Another reason for my doll quilt obsession discussed in my last post could very well be my love of miniatures. It does cause me to do some crazy things in cross stitch.

And to buy some totally adorable Lustreware salt and pepper shakers. Why wouldn't it be at least a part of the doll quilt thing? I'm off to cut up some more tiny squares!

Attack of the Doll Quilts

I seem to be addicted to doll quilts. They're just so much fun! A good place to try out new techniques that maybe I don't want to use for a full quilt. A nice practically instant-gratification project. Not to mention the fact that I've become a bit obsessed with these two photos.

My quilt for DQS10. I love this swap! Except for the fact that in this case, the secret partner thing is requiring me to keep that piece of paper over my favorite part of the quilt until I get it mailed out to my partner!

This one's backed and quilted now but this is still the best photo that I have of it -- at least it gives you an idea of the pattern.

This one's inspired by one of the ones in Hilary's photo (linked above). I do love this fabric!

But the unfortunate side effects of making this many doll quilts is that 1) a person eventually uses up every last little scrap of batting in the house and 2) the quilts all inevitably come to the part (and all at the same time if they're feeling particularly diabolical) where the binding needs to be hand-stitched onto the back of the quilt. Oops.

Yet Another Collection

I'm dying to buy this book right now so, to deter myself from making such a large and unnecessary expenditure this close to holiday gift-giving time, I'm looking back at all of my other Blackbird pieces I've stitched over the past 7 years. Blackbird Designs are, by the way, my very favorite of cross-stitch companies and Barb and Alma are the nicest people (I was lucky enough, in about 2004 to get to travel to the cutest store in Mexico, MO for a rug-hooking class that they taught).

This is the inside of that needle book at the top of this post. An old, retired loose feathers pattern. I love how they mix little things like needle books and boxes in with the plain, flat cross-stitch pieces in their designs. They always have great instructions for finishing these little items and its fun to occasionally not just use the stitched pieces for framing or pillows.

My most recent framed cross-stitch project. A new addition to my miniature houses collection, from a Loose Feathers pattern. More miniature houses (with a box of pins for scale) below. I have done 3 of these houses so I guess that this is really becoming a Blackbird Miniature Houses Collection.

I don't remember offhand where the pattern on the left is from (if anyone is interested, email me and I'll dig it out of my old patterns to tell you what it is) and the one on the right is, if I remember correctly, a free download from their site from about 4 years ago. Maybe longer. Time flies.

This one can be found here. I have a series of cross-stitched pieces that I like to hang for each season/holiday. I think I have about 13 of them, mostly stitched between 2003 and 2005. Every place that I live, I find a nice prominent wall, put one nail right in the middle, and rotate out these pieces. I'm starting to want to put two nails in the wall and make a set of complimentary pieces. Yikes.

This one is my marriage sampler. It's from "A Fine Collection". They mentioned in the book how they'd originally stitched the initials of a group of their friends in among the leaves. I loved this idea and we had a tiny wedding so I put the initials of all of the attendees in among the leaves, with my and Patrick's names and the date at the bottom. We came to NYC on the train in December of 2003 after being married in November and I stitched most of this on that 3-day ride.

Also somewhere around here is another half-finished piece which I believe I'm planning to make into a pillow. But it's hiding. Probably with my rotary cutter and the bin pulls for the kitchen drawers. So I'll save it for a later post.

Maybe in the meantime I'll go stitch something else from the Fine Collection book since I've only made one thing from that whole book (and surely I don't need to buy another book until I've made better use of the one I already have!)

My Vastly Improved (but Still Unpainted) Sewing Room

After spending most of last Friday better organizing the shelving in my craft room / sunporch, I decided that the time had finally come to post a few photos over here.

First, here is the room as we saw it when we looked at the house last summer. It was being used as a kind of breakfast room. Off of what was set up as a dining room (now the tv room). Off of the kitchen, most of which was taken up with a dining table. Hmm.

As you can see, my sewing machine is right underneath where that light fixture dangled (and, conveniently, looking out onto the chicken tractor!). I whacked my head on that thing about 1,000 times. Luckily, I have a husband who doesn't mind being daring with harmless little things like electricity, so he replaced the fixture with this milk glass one that we picked up at a junk shop for practically nothing. It lacked "guts" but he just put in the wiring from the old fixture. I didn't even have to paint it (it's kind of copper-patina-green)!

You might also recognize the curtains made for me by my mother and grandmother. These are pretty much two of my favorite things in the house right now!

Beeker likes to watch the chickens just as much as I do.

The fabric and books are all in there (with tons of miscellaneous other things). Obsessively organized, with red, brown, and grey fabric in the cabinet on the left, and blue, yellow, and green fabric in the cabinet on the right. That porcupine-y thingy next to the window, on the left, is my knitting needle holder. Being guarded by a monster I made in a silly craft workshop with my friend, Aryn.

I actually managed a decent shot of the yarn tower Patrick built for me from cedar (to keep the pesky moths away a bit). The room is so small, it's really tough to get a shot of it but here it is! (And this is all after not buying yarn for almost a full year!)

On the other end of the room, not as much is going on. I'm hoping to eventually be able to get my daybed which I've had since I was 10 years old shipped or brought up to New York. It will go down here with the quilt on it. In the meantime, at least it no longer contains a toaster oven and a television and I've been able to hang a few of my favorite bits on the walls. (The first photo is (hopefully obviously) a before photo.)

In the foreground is the cat-proof door that Patrick put up for me. It's one of the best things about moving from the bay window in our apartment to the sunporch in our house.

On the wall are (clockwise from top left) a funny clay head which Patrick made in high school, a very very cool fabric collage that I found at an antique store on Cape Cod, a shadow box I put together with a postcard from Paris, an antique crochet hook, a lace doily, some antique buttons, and my small vegetable ivory collection, one of Stephanie's pinecones, and an antique picture postcard of 3 baby bears in Maine.

The only (major) thing left to do is to paint the panelling. I don't know when it will happen as I have made it my goal to paint the living room, finish painting the kitchen cabinets, and paint our bedroom before Sheep and Wool (when I am having a party at my house). Some day, the panelling will hopefully be similar to what's in the adjacent tv room, only pale green rather than white.

Selfish Buttons

Anyone who knows me in real life or reads this blog or even casually passes me on the street probably knows at least one thing about me -- I have a button obsession. I think it's because they're so compact and inexpensive (usually) and varied. Or maybe it's something else. But, any way you look at it, I almost had a heart attack when, in the course of helping my friend (the antique dealer) to clean out a house recently, I uncovered a whole bread bag packed full of buttons at the bottom of a hidden compartment in a sewing table.

My friend (both fortunately and unfortunately for me) deals in buttons so he wanted to take them but he generously gave me first pick on which ones I might want to keep.

I thought I might use this ornate one for a pincushion center.

This wooden one is my very favorite. Although I'm quite partial to that blue silk one next to it as well.

Below are a few button cards I found at a hidden gem of an antique store recently. I thought I'd include them while I'm going on about buttons so as not to wind up with a whole series of posts on buttons (I easily could).

They were quite a bargain so I had to buy two. (Did I mention that I have a problem?)

Junk Sales!

It's been so long since I've lived in a place where there are actually inexpensive flea markets / garage sales / random little ladies selling sewing supplies out of their garages, that it's about my favorite thing about this summer so far. I've not bought a whole lot but, to me, I found some treasures.

I love the little embroidery of the barn especially. There was one like it at a store in Brooklyn but it was already embroidered and they wouldn't sell it so it was great fun to finally get a little barn embroidery and to get to work it myself!

In case you can't tell those dogs are cross-stitch patterns. They're in a crazy embroidery manual from 1967 which is fun to look at but I will actually stitch some of those dogs.

We're using the big old crock as a compost cannister. It's too bad that it doesn't still have its handle but I think it's cool anyway.

And all of this is not to mention all of the good stuff left behind in our house (most of the things left behind were horrible, like piles of Reader's Digest Magazines from 1994 and a very very old hospital bed). But that's for another post.

Antique Store Find

This weekend, I finally got to go out to an area antique store which is supposed to be a really great shop but is closing at the end of the summer. It lived up to its reputation (although a bit low in stock, likely because of the impending closing) and I found my new favorite piece of furniture.

The photos are a little weird due to the fact that the light in this room is always bad but you can imagine that the colors are nicer (less purple -- the walls are white) in person.

The first teacup I acquired was the one on the bottom right. Patrick's Great-Aunt gave it to me when we stayed with her a few years ago. Since then I've been given another (top left) by my grandmother, bought one at my favorite antique store in Oklahoma City (center right), found one at a tea room in York (top right) and then, despite my decision to buy no more than 4 cup sets, purchased one more on a trip to maine (center left). They've never had a place for display until I ran into this great shelf. And now I need one more teacup to finish filling the shelf. Added bonus (I love quests for pieces to finish collections)!

Forget that the walls are not yet painted and the light is not good and the cabinets are currently lacking doors, I love this pantry room and the fact that I have this shelf for it makes it just that much more fantastic.

Renegade!

I love the Renegade Craft Fair. I always loved craft fairs but Renegade is above and beyond many of them. When I was in Brooklyn, it was always a fun excuse to meet up with my friends and spend a whole day outside, wandering around the park (or the swimming pool, depending on which year it was) but now it was just a good excuse to drive into Brooklyn to see my friends and find some really cool things. I spend most of the time out of doors these days.

The camera was forgotten so I don't have any photos of the actual fair to share but, as requested by Melissa (who wanted to go but couldn't make it out), here is a shot of my purchases. Unfortunately, I don't remember where most of them came from (when you are walking around and around a track, with many many booths on all sides, it's tough to remember things like where things were purchased) but I do know that the handkercheif kit and pouch on the right are from Kimberly. And that both the fabric-covered buttons and the wooden buttons will likely find their way onto future knitting projects, whomever it was that I bought them from. Thanks, Renegade (and Aryn and Thea and Nana), for another fun year!

Pretty Projects

While there is a ton of construction-type work to be done on the house, it's not always the fun thing to work on. This weekend, with the help of our magnificent and generous houseguests, we did several of the "unimportant" pretty projects. And I can't stop staring at them!

The largest silhouette is from an antique store here in town which I had been stalking in anticipation of its opening for "the season". It's the only one which is actually cut paper and it made me feel like my collection was completed and had to be hung up. Even if the wall isn't yet patched and painted.

As you can see, this half-bath is tiny. It had a 3-inch deep medicine cabinet on the wall where the mirror is and that just wasn't working out too well for us. First, we didn't need it for storage and second, even the 3 inches of space was precious in this tiny room. So Kelly and I picked out this mirror while Patrick and Mark inspected lumber at Home Depot. We hung it and the shelf (from Pottery Barn but we've had it for about 5 years) and the little soap dish while they worked on their masterpiece on the porch (below).

Patrick and Mark working on our new guestroom headboard based on one I saw in a Crate and Barrel promotional e-mail about a year ago. (I don't know if the actual headboard was at Crate and Barrel, the ad was for bedding.)

Beeker's version of helping. At least she's not getting under their feet.

I think the room looks far more finished and less empty. Although I do still need to hang a few more things on the walls and do something about the frilliness of the ceiling fan (maybe just take down the light kit -- the light switch goes to a lamp in the corner anyway).

Buttons, Buttons Everywhere

Lots of button-related posting for today. I've put up 4 styles of cross-stitched buttons over on etsy.

Also, I'm working on a summer cardigan (Marigold Sweater from Interweave Knits, Summer 2010) and, due to my extensive button collection, can't decide which buttons I like best for it. Any opinions?

vintage red plastic (from Tender Buttons -- designed by a store employee pre-1960's)

peach glass

pink ceramic with imprinted flowers

white victorian shoe buttons

Vintage Paper Swap

I was only one day late but I got my vintage papers in the mail for Abbey's Vintage Paper Swap. They are on their way to a lovely person in Australia! I hope that she finds more uses for them than I did — a lot of them were from my inadvertent stash of vintage paper things. (Inadvertent because I HAD, at one time, intended to put them to good use. But that didn't happen and didn't happen so they've moved on to a better home!)

There are also a few things in the package from the West 78th Street Greenflea which I had never been to before. This was a Bonus Outcome of this swap since I went there expressly to get some paper. And did I ever find vintage paper! There is a whole booth with nothing but vintage postcards and 2 of the most knowledgeable and friendly flea market vendors I've ever run across. I'll have to be really careful about how often I venture back over there!


I also put to good use a lot of the cute little envelopes that I have from my stationery store days (they were samples, destined for the trash, so what choice did I have but to take them home and hoarde them until I now begin to feel that I may someday put all of my mismatched envelopes (all sans cards, of course) together in one place and die when they fall and crush me!?)

Salt and Pep!

My Aunt will have to be blamed for this one. It's all that I can say for myself. I've started collecting salt and pepper shakers. I'm limiting myself on this one though. Only the slightly disturbing figural shakers will be allowed. Meet Salt and Pep! (The latter must always be followed by an exclamation point as it is creepier that way):

They are a vintage Japanese set that I bought on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Cape Cod in February (yes, I know that that sounds odd but we LOVE the Cape and felt like having a trip so off we went. In Februrary. At least it turned out to be a more mild weekend than when we went in January in 2003).

These are the funny little pair that started it all. They were given to me as a lovely going away gift when I moved from Oklahoma to New York. From my Aunt who shares my obsession for strange and wonderful things. Apparently they are from a 1930's cartoon strip and their names are Maggie and Jiggs. The cartoon was called Bringing Up Father and I've found a lot of information on it online. My favorite bits were here, here, and here (especially this last because it has the most photos).