Finished my 'project'...

A friend and fellow quilter/crafter nearby became a first-time grandmother two weeks ago.  I decided I wanted to hand make a gift for the baby.  The last time I used this pattern to make a gift was 40+ years ago!  I remember it working up rather quickly and not being too difficult.  The first part (the rosette above) looks more difficult than it was.  I did have some difficulty keeping a good tension for my stitches; my hands are not as dextorous as they used to be!  :)

Four audiobooks later I had the back rosette, the crown, edging, and embroidered flowers across the top done.  Considering I hadn't crocheted in an eon, I'm rather happy with it!  I have to say the embroidery is the most difficult part, since you are working on a limp item without a hoop; and working the embroidery floss into the bonnet's stitches without letting the floss show between the crochet stitches or leave knots on the inside that might be uncomfortable for baby was a little finicky.  

I'm a firm believer in blocking needlework projects to improve finished results.  I washed it in a bowl of cool water with mild soap, then I rinsed it twice.  I used a large bath towel to press as much water out of it as possible.  I didn't want to wring it and distort it, so I folded it in half, and just kept moving it to a dry part of the towel and pressing it flat between a top and bottom layer of towel.

When I had as much water out of it as possible using that method, I used a rather large plastic Christmas ball ornament settled into a smallish food container to stand in for a baby-sized head mannequin.  I made sure that both the ball and the food container were very clean before I let the bonnet come in contact with them.  I gently smoothed the bonnet over the ball, and set it under the best ceiling fan in the house overnight.

The shape tightens up in the drying process, and has a much more stable texture.

The proud nonna (my friend is Italian) texted me the sweetest photo of baby wearing the bonnet.  Such an adorable sweetie pie!

Keeping the momentum going...

 
As usual, I forgot to take the before photo till I had already started clearing out.  
Terrible photo, but the hallway is very narrow.

I have gotten so much done during the past few days, and I've taken great pleasure at marking each task off my list as it was completed.  Since my post last Thursday about what I got done in that one day, I have kept at it.  I swear I have done more laundry in the past few days than I have in the past few months...I stopped counting at eleven loads.  And every single load was immediately folded or hung up and put away

I've cleaned out the refrigerator, then refilled it after planning the week's menu and ordering groceries.  

I have cleaned and descaled my countertop ice maker.

Both guest rooms have fresh linen, and are somewhat guest ready...if you consider that anyone who spends the night in my house either loves me enough not to care about a little clutter or can feel free not to return.  :)

I've completed my Cologuard test and shipped it back.

I've filled up the car with gasoline.

I've emptied the linen closet.

I moved all of its content to a clean guest bed (and a chair which isn't seen in the photo above), and went through every single item and filled two large boxes with things to donate...mostly sheet sets I didn't remember having and were not needed any longer, a number of sets of pillowcases still in their packages, a factory-made quilt that I only used for a Christmas tree skirt on occasion and even then didn't love, and seasonal kitchen towels that I always forgot to put in the kitchen during those seasons.  I've dropped off the donations at Goodwill.  

While I was there, I picked up five polo shirts for Carey that have front pockets (his preference).  Ones with pockets are hard to find new, but I found five in his size (including one from LL Bean and one from Land's End) that all looked nice and only very lightly worn, and were marked $6.99, but when I got to the register they were each $3.  Yay!  

Oh, from the linen closet I also found three packages of 100% cotton cloth napkins.  When I went to Kasey's for Mother's Day dinner, I took two of them with me, and talked with my grandchildren about how earth friendly cloth is over paper.  These were very well made, can just be tossed in with a load of towels to launder, and will basically last a lifetime.  Both sets were snagged by grandchildren.  

I also found cloth diapers that both of my children wore 40+ years ago, along with a few baby washcloths, and bibs that were my favorites as a mom.  I'll wait a few years before we have another talk about eco-friendly and sustainable products for babies before I offer these up.  :)

As if these items weren't enough, I found one additional item that came as a complete surprise!

We've lived in this house for fourteen years now, and neither Carey nor I had the least memory of there being an electrical outlet at the back of one of the shelves!  As seen above, I plugged in a lamp, and there was power.  I already have a new plan for this shelf.

I only got all of this accomplished, because Carey was away from home.  These are the kinds of projects that I used to do while he was away at work for a week at a time, and so not around to see the "worse before it gets better" parts of the projects.  Though I still have some final work to do in the linen closet, he missed all the chaos.

I'll show the closet 'after' photo eventually.  This week is going to be a very busy one in other ways.

Coffee table redoux...

This is the coffee table last week.  It was purchased about twenty years ago from an ad on Craigslist.  I'm sure I didn't pay more than $50 for it.  It was exactly what we needed at the time, and it was then in pristine condition.  It has suffered a lot of wear since it came to our house.

When we were ready to begin, Carey removed all the drawers and lifted the wooden part of the table off of it's metal base, and he took it to the workshop.  He then removed the drawer hardware and sanded all surfaces.  You may recall, from a previous post, that we tried three different stain colors on it, but it didn't take any of them well, so we chose a paint color that appeared to be a base tone of the new furniture in the room, and Carey painted all of the table's exterior surfaces.  

I then mixed a little of the base color with a little of the darkest stain (they were both latex) and added a little water to thin it out.  (Instructions said not to thin with water, but I had very little to lose, and so far it seems to have worked acceptably.)

The three tools above are what are used to apply a faux wood grain.  I tested using them on a piece of scrap wood that had been painted the base color.  You use a pulling and rocking motion with the handled semi-round tool.  When I felt comfortable using them on the scrap wood, I began on the actual table.

With the paint/stain mix, I painted each side of the table, one at a time, and used the tools to add the 'wood' texture.  Then I did the same to the drawer fronts.  Once I had gained some confidence on the smaller areas of sides and drawers, I painted and fauxed a strip running the length of the table.  I then painted a strip next to the first and repeated the process until the top was finished.  The picture above was taken after I completed all table surfaces.  I have no idea why the side at the bottom right corner of the photo looks so much lighter than the top; it must have had to do with the lighting in the workshop.  Carey was happy with it the way it was at this point, but I didn't like the distinct light and dark of the two colors.  We left it overnight to dry thoroughly.

In the morning I used a cloth to rub the surfaces, a section at a time, with the dark stain in the direction of the 'grain' then used a clean cloth to remove the extra stain until the light color was toned down somewhat.

In case you can't see the differences, here's a close up before and after this step.  The arrows point to  the same spot (a faux knot if you will) before and after applying the stain to blend the colors a little.  It's subtle, but I think it definitely makes a difference, but maybe it's an IRL thing.

These are the drawers, and again, the lighting in the workshop makes them look different than the table top, but they are very close in reality.

After letting everything dry overnight, we added a coat of polyurethane, and let it dry overnight again before bringing it in and putting it all back together.

Here is the before:

And here is the after:

Here is a different angle closer up, so you can see more of how the faux grain turned out:

We'll leave it for awhile to cure before setting anything on it.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  It's not perfect, but it blends much better in the room now, and it still holds all my memories of the kiddoes visits when they were little.  (Background story linked here if you missed it.)

Mom is relegated to furniture...

It is absolutely ridiculous when I make myself sit still so that Rudy can have a good nap!

I think it may be time for me to make one of these...

I don't know who to give credit to for this idea, but whoever they are, they are brilliant!  Of course, everybody in my family has short legs, so ours may not be comfortable for a larger dog, but it might be worth a trip to goodwill for a used pair donated by a taller person.  :)

If I have any success, I'll let you know.

 

Before and after...

Before

After

It looks very white, and I know the distressing doesn't show up much in the photograph above, but it actually shows up very well looking at it in person.

Sometimes there is a fine line with distressing, and I didn't want to go overboard.  Here are some closeups.  

The handle on the right is the original.  Its original mate broke (as in irreparable metal-fatigue broke) a long time ago, so we had to replace knobs.  I found the bronze flower knob on the left at Hobby Lobby yesterday, and they were half price.  It never happens that the thing I want is actually on sale when I need it, so that was awesome...$2 each.

I tried just the knobs, but that looked a little too bare, and somewhat juvenile, to me.

So I put the original ornamental knob backing back on with the new knobs, and I like it a lot better.

And there you go.  Before and after.  I haven't had Carey seal the chalk paint yet.  It is pretty resistant to scratches as is (we tried scratching, and it resisted, LOL).  And in case the white continues to look too bright to me, I wanted to be able to do some sort of a lightly tinted wash before we put on a coat of polycrylic to seal it.

I have to say that even though people say how easy chalk painting is, it wasn't Carey's favorite foray into experimentation.  That could have just been user error.  

Wait till I tell him that the big brown wall looks too big and brown now and needs to be repainted another color.  ROTFLOL!  Oy vey, that wall requires scaffolding.  He's going to flip.

Making it Monday...

I had to go in to work for awhile today in preparation for jumping in next Monday.  I left Carey at home with one chore.  This is all he got done.  :)  I have been cracking the whip since returning.  Funny...that doesn't speed him up any.  LOL  I'm starting to worry that it won't be done as soon as I was hoping.

For some reason, every time I look at it now I see this...

Decisions, decisions...

I couldn't motivate myself to pull fabrics to try out for borders.  Frankly if I pulled even one fabric right now a stack of junk would probably fall over on me.

So the lazy way was to take the photograph of the squares and doodle on them in different colors.  I'm still leaning towards the blues, but the black and the yellow in the top photos are not bad.

Vote for your favorite, please.  :)

Making it Monday...

Today was quilting day at the library.  For the past few months we have been making 12 1/2" blocks to exchange.  Oh, and they were to be stash-buster squares, so made only with fabric we had on hand, nothing purchased.  

Each member made two blocks per month...collected and held by our fearless leader...with there eventually being twelve in total from each person.  The photo above shows them all laid out on a table this morning awaiting the exchange process.  

We drew blocks at random from each person's contributed blocks, so each of us has at least one from every other member.  Then what was left we drew at random so that we all had twelve.

These are the blocks that I received.  I ended up with two of my own; the spool (2nd column, 2nd row) and the butterfly (bottom right corner).  We are to have all squares assembled by our next meeting on December 4th.  How we assemble them is left up to us.  I am pretty sure I will be adding sashing and borders, but I haven't even thought about colors or designs, since I wasn't sure what colors would be dominant in the squares I ended up with.  Now I'm thinking maybe blue and white for sashing and borders.

These are not necessarily in their permanent locations, but I love the way they all look together.  I'll post when it's finished.

For anyone who has expressed an interest...

Some have asked me about the magazine that I write articles for occasionally.  You can click here to see the new summer issue.  Click through to see my article (on putting an enlarged photo on a canvas and other patriotic decoration ideas) on page 20 and 21.  That's my dad in the middle and his brothers on each side.  

Be sure to stop on page 9 to check out the recipe for a Watermelon Melody, an original recipe for a summer cocktail created by my friend, the other Kathleen.  It looks so pretty, it might even get me to overcome my life-long aversion to watermelon.

Ooooh, and look at page 24 through 27.  I want to take that train excursion!

Making it Monday...

Today I made a pillow.  A big pillow.  How big, you may be wondering?

Big enough for a growing puppy!  I used two standard bed pillows...not the expensive kind.  I sewed a long side of one to a long side of the other.  For the cover I used about a yard and a quarter of a sturdy pillow ticking.  With right sides together I sewed around the edge with about a 3/4" seam allowance (leaving a fairly large opening to insert the pillows), then turned it right side out and top stitched around it again with about 1/2" seam allowance.  I stuffed the pillows into the cover and stitched up the opening with a double row of stitching.  Hopefully the double-seamed edges will slow down Rudy's urge to rip into it.

I hope it is comfortable.  I hope it is indestructible!  I know it was frugal.  It cost about half of what his last pre-made dog bed did.

Something got into me today.  A burst of energy and motivation on the same day!  Must be the SUPER MOON!  :)  Aside from making Rudy's pillow, I vacuumed the entire house, washed all the bath mats, cleaned the toilets.  And because I knew Rudy would be sleeping on his new bed, I gave him a bath, cleaned out the kennel, and vacuumed it well.  Then I emptied the vacuum cleaner, and took out the trash.

Now I've had a shower and washed my hair and am ready to go to bed and read.

July 25th, Rudolph Day...

Another month has flown by!  The last couple of weeks have felt really busy, but I couldn't necessarily think of a thing that I have accomplished.  This summer's heat has been dragging me down.  It seems to get harder to endure every year.  Two more months before we start cooling off.  Two more months...

Now for this month's Rudolph Day project.  As you may recall, I am using the 25th of each month from now until Christmas to do something, either craft or chore, to be a little more prepared when the Christmas season arrives.

For this month's project I decided to pull out the cross stitch piece that you may remember from last year.  I worked on it while my mother-in-law was here visiting.  Only two colors, so really simple.

Last year I finished up all the cross stitch and then put it away.  I meant to complete and frame it before last Christmas, but...well...you know... 

This morning I dug it out of hiding.  I washed it, and ironed it.  I left it to dry thoroughly while I rounded up needed supplies and cut backing pieces and padding to fit the frame.  

I added the pearls to the cross stitch, cut off some of the excess linen so it would be easier to apply to the backing board and be less bulky in the frame, and zigzagged the edge so it wouldn't ravel.  Then I gave it another press to make sure there weren't any wrinkles from all the handling.  

I did my best to center the design on the padded backboard, and then carefully taped the fabric to the board before placing it into the frame.  Lastly, I added a piece of white cardboard to fill the frame's inset and give the piece a neater appearance.  Then I taped it in securely so there will (hopefully) be no shifting.  The only tape I had was clear packing tape.  Will it hold?  Not sure.  I may have to redo it sometime in the future.  But I figure the packing tape is still pretty secure on those boxes still left packed since the move six years ago, so...

I took this final photo from an angle to better show the dimension the pearls add.   The lacy snowflake designs and the pearls lend a simple elegance to this piece.  I'm happy with how it turned out.  And I'm really happy that it is complete and will be part of this year's Christmas decorating.