New Kitchen Towels

I have fond memories of my granny's kitchen towels and the way they brought a little fun and happiness to kitchen chores. Most of hers were either traditional white feed sack style towels with embroidery motifs on a corner or terry towels with 1960s - 1970s colors and designs. I have a new stack of embroidered feed sack towels, but wanted some with more color.

I prefer woven towels to terry towels. Recently, I spent an evening whipping up a few. But, before I could work in the sewing room, I had to do a little shopping at A Heart Like Yours. 

 The top four towels were all made from towels and fabrics from my shopping spree. The top two are my favorites, the roosters and the colorful eggs. I like the wine bottles in the second set and the panoramic view was another motif on the same piece of fabric. It is nice, but not my favorite kind of scenery.

 These last two black ones were made with stuff found in the sewing rooms stash. I love the barns, sunflowers and farm animals!

I am working on creating a pattern for a cute little kitchen towel that can hang from a rod or oven handle. Stay tuned.

Trim the Tree

After a long wait, the third Christmas ornament arrived! Aren't they great?

These were the ornament I received in the 2011 Trim the Tree Handmade Ornament Swap on Flickr. This was the second year I participated and really have enjoyed both sending and receiving.

The two smaller ornaments arrived by the swap deadline back in December 2011. The third, larger one was sent from Poland and accidentally was sorted in the neighbor's mail. They are snowbirds and were away from home. They returned over the weekend and got it to me as soon as they realized the mistake.

February Hexis

I whipped up a couple of pastel flowers with solid white centers as requested for Jane Kerr. Jane is my assigned February partner in the Inchy Hexagon Flower Swap. These will be on their way to her in the mail tonight!

Sorry for the poor quality photos as the battery for my nice 35mm digital is not holding a charge, had to use the camera on my phone.

Christmas Quilt

This is the Christmas quilt my mom made for Rick and I. It is queen-sized and all the fabrics are holiday prints, mostly florals.
I'm usually not a big fan of florals, but this quilt is different. This rounds out all the Christmas quilts that arrived for the holidays.
For years and years, my mom has been trying to win Rick over with a quilt that he will love. However, the only quilt in the entire world that he professes to LOVE is in my mother's possession. It is a crazy quilt from the 1940s-50s that my grandparents made. It is so heavy that it feels like an elephant - or at least a large dog - is lying on top of you when it is used. Oddly, the binding has never, ever been finished. About three years ago she made a crazy quilt with similar fabrics and black Turkey Tracks stitches for Rick. He was appreciative, but still hasn't stopped pestering my mom for the other. All she said is, "When the binding is finished, I'll decide who it belongs to." Since the quilt is nearly 20 years old than Rick, he may be waiting a while. I think they just like to annoy one another.
Mom also made us matching pillowcases made with the red fabric she used on the border.

Ugly Chair - Part 1

We recently picked up three of these super ugly, but very functional chairs at an auction. All three set us back a whopping $5. We were the only bidders. Maybe their appearance had something to do with their cheapness? I'm just saying. 

These were produced by Shelby Williams Industries sometime betwen 1986 and 1988. Does that count as vintage? They are quite sturdy and made of solid wood, no particle board here. And, all the visible hardware is brass. We needed some chairs for the dining/poker/homework/craft/catch-all table in our family room as the old chairs are falling apart. In fact there are only two of the original six remaining.

 After I removed the pad from the chair this is what I found beneath. There were oodles of dirt, a few dead bugs and gobs of hair. The floral (oooh, it is so ugly) was actually a decorator grade fabric. The stripes however, were a very cheap, thin poly blend. It took nearly three hours to get all the staples and these two fabrics torn away from two of the three seats. The third is waiting... And, under it all was the original upholstery fabric, a nice woven teal and chocolate brown piece.

Woof! My puppy keeps growing. He has been banned from the house the past couple of days as he has taken to rolling in something that is not-so-delicious smelling.

First Finish of 2012

Drum roll please......

This little potholder, made from nylon loops on a child's plastic loom is the first crafty finish out of my sewing room this year!

And, sadly, I can only take a smidge of credit for it. Keeli did all the intricate up and down weaving of those pesky little loops that like to fly off the loom when stretched too far. It took me the better part of Sunday and a few internet searches to remember how to get the darned thing finished and off!

This is her first weaving project. Isn't it great? She had to experiment with different colors and patterns for a few days before deciding on these. She now wants to make a scarf. I talked her into perfecting the potholder and using up all the nylon loops we have before we move onto bigger projects. 

There is a similar potholder done in red, white, blue and yellow, I completed at about her same age in my parents' kitchen. My loom was wooden with little metal pegs around the edges to hold the loops. Wish I knew where it was.

2 more hexis

I wanted my hexi flower blocks to have black and white petals and red centers. I wasn't sure how that was going to look so I whipped up a couple.

They are definitely eye-catching! Now I'm anxious for my garden to continue to grow.

Inchy Hexagons - Jan 2012

My first hexi flowers are done!

I have been lurking around The Inchy Hexagon Flower Swap blog for a year and finally decided to take the plunge. The hand sewing and quality expected were intimidating me in the beginning. But, once I started I realized this is just tedious work, not difficult work. These are already in the mail on their way to Oklahoma, to Erica, my January partner.

Erica requested her flower petals be made from fabrics printed with stripes. She is anticipating her flowers having the appearance of a kaleidoscope. The one with the dark red center is fussy cut from a winter themed border print with snowmen, berry garlands, strings of popcorn. The other is a cute, relatively new print with cute little snails. When I saw them all in straight little lines, I was hoping the lines would become apparent once fussy cut and sewn together. What do you think?

I am now sewing together two hexis for myself. Stay tuned!