Valerean

While looking for backing fabric for the Halloween quilt I visited The Old Packing House , my favorite antique place in central Florida. When you walk in and turn left you'll find a wonderful section of in-new-condition fabrics of all shades and colors (mostly prints.) I got lucky, I was able to find the fabrics I needed for the rest of my Halloween projects and fall/Thanksgiving projects. The things I like at The Old Packing House are really reasonably priced, so I also found some charming handmade decor pieces I can use for Halloween, and a gift for my favorite person. I couldn't resist this little Halloween quilt, either. One final, fabulous find was a bag of 25 vintage handkerchiefs. I use these for stitch practice -- and I just ran out -- so I'm thrilled to have them. By supporting local antique sellers and artists I'm able to put my money directly back into the community, which is the greatest bonus. I don't need a Michael's o...

My ten dollar bag of vintage scraps needed to be hand-washed and picked through before I could use them, so I spent an afternoon last weekend working on that. This is one of the recycling chores I do that I really enjoy, as it's a little mindless and gives me time to think about other things. I've worked with a lot of vintage textiles over the years, and I knew some of the scraps were so old they would have disintegrated in the washer even if I put them in a lingerie bag. I don't mind hand-washing them, or drying them on towels on the back porch table. It's weirdly soothing for me. Once the scraps were clean and dry I needed to pick out all the snipped thread pieces left in the old hems to make them usable again. This is my favorite part of the process. To illustrate what I mean, here's a green scrap with those threads snips from the original stitching still stuck in the folds. I pick them out using the tip of my seam ripper, or use a piece of ...

Last weekend my guy and I stumbled across a lovely antique mall in downtown Oviedo called The Coop Antiques , which has more smalls than I've ever seen anywhere. The regular-size stuff is also very cool; I scored this glass pumpkin treat jar for just $5. One booth had genuine feedsack for sale in yardage, which is almost impossible to find. It's not cheap (my yard here was $13.00) but I'm thrilled to have a big print piece in a pretty green print. A gallon size ziplock bag of vintage scraps wrapped up my purchases for $10.00. These were either harvested from vintage quilt tops or were waiting fifty years to be made into some. If you're ever in Oviedo, check out The Coop Antiques -- you'll love it. :)

To makeover my thrifted stuffies for Halloween I needed some supplies, but since our local Jo-Ann has closed all that's left in my area is Hobby Lobby, where I absolutely refuse to shop ( see this article at The MarySue if you'd like to know my reasons.) Since I had another excuse, off I cheerfully went thrifting! I found a lovely little pumpkin for my collection at our local church thrift for .99, and a bag of wee faux gourds and berries in autumn colors for $1.00. A trip to Dollar Tree surprised me when I found two skeins of chenille yarn, some metallic pipe cleaners and three fat quarters of fabric in Halloween colors that I needed. Not a bad haul for $7.50. I purchased five adorable Halloween novelty prints from an eBay textile seller. These were $13.00, but that's pretty much the only way I can get small amounts of holiday fabric now (plus I got free shipping.) Sorting my scrap bin earlier this summer made it easy to pull some Halloween and fall f...

I love old textiles, especially when they can still be used for their original purpose. One of the most fun to thrift are vintage tea towels (also known as kitchen towels or hand towels.) Here's one that's not particularly old but that I loved the minute I saw it because of the unusual color and print. The tag doesn't give away any info, but I'll guess this was sold at a store like Target. Here's a pretty 2024 calendar towel that I thrifted a few weeks ago. It's in very good condition with lovely graphics. It's also 100% linen, which is getting hard to find these days, as most stores sell cheaper cotton towels. It was designed by French artist Isabelle Boinot, whose work is not cheap , either. This is a huge tea towel I thrifted in mint condition. Sadly most people don't use tea towels these days, preferring paper towels that don't have to be washed. I'm the opposite; I'd rather use something I can wash and reu...

Today I'm going to make something out of all this. :) The napkin is one I found at an antique mall, and the scraps were in a $1.50 bag at a thrift store. I cut all the fabric into 2-1/2" strips and started piecing blocks to go around the vintage napkin. This is what I got done in one night, and how I plan to sew them all together. The only fabric I added is the brown plaid in the center, which came out of my stash. Stay tuned to the blog to see how the project turns out.

I like to use scraps from one project to make another so I don't waste them. This bag I pieced from scraps of a quilt I made turned out really pretty, and made a nice presentation piece when I put the quilt inside it and shipped it to the recipient. Even ragged bits of scraps can be turned into something useful. Here's a project bag I made from snips and scraps from another tote project that I fused to a piece of muslin and machine sewed over to fix in place. Stitch practice pieces are also great for using up scraps. I generally use these in place of bubble wrap when I mail things. I often repair garments with scraps, too, as I did with this sample flannel shirt with a big cut out in the back. One of my favorite challenges for myself is to buy a bag of scraps and try to use all of them to make something. Here are the contents of a three-dollar bag I picked up at a quilt show some years ago. Here are all the things I made from it while using up every ...

I designed a fat quarter via Spoonflower to print the poem I composed for my pink-only quilt, and it arrived on July 22nd. I thought I'd done the math correctly to get four repeats of the poem (extras in case I mess up with what I have planned for incorporating it into the quilt) but I have a bit of repeat runover on one side, which I will use, no problem. I'm taking a break from piecing the pink-only quilt now as I'm having trouble with my hands again, and want to loosen them up a bit with a small crochet project before I continue sewing. Stayed tuned to see what I do with that.

Back in May while I was having a bad arthritis flare-up I went to the scraps bin to dig out something I could sew on the machine, and settled on a bundle of green scraps and a charm pack in what I think are Kaffe Fassett prints (where I got those is anyone's guess). I had enough charm squares to make a decent size table topper, and I knew I could sew it all together on my machine in one night. As I was piecing the top my angst over my hands being too crippled to hand sew eased a bit. It's hard making this transition, but necessary. Eventually I won't be able to do anything but machine work. I pieced the backing, too. Using scraps to make things on the machine is fun, and I don't mind if I mess up (which I did.) The final topper came out okay. I definitely need more practice on the machine, but it was nice to get a project like this done in a night versus two weeks doing it by hand. I used the last four charm blocks and green scraps to make a m...

For my pink-only quilt I decided to do borders of hearts, and found this paper pieced pattern that was free if you sign up for her newsletter. It looked simple enough to do, but I haven't done any paper piecing in years, however, so I decided to make a test block. I did enlarge the foundation pattern slightly for my own purposes, and then got to work. Paper piecing is easy enough, but you do have to remember to watch your positioning and seam allowances. I ended up making a mistake, of course, but that's why I do test blocks. The finished patchwork looks nice despite my little error. I also got to remember why you're suppose to use short stitches with paper piecing -- for easy removal of the paper backing. Still, it worked out well, and if I do these in an assembly-line fashion, I can probably piece all the hearts in one or two days. This is just a mock up, but it will give you an idea of how the border of the quilt will look.

Hey, it's me in real time again. My Scrappy Saturdays idea hit a snag when I made this crazy-quilted tote. I wanted to hand-quilt it with circles, so despite working on it for the last month I'm only about half-done. I'm not making much of a dent in the scraps bin, either. Time to try a one-day challenge and see what I can make in 24 hours, and post the finished projects at the end of the day. Here are the results: a quilt top, a dog mat. a diagonally-pieced runner and a little gift pouch. Not bad for a crippled old lady with crampy hands. :)