Craftsman Style with Remnants

My DH is a woodworker and a maker of Craftsman-style furniture. His most recent accomplishment is this “grandfather chair” and ottoman in the style of Gustav Stickley.

Stickley-style Grandfather Chair

He has also made a settee, a Morris Chair, a media console, and several tables. As the rooms are graced with more pieces of Arts and Crafts style furniture he has lovingly produced, we’ve thought about adding accessories like lighting, textiles, art objects and even wall coverings.

At one point I collected machine embroidery patterns for making textile pieces to complement the style of the furniture. And yesterday, I FINALLY made for DH my first Arts and Crafts themed pillow.

linen remnant gingko pillow

Er, sorry about that moire effect; it’s the first time I’ve noticed it so prominently in a photo. Perhaps because the linen fabric slubbing catches light and shows off the warp and weft more dramatically than other fabric? How does one fix a moire effect in a photo? I am posting a tag on here for “Weekly Photo Challenge: Pattern” because that is the theme of the challenge for this week. The photo has a moire pattern going on, although it’s not sought after. If you want to see more Pattern photos in the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge, click here.

Sewing divas must be using linen a lot more lately, because I’m finding great pieces of it in the remnant bin at Joann’s. Thank you, sisters, you know who you are and I appreciate you!

thanks for the linen remnants

Linen is made from the flax plant. I love to picture an old-fashioned flax spinning wheel with its birdcage distaff overflowing with fiber. I have a large cache of well-used table linens from my grandmother, that are still in majestic shape, even with so many washings and ironings and applications of starch. Linen fabric is thick and lustrous. However, one wrong glance, touch, or breath out of place, and it’s wrinkled.

The embroidery design for this pillow is a stylized gingko vine. I plan to make more textile items using the gingko and other popular Arts and Crafts motifs: dragonfly, moth, lily. I tried to find the source of this design but I couldn’t discover where I bought it from; so sorry. I also found a treasure trove of machine embroidery designs for a quilt at Secrets of Embroidery. That project will be a long time in the making! But don’t you agree that the painstakingly hewn and polished and hand-crafted (complemented with machine tools) furniture needs a hand-pieced and theme-embellished quilt to set it off?

settee, with pillow

matching Morris chair

My Tarte-y, Heart-y Birthday & Remnant Project

My less-than satisfactory blog photos of the past few months are partly the result of the Canon EOS20D having bitten the dust. DH took the 20D to the local camera shop to get it fixed. After the repair shop mailed it off to Canon, they sent it back with regrets: they don’t make the parts for these any more and so it can’t be fixed. Our only option is to take it to a dealer in a big city, like Orlando, and maybe an old-timer in the back room of a camera shop can fix it. They couldn’t even tell us what was wrong with it. The 20D was made from 2005 to 2006. It is now 2013 and no one can repair it? Aaargh.

So DH got me for a birthday present—as consolation for the functional obsolescence I feel from being older AND having a defunct camera, 2 new cameras to play with. One is a Canon Rebel which can use the same lens as the 20D. The other is the pocket-size Nikon Coolpix.

I snuck the Coolpix out of my purse to photograph our very romantic birthday dinner in the flickering oil-lamp light at Embers.

blackened filet mignon and collossol crab appetizer

bronzed cobia with lobster mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus with Bearnaise sauce

DH’s braised short ribs with fire-roasted beefsteak tomatoes and caramelized onion blue cheese, and sauteed spinach

this is the remains of our dessert, apple tarte tatin

The tiny Coolpix fits perfectly in a purse pocket, but I wanted it to have a bit more protection from bumps, so I made a little felted case for it, out of remnants.

felted wool remnants from a couple of old sweaters

I heart my new camera

Coolpix fits in case very snugly

The cost for this case was $0 because I had these scraps kicking around. I used hand-quilting thread to hand-sew the felted wool pieces together. I try to pick up old wool sweaters when I see them at yard sales and thrift shops. If they are not already felted from some laundry mishap, you can prepare woolens for felting (or “fulling” as it is more correctly called) by washing them in the machine in warm or hot water and making sure they agitate quite a bit. Drying in the dryer also accelerates the process, making stretchy knitted fabric turn into tight, shrunken, thick woolen material.

On the way home from the restaurant, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up an item we couldn’t do without. The plan was for me to run in and get it, while DH circled the parking lot and came around to pick me up. I made the purchase, went out the door and saw what appeared to be our car pulling up with a strange woman at the wheel. Then I realized that wasn’t our car after all, ours was parked out front but DH wasn’t in it. So I went out and climbed in. DH had gone in to use the restroom, and when he came out he saw what he thought was some strange hoodlum breaking into our car! Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten such a shorty-short haircut! I tell you, it’s heck to get old!

back view of my short haircut

Weekly Photo Challenge: From Above

hallway in the gym, from above

Change your perspective, they say.
For more Weekly Photo Challenge: From Above, click here.

Weekly photo challenge: Change

Sheep Shearing Time in Central Florida

Click here for more Weekly Photo Challenge: Change

Weekly Photo Challenge: Color

The colors of Gainesville, Florida.

Orange!

Blue!

A shiny blank marquee

Band played at NCAA Regional Gymnastics Championships 4/6/13

Spring color!

gator dresses

gator wear

Ilene’s

spirit clothes

Looks like The Yearling is still playing somewehre

watch your toe!

Go!

For more Weekly Photo Challenge: Color, see the Daily Post and put up your own sweet photos!

Weekly Photo Challenge: A Day in the Life

Went to the gym

Yoga practice for an hour

Packed it in

wandered a bit

Grayzie was doing the Dead Bug pose when I got home

had leftover General Tso’s chicken for breakfast

volunteered at the Family History Center

First time trying tiled galleries. Fun! For more Weekly Photo Challenge” a Day in the Life, go to the Daily Press page. I was able to bring up the tiled gallery but then the regular images wouldn’t back off. Why?

Spring Break Grandma Camp with Remnants

Spring Break brought a week of “Grandma Camp” at our house, and what a list of revelations I experienced!
1. Less time spent going over emails. Result: consciousness more focused on tasks at hand rather than clogged with internet distractions.
2. Start of Spring Break was Roots Tech conference, pointing me toward family history. I was very family-history-conscious all week.
3. Hey, wait a minute! I’m grandma! Is that why I’m so tired at night when I fall into bed? Because I’m….old? Gasp!

What do I remember about my grandmothers? Precious little. When we went to visit for my dad’s dad’s funeral in 1966, we took a walk to the corner store, and all of a sudden bird poop dropped out of the sky onto my nose. I ran into the house, freaking out. Someone asked what was wrong, and my grandma piped up in her British accent, “A bird crrrrrapped on her nose!” She had lots of cats, and she fed them fish wrapped in white paper from the grocery, just unwrapping it and letting the cats jump up on the counter to eat it. That’s what I remember about her. And my mom’s mother taught us to play Casino and gin rummy. And she taught me to crochet, knit, embroider, sew, and tat. Yes, tat. All of which I forgot and had to re-learn later, except for the tatting. I still haven’t gotten to t’at.

My DH remembers that his grandfather talked about the Boer War. Really! He and his brother called it “The Boring War.” He said his grandmother didn’t have TV. They also didn’t have Lunchables or Happy Meals so they had to eat real food when they visited their grandparents! And the grandparents’ neighbors had ducks and chickens, and they hoped they wouldn’t get impetigo when they went next door to play in the yard that had all the duck and chicken poop. So DH and I have a common thread of childhood memories featuring bird poop!

I asked Granddaughter which patterns I had for doll clothes she would like to help make. Of course, she chose one that was UNBELIEVABLY, HEINOUSLY, FIENDISHLY complex, the Snow White costume! With fuse-able and sew on appliques on the puffy, cuffed sleeves, a stand-up collar, and stuffed-ribbon hair ornament? And they call this Simplicity 5705? Please. D’oh, I should have seen it coming! But why not, when Snow White is such a part of our family culture that Aunt Amber even had a Snow White-themed wedding reception? Grandpa helped out by searching up loads of Snow White videos on You Tube. Our favorites included a Snow White make-up tutorial and a remix of the Wishing Song using scenes from the original 1937 Disney movie.

the finished doll dress

Best part: I didn’t have to buy anything, all the materials were in my remnant stash! The skirt fabric was a JoAnn’s remnant from 2004!

Ta da!

Granddaughter did some of the sewing and cutting and ironing. But some of the steps were pretty intense for a 10-year old.

I like sewing!

She had to take a lot of breaks. The sounds of nana’s teeth grinding and barely-audible utterances of “what the frig?” as I squinted at the instruction sheets prompted brief break-times. And she needed to wheel the cat around the sewing room after he took over the chair.

come on, Grayzie, let’s go!