Reupholstering

A week ago I went south to fetch some furniture home.  Namely my paternal grandmother's dining room furniture.  FH and I finally have some grown-up furniture in the house.  Not only are these much loved heirlooms but given our love of entertaining the lack of a large table was becoming irritating.

The latest timesink for me has been fighting with my grandmother's dining room chairs. They have been naught but bare frames and have been this way since I was in high school.  Several things (grandchildren) came up and my mother never got around to actually reupholstering them.  She did however make a lovely book (with photos) showing how the original upholstery was put together and included a pattern for the seat cushions.  She also saved original pieces of fabric to use as patterns.  I finally finished them on Friday evening after about two weeks of stop and go work. The project stopped and started based on availability of materials. Everything was here except for the fabric, which arrived Wednesday. Then the real fun began.

Here is a pictorial step-by-step of the process:

Bare frame.

 Jute buckram webbing.

 New cushion cut to fit.  This replaces the original (and very icky) horsehair.

 Muslin to cover the cushion and make future upholstery easier.

 The gorgeous fabric that Mom picked out for the chairs.

 Simple black fabric to cover the bottom and make things look more finished.

 Close up of the fabric.

 I plan on covering a few 12" pillow forms with some of the leftover fabric.  That way FH can comfortably sit in these chairs for a long meal.  Once the sun is up we are going to spray some Scotchguard on the fabric to hopefully help protect it from spills and dirty cat feet.

If I get a chance during daylight hours I'll get a picture of the dining room set in situ.  I'm off for some much needed sleep.

Copy Cat

With one small difference...

A different number to correspond with Pollux's larger frame and ability to dominate in skirmishes.

I actually started this one last week but was distracted by going to fetch the rest of my furniture from down south.  I'll post more on that later, hopefully tomorrow or Friday.

Again the original pattern can be found here.

On to Happier Things

FH suggested I make Castor a new sweater, so I checked my notes on the blue one and made a few modifications.  Again the original design is by DIY Maven.

The last two rounds at the next are done in kitchen cotton while the rest of the body is worked in LB Homespun.  I used kitchen cotton to embroider the numbers on the back.

The yellow cotton at the collar helps snug in the neck enough that it doesn't flop as easily as the blue one.  He's been gaining some weight back, so I made the belly a little loose so it won't get too tight.

I could have used cotton for the whole thing but I didn't think he'd stay as warm so I went out and bought some green Homespun.

Pollux is in for a shock though.  I think he needs a matching one before the game this Sunday night. ;-)

Auction is Over

And what a day it was!

My humble contributions of stitched pumpkins and crochet top towels brought in roughly $70 for the guild.  That made all the effort worth it to me.  I'll be setting things aside for next year's auction ahead of time.

I did manage to win the piece I wanted.  I spent the better part of several months with the guild's quilting group putting together a queen-sized quilt for the auction.  Much of that time was spent keeping Confetti from sleeping on the blocks.  In fact on the day she died we were in the sewing room and I was working on the bottom row of blocks.  She had been helping me do this of course.

So many happy memories were tied up in this piece, even though it's not quite my style.  But I bid on it and won it.  Now it's mine to treasure and be reminded of happy things.  It's going to live in the sewing room on the bed where I will always think of my sweet kitten.

Happy Halloween!

Going Once...

I finished a couple of related projects yesterday and today.  Everything in this post was donated to my Stitcher's Guild's annual Silent Auction.  The event is next Tuesday and I have my eye on a particular something.  If I get it I promise to post about it.
First up are some sewn pumpkins.  These will be divided up into three lots: the large one by itself and two lots of three little ones.

 

 

Poke the images for a better view of the embroidered leaves.  I had the most fun with the small pumpkin on the top left.  The fabric is green on green images of leaves and  such so I embroidered branches and berries onto it.

Next are two more crochet top towels, Halloween themed.  They're just like the ones I made before but I used different yard for the flowers.

I'm going to have my hands full tomorrow helping a friend do some more renovation work in her home.  Catch you all later!

Grr...

- Water heater safety controls died a horrid death (but nothing else was damaged) and we decided replacing it would be prudent.  Luckily the handyman was already here dealing with plumbing, which is how we figured out there was a problem.

- Castor's seizures are not under control.  We're playing with dosages again.

- The laptop is dead.  No clue as to why.

- I have a mystery fever.

 I'm going to crawl into bed and hopefully I can function again in the morning.

And People Wonder Why I Don't Loose Weight

I just keep finding new ways to have it stick around. 

Monday night I whipped up some Snickerdoodles to take to Guild, so of course some came back home with me.

Today I tried out a recipe for blueberry-lemon scones.

 

FH isn't much help either when he makes lovely dinners like this: 

 

 Moroccan beef over couscous with stir fried broccoli... it may sound healthy, but only if you can manage to control how much to eat.  ;-)

Halloween Crochet

A friend of mine makes these awesome towels and was nice enough to show me how she does it.  Here's my first two attempts at using her design.

 

I like the flower in place of a button.  It's more girly and means you don't have to dig out stuff to sew on buttons.  

I've got more towels in my stash for Thanksgiving, Yule, and even the 4th of July.  Hopefully I can find colors of crochet cotton that look ok with them.

Back to house-cleaning and other necessary things!

Painting - Before and After

Towards the end of last week I decided that the living room/dining room really needed painting before I bring my dining room set up from down south.  Especially since that room's paint had been sitting in the way since early March.  Here's a look at the former wall color, with some of my autumn/Halloween decor for contrast.

 

Now here's the same view with the new paint on the walls.

 

I love love LOVE the new color!  And as an aside, don't Kat's hats look great in that random Halloween bag I did up a while back?  They look absolutely fab against the new paint too!

 

 

I can't wait to get my dining room furniture here and in place.  The chairs are actually here but need reupholstering... quite literally.  There's nothing left of the original materials, only the wooden frames remain.  That will be an upcoming project, perhaps next week.

I've got to get back to real life house work again.  We're having company for the weekend and I"m hoping to get all the random clutter, laundry, etc out of the way so I can scrub, vacuum, and mop on Friday morning.  I'll also be doing some baking later in the week.

Felt Cookies with A Side of Book Review

So while my parents were visiting for my birthday my mom picked up a new book on felting. ("Felting-The Complete Guide" by Jane Davis, for those who might be interested.)

We flipped through it and I saw a few projects that were intriguing and she offered to let me play with the book for a while. The problem is I don't have any fiber to use for felting right now, at least not for this project(greens and blues), and I really didn't feel like waiting on the spare cash to remedy the situation.

One of Ms. Davis' projects is an adorable cookie ornament. She suggests that one could use store-bought felt but it won't look as nice as one made from thicker, homemade felt. For giggles I decided to try it out anyway, using store-bought felt and glass seed beads to pose as nonpareils. This is what it looked like:Frankly it looks like the baker left out the baking soda and/or powder. This would be why Ms. Davis warned against using store-bought felt. For obvious reasons I can't show you the picture in her book, but take my word for it... the one made from the homemade felt looks better. Loads better.... like "get me a glass of milk to go with that cookie" better. I even used two layers of tan felt, hoping I could make up for the thin nature of cheap felt.

Not to be utterly daunted I made a second one and took advantage of the two layers of tan felt. While I was at it I even stuffed behind the "icing" layer of the cookie. To make it easier to tell them apart the second ornament (on the left) has sprinkles.I liked this stuffed version better and opened up the first one (on the right; tan layers only) and poked some stuffing into it. As you can see I have a much poofier (that's a word, right?) looking cookie-thing.

Now that I see the two ways to stuff this cookies, I think I prefer the stuffed cookie but unstuffed icing. I also think the first cookie needed more nonpareils, but that can easily be fixed. I do like the sprinkles on the second one, which is what Ms. Davis called for in her original. I did use a thinner thread for my embroidery since I was working with a thinner fabric.

All in all I'm happy with the end results but I really want to get my hands on some roving in the right colors so I can do the entire project properly. I think it may have to wait for next year though since it's getting colder here and my hands don't like being wet and cold in colder months. Waiting gives me time to find the right rovings and something to look forward to. Also I might be able to talk Mom into trying the fabric making too since she's the one who bought the book.


And speaking of the book, I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting either more information on felting or is looking for some cool projects ideas. Heck, I may have to improve my knitting just to play with a few of them. Anyone who knows me should take that as a testament from the heart... and for those of you who don't know my knitting is horrendous on a good day.

Pumpkiny Things

I've spent the better part of the last six days dealing with pumpkins in one form or another. I'm finally finished with the first round of smaller sewn pumpkins to go with the larger one I made on the 24th of September. The pumpkins themselves are very quick to put together. The time consuming bit is the hand work on the leaves but I love the effect.

These are the ones I'm keeping for myself so I have an autumn centerpiece.
These are the ones I'm donating to the guild (in a pretty basket once I find one) to have for the silent auction next month.I still have a few more little ones to make so the basket and bowl will be nicely filled. But for the moment I'm done so I can move on to some other projects. I will pick these back up when the quilter's group meets this month and we're all making pumpkins.

Monday I spent the day in the kitchen. Two pumpkin cake rolls with maple cream cheese filling and two loaves of pumpkin spice bread were the result.

This is all the guild left me on the two cake rolls.

One loaf to enjoy now, and another in the freezer.
Life is pumpkin-filled goodness right now. Catch you all later!

It's My Party...

...and I'll slack if I want to. ;-)

I'm taking the vast majority of today off from cleaning, chores, and the internet. Why??

It's my birthday!

For those of you in the know, Katie and I are the same age... but I don't talk numbers. ;-)

Anyway, I'm off to a guild meeting and then to Little D's soccer game. After that perhaps some dinner with FH. We actually had my birthday dinner last night at our favorite pub while the Packers game was on. (We lost.) It was a good game though and the food and drink flowed all evening.

Oh and before I go my fiber friend, Michelle over at Bouldeneigh, is having a rough couple of days. Her lovely husband had a coronary yesterday and needs some well wishes.

Catch you all later!

The Tuscan Sampler, Such As It is...

The last time you all saw the Tuscan Sampler was August 28. Since then I have only worked on it in small snatches of time. Here's what it looks like currently:

Real life had gotten in the way of most fun projects, and continues to do so. We're expecting overnight company next week and my sewing room/guest room needs a good cleaning as does the rest of the house. Today and tomorrow we'll be doing chores and Tuesday I am going to a guild meeting so I shall be stitching there, but I don't know what will strike my fancy.

Back to cleaning I go!

Pumpkin Project

A few weeks ago I was out shopping with a friend and we saw some really cool fabric pumpkins for sale. We looked at them and decided we could make our own and wondered if any of our stitching guild members would like to play along.

We figured out how to make the actual pumpkins but neither of us had the time to design leaves. So we bought a copy of McCalls 6178 for the leaves. Then we made mock ups.

This is the mock up I took to show everyone to see if they wanted to play. Everyone loved the idea, so we're getting together next month to play.

I used most of a fat quarter sewn into a tube for the pumpkin's body, the stem is covered with some fine whale corduroy. The ribs are made with some one-ply wool I had in my stash. The leaves are felt and cotton fused with interfacing. I used chain and blanket stitches to accent them instead of the machine stitching the pattern used.
Right now I'm working on some smaller ones in different colors and varying fabrics. My friend made hers out of tan velveteen (batik leaf) and a luscious gray wool (double thick golden felt leaves), but I don't have a picture of hers.

Once I get my army of smaller pumpkins finished, I'll get pictures up. I may not get most of them finished until next month when we all get together. There will be pictures provided I remember the camera.