. We've unpacked most of our boxes and are finding that luckily our furniture fits very nicely into the house. My favourite room so far is the living room which is practically all decorated.
Before we moved in I painted the walls. The original colour was a designer favourite Manchester Tan but I wanted something lighter. I chose a pretty pale blue colour called Green Tint. It looks like a bluish grey on the chip - very pale - but I found once I had painted all the walls you really start to see the blue. A very grey, soft, pale blue that I feel makes the room seem larger and brighter. It's hard to pick light subtle colours like this from the chip, in this case I actually relied on a description of the colour by a designer in House Beautiful magazine.
Then I added sheer voile curtains combined with blue linen drapes with a branch pattern. For the cushions I sewed two new blue and brown floral cushions and bought a velvet and grosgrain ribbon embellished cushion. Finally I hung my favourite picture on the wall, an original antique pen & ink piece that illustrates the Aesop fable The Fox and the Crow.
But the big project right now (being undertaken by my resourceful and talented husband) is updating our wiring. During the inspection we found out that there was a lot of knob and tube wiring in the house. In case you don't know, it's an old style of wiring that everyone used to have.
But nowadays any knob and tube wiring is going to be very old, and a bit the worse for wear. Mainly it becomes dry and a little brittle and can be a fire hazard. Insurance companies require that you replace it, and because you need insurance to get a mortgage we really have no choice in the matter.
Now that we're doing it, I'm glad because the old wiring that's coming out of the walls certainly doesn't look very wholesome.
Next up, the bedroom!
We finally sold our house! It took much longer than we expected which I guess isn't surprising since we started when it was still snowing. It wasn't easy but I'll spare you the gory details since all's well that ends well. It was certainly worth the grief since we love the new house.
We moved in to the new house this past weekend. Springtime is a great time to move as everything seems wonderful wherever you end up. The trees are all flowering and it's warm and breezy. Well on the day we moved it was alternately raining and hailing... but we somehow managed to dodge the worst of it.
Before I start to show my new decorating pics, I'm just going to take a minute to say goodbye to our first house. My favourite part of house selling (possibly the only good part) was all the fresh flowers I felt entitled to buy so we could show off the house.
Staging also involved clearing out lots of stuff to make the house look as spacious as possible. An airy, serene look I'm now trying to recreate in our new house.
So that's it for the old house, pics of the new house coming up soon!
You guys were right (and had some cute ideas) the mysterious green item was a vintage carousel for rubber stamps. I use my stamps for adding my name and copyright on the back of my illustrations and for adding the return address for packages and letters.
If you'd like to try it yourself I found a great place online called Simon's Stamps. You can preview your image online and once you've approved it they will make up a stamp and mail it to you. So easy! I love mine.
Just a reminder, the Hunt & Gather trunk show is this Sunday at the workroom from noon - 5pm. It also happens to be my birthday. I've made some new colourful phone cosies, and lots of pretty earrings which would make a very nice Mother's Day gift. I also have lots of fabric scrap packs and mixed-up button grab bags. See you there!
I've mentioned it before, but how great is the Sunday Market at the St. Lawrence? I go there fairly often but sometimes I really just don't find anything I need to bring home. Last week I went and kept finding things. The first item was the tin tartan picnic basket pictured above.
I saw one just like it in the window of Liv (by Au Lit Linens, on Eglinton) and was thinking "note to self - come back when the store's open and try to buy it". I see lots of these on ebay too. The faux bois ones are nice, and another fave motif is the faux basket weave ones. Price for this one: $30.
The second item was this pretty green planter. I have a thing for vintage planters, I put all kinds of things in them. Such as buttons and trim or office supplies. Price for this one: $10.
My favourite area in the market is the shop in the corner called Antiques at the St. Lawrence. I found a charming vintage Peek Frean tin there. Why don't cookies come in these anymore?? I use these tins for sewing supplies and it really does keep things organized. That's right, I'm pretending it's practical. Cost for the tin: $8.
Then last but not least, I've been keeping an eye out for one of the above for months. It's dark green, made of cast iron I suppose, very heavy, and it has a nice decorative detail to it. I'm wondering now if you know what it is? I'll tell you later but you can guess if you like! Price for the fabulous mystery green item: $20.
I try to set up some kind of budget before going to Sunday Market, such as "if you find something really great you can buy it but don't spend more than $50". This time I was in a splurgy mood. But I was still trying to make sure it wasn't a question of being tempted by things I don't really need that would just lead to clutter and regret..
Whether or not I needed the items pictured, I leave up to you to judge (in your head.. I don't really want you to tell me if you think I'm nuts). But suffice it to say they certainly made me very happy. That was a good day.
It's that time of year again. I brought some Forsythia branches in last week to force them to bloom. I thought it might have been too early in the year, the buds were quite small and brown and kind of dry looking and it didn't seem like they'd be ready to bloom any time soon. But it worked!
All you do is cut some branches from a tree that blossoms in spring. If you can find some cherry branches, those are gorgeous. Then before you arrange them in water, clip an extra cut at the bottom of the branch so that it can draw up the water better. Wait a few days and you will see your branch start to blossom.
A nice way to cheer things up inside as you wait for your garden to bloom.
Sometimes I post something and then I think it needs a little follow-up. In this case it's the IKEA Fusion dining set. I loved it when we bought it and it did fit perfectly into our kitchen eat-in area. But I was never really happy with the cushions.
The set comes with the seats covered in a black matte vinyl? fabric. I really didn't like it. So I used an aqua and white striped fabric I had on hand to recover them. But I made some mistakes. First of all I didn't pre-wash the fabric and I had bought it 2nd hand so it turns out that there were dusty marks on it. I didn't notice until later.
Also I didn't remove the black fabric that was already there since it was attached with about 1000 staples. This isn't a good idea because it doesn't feel right and there was a subtle dark shadow from having the black underneath the white and blue striped fabric.
So this time I was determined to do it right. (if something is worth doing, etc...) For some reason I was picturing a green and white print and finally found the perfect one at a fabric store on Queen West. The best part is that it was a fabric that was usually $19/yard but I found an end piece that was around 1.5 yards for only $10! The green colour was exactly what I was looking for, and it was a nice upholstery weight with a lovely smooth feel to it.
Bradley helped remove the 1000 staples and I attached the new fabric and now I re-love the IKEA dining set. Yay!
Ok, so the Toronto Craft Alert Get Er Done Giveway worked. I finished the lining for my knitted bag yesterday. I also worked out a way to line a bag like this with a handle as part of the main shape, so I can show you that too. I think that was the main reason I was procrastinating... I wasn't sure at first how to do it.
First of all, this is why you have a stash. I was able to just rummage through my fabric to find one that would work. I wanted one with some stiffness to offset the floppiness of a knitted bag and give it some structure. I chose a pink upholstery fabric that went with the colours in the bag and had a pretty motif of bunches of white daisies.
So I cut out the main lining piece, attached a pocket to it, hemmed the top ends of it and sewed the sides together.
Then I cut two strips for the top part, folded them in half lengthwise and sewed them together. This creates a strip with a finished edge to be the top part of the lining. As you can see in the picture the back of the fabric has a lot of threads for the daisy embroidery, so this helps prevent snags as well.
These are the finished strips.
Then I turned the bag inside out with the main part of the lining pinned in place and the top strips pinned in place. Then hand sewed the strips to attach them to the main part of the lining, except for the areas where the gap was for the handles. Then I hand sewed around the handle gap and around the top of the bag to attach the lining.
It's hard to describe but hopefully you can kind of see what's going on in the picture:
And now it's finally done! I have too many bags now so this one may make an appearance at the Hunt & Gather Trunk Show...
Is it wrong that I procrastinated in posting my craft slacker project? So this is it. I craft all the time, as you know, and I'm pretty good about finishing things. But I do have my share of unfinished craft projects. Let's call it the basket of shame. For some reason I like to knit bags and pouches - almost as much as sewing them - but I never seem to get them finished.
Sewing the linings and zippers for knitted projects can be pesky. So this is the batch of knitted but not finished things I'd like to finish. The main offender is the knitted bag, which has nice stripes made of blended yarns and I really like it, but it needs a lining. That's it! It's been sitting around for years. I'm guessing it was abandoned in 2005. Well this is it's big chance to get finished.
It's not to late to enter yourself, all the details are on the Toronto Craft Alert website.
So I've tried it out and it looks like I'll be hand-piecing the single girl quilt. I didn't sew the pieces together in the order it suggests in the instructions since I wanted to see a finished square and see whether I was happy with using the muslin for the background fabric.
Denyse Schmidt's Single Girl quilt instructions suggest sewing all the first quarter rings first, then all the second quarters etc. It makes a lot of sense to put together batches at a time and then you could also chain piece as well and save time and thread.
Part of the reason I went ahead with a full ring was that I had laid out the whole quilt and made sure I was happy with the prints in each ring. Mainly I was checking that there were no duplicate prints in each ring.
The rings are mainly all the same, except you substitute in a few different prints so the overall effect appears random. I had done that and spent some time making sure I liked the placement of my random prints. So I want to keep all the pieces for each ring together as I go along.
Now that the first square is done (11 more to go!) I'm really happy with the results. When I sewed my last quilt I quickly machine pieced it and while I was fine with the way it turned out in the end I was a bit bothered by the way some of the squares didn't line up perfectly. In retrospect that was also about cutting out imperfectly - some of the little pieces of fabric I had were just slightly too small and I wanted to make them work.
So as I was methodically hand sewing my ring together I found I was able to line up the quarter rings almost perfectly. And I was thinking of a saying that my grandfather used to say from time to time: If something is worth doing, it's worth doing well.
This simple phrase haunts me. Anytime I do something in a rushed, haphazard way and I know it's not going to turn out as well as it could I have a sort of guilty feeling. I question whether it's worth doing, and if so why am I not doing it well?
So in this case I'm slowing down and I think it will be worth it in the end. Not that I'm against machine piecing! Not at all. I may very well go back to it for my next quilt. Which I'm trying not to think about so that I can focus on this one. But I will say the next one is going to be made up of yellow prints. I love yellow.
All my Single Girl quilt rings are now cut out and ready to sew. I finished up with the cutting at the workroom during Quilt Sunday, then when I got home laid out everything on our living room floor. After a few more tweaks I'm finally happy with all the prints I have and how they're arranged so it's time to sew it together.
Katrina asked me about whether I would do hand piecing and I said "no" to doing that. But tentatively because I was thinking about it. I did a little reading online last night, and found an appealingly simple discussion/tutorial on the purl bee.
I started hand piecing but I'm not sure if my patience will hold out. I actually like the idea of having a little portable craft project on hand. Especially as we're still showing the house, so setting up my sewing machine and putting it away all the time is an extra chore. But it still means really slowing down the creation of this quilt.
And seeing all those circles lined up on the floor got me really excited about the quilt top!
My chair "after"
the chair "before"
Also one of the arms was dislodged at the join. The woman at the cash looked at me like I was a bit pathetic for buying this dodgy chair and charged me $5.99.
The final touch was a pillow made from an old cashmere sweater. I've been meaning to do this for ages, I see them in magazines all the time and they always look so nice. The best part is this one is also so soft and cosy because of the cashmere. Perfect for that last little patch of winter.
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