Cherries

I love cherry fabrics! This first one is a vintage dish towel... isn't it sweet?



This next one was a skirt that I got at a thrift store. I've cut it up to make a handbag out of it.... what else?



This vintage fabric belonged to my great-grandma. She sewed a lot, and after she passed away, I inherited all of her fabric.

Repurposing- The Fourth "R"

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repurpose. The last one's the most fun, isn't it? I didn't exactly repurpose old cork like I should have for this project, though I am repurposing old hoops. I know if I was patient I surely would have run across a corkboard someone was selling for next to nothing, however at Smith & Hawkins, they were having a sidewalk sale yesterday and, on clearance, they had these circular cork mats to put your plants on for $1.39 each. They were perfect (or so I thought), so I grabbed three; one for each of the hand-me-down embroidery hoops I had in mind for the project.

After I got home, I traced around the hoop onto the cork just like this tutorial says, http://www.sweetjessie.com/2008/03/put-cork-in-it.html , but ran into some problems because the back is lined with plastic. I thought I would be able to gently peel off the plastic backing however the cork breaks when I try to separate the cork from the plastic. So there it sits, awaiting for me to come up with a solution, and also awaiting for me to decide which fabric I want to use. Too many fabrics, so little time.

---

In this photo, look at what the vintage fan is sitting on, and there you will find another artfully repurposed craft that is fun and simple to make. I found some shutters at a garage sale (I found some in three different sizes, and so I made three, though the other two can't be seen in this photo). With these shutters, I screwed them together to form a rectangular box, topped it with a piece of scrap wood, and paint as you see fit. Voila, a nice little place to set your beverage, book, clock, or whatever else doesn't take up too much surface area!

---

Here you kind of see more of the shutters that I repurposed. On top is an antique shoe-form, into which I popped an old dowel rod (which had been a paint stirrer in its recent past), and there you have a paper towel holder.

---

Next is a birdhouse-trio wall-hanging necklace-holder I made. At the flea market in Shipshewanna, Indiana, I found someone who was selling those adorable little birdhouses for something like fifty cents to a dollar, depending on the size. Surely he was using reclaimed wood, which makes this all the more eco-friendly. I glued and nailed the trio together, placed eye hooks in the side and attached with a ribbon I got at a garage sale years ago. Then I screwed three cup hooks onto the front, and there you have it. I originally made it for keys, but after I amassed all those necklaces at a garage sale for ten cents apiece, I needed a place to put them.

---

Next up is one of my personal favs. Here we have a few feedsacks that I've sewn to fit a body pillow. Did you know that back in the olden days, people would use their feed sacks just like regular fabric, and many of their garments would get lined with this feedsack material. Companies actually started making the lettering wash out so that it was all the more easier to repurpose the material. Anyway, I love the way they look, and they're comfy too!

---

Along the same lines as the Feed sack body pillows, here we have three pillows. One is made from ladies' handkerchiefs, one from fabric napkins, and the third from a vintage bag of flour.

---

Last up for now is a wine crate ottoman, complete with free casters that my friend gave me after she took them off something of hers. The wine crate was given to me a long time ago by an ex's mother. I simply placed some foam on top, covered it with fabric, and stapled the fabric to the underside of the lid. Inside I store linens. In this house, almost everything needs to double as storage because I have so much STUFF!

---

Here is a mug tree I got awhile ago at a garage sale. I liked it because it was metal and shabby chic, not like the 70s wooden one we all grew up with. I did have mugs on it until I came into a ton of jewelry at a garage sale, all ten cents per piece, and now I am having to find creative ways to store it all. I told myself I wouldn't buy anything to put the jewelry on and would instead just use found objects around the house. This seems to do the trick, however, I think it works best with bracelets because it doesn't have much height.

---

This is a cat house I made in college for Lily, our then-cat. She was a stray who just walked into the house one day, literally, and then never left. A roommate of mine kept her after college. To make this house, I used leftover wood that I had. No new wood was purchased. I painted it to look cute, and there you have it. It no longer houses any animals, but it sits out in front of our house just for show.


Wow, am I tan in this photo.

My Sewing Room

Here's a pic of my sewing machine. It's a Singer, millenium series. My first summer out of college I worked at Joann Fabrics until the school year started (I'm a teacher), and one of the ladies I worked with bought an embroidery machine, and so she sold me this machine for fifty bucks. Not bad, not bad. If anyone has an extra manual to this machine, please let me know! I never did get the manual from her when I bought it.


I love vintage tins and glass jars!

Every sewer must have a stash of vintage buttons.


Every time I see a wire basket while out and about, I get it if the price is right. I especially love these deep ones. I have two of them this size; the other one is in the living room and holds scarves, hats, gloves, and umbrellas.

Let's eat up the Potato Chips

As any crafter knows, this hobby can quickly grow to be a monster with unfinished jobs here and there. I should make myself a New Years Resolution next January to finish up some of the unfinished projects laying around before starting anymore. I have a quilt from YEARS ago that still needs finished. I also have several handbags awaiting completion. Five to be exact. So why, you ask, am I about to blog about yet another project that I want to start? Because I'm an addict, that's why.


Here is one of the bags I started to make last night even though there were already three other bags waiting to be finished.

And here's the other one I started last night. It will say "coffee" when it's all appliqued. I just learned how to applique and so it takes me forever. I was worn out after appliquing the coffee cup, the O, and the F so I stopped and started the boot bag. Sounds logical, doesn't it?

And here's one more that I haven't started cutting yet, but I like the combination of fabrics, so it will most likely be next:

---

Potato Chip bags (or newspapers, magazines, candy wrappers, bird seed bags, etc) can make quite a lovely, eco-friendly handbag. I need to get my husband to hurry up and eat these chips so I can have yet another project to work on.



Here are some links and tutorials for making bags out of wrappers you would normally just throw away:

• http://www.instructables.com/id/Potato-chip-bag-pencil-case/


• http://www.candywrapperpurse.blogspot.com/


• http://www.dollheads.com/crafts/?p=17


• http://www.curbly.com/stephee/posts/2064-Make-a-bird-seed-bag-grocery-tote-


• http://madewithlovebyhannah.com/WordPress/?p=33

So now all we have to do is eat up the potato chips so I can empty these bags out! We really don't eat a lot of chips; these were from a get-together we had a few weeks ago. I bought two more bags of chips to take with us on our mini-vacation (we leave in two days, yippee!). Well I mainly bought them so I could have more empty chip bags upon our return. Perhaps I'll make a casserole with crushed chips on top to use up these two almost-empty bags of chips before we leave for Indiana.

This started out as being a woven magazine handbag, however afterwards I realized I made the base about twice as wide as it should have been to make a good-sized bag. Instead, it looks more like a trash can or something.

Handbag Mania

Lately I've found my niche in life. I've always known I've liked sewing, quilting, crafting, etc., however I usually made home-dec types of things such as pillows, window treatments, quilts, etc. The other day it was brought to my attention that I should branch out and make other things... like bags!

I started by making a few bags that I would take with me while grocery shopping, and then it just became a craze. To the left are pictures of handbags I made with kissing clasps a friend and I found at a thrift store. There was eight frames in total, I believe, and they cost a whopping $2.99 if memory serves me right. They were free for me, because she gave half to me for driving and using gasoline. The fabrics are all just ones I had laying around my sewing room. Some were given to me, some I purchased, and the pink & gold one was originally for our wedding but it ended up not working out (I think that one's my favorite!). Hopefully I'll get an Etsy shop up and running sometime soon!

Just Who Am I, Anyway?

Hello! I have pain-stakingly created this picture to the left so that you can get a better picture of exactly who I am. There are a few strange ones on there (you might be thinking, "cemeteries? she must be a freak...") but I am who I am, quirks and all! We'll save that explanation for another day. I can't divulge all my secrets on day one, or there will be nothing left to draw you back and read more next time.

I really enjoy collecting stuff... I have so many collections it would be hard to name them all here. Basically I collect most anything vintage... including but not limited to rolling pins, red-handled utensils, Wagner or Griswold cast iron, enamelware, egg cups, fabrics, notions, tablecloths, chairs (I have a mild chair obsession much to my husband's dismay), rabbit paintings and other rabbit tschotschkes (we have a nine-year-old rabbit named Licorice), floral paintings, paint-by-numbers, cabin type decorations especially moose, ... the list goes on. But I think you get the point. I'm a packrat with a bad garage sale habit.

One of the mottos I truly live by is "waste not, want not." I actually went so far the other day to drain the water from my spinach and mushroom cans into the plant that sits on the kitchen windowsill to save on watering the plant. I figure the canned veges probably had some extra nutritional goodness anyway, so it was just an all-around good thing. Either that or I am incredibly cheap. Or both.

I'm also a recycling fiend. Being the crafty person that I am, I painted the recycle symbol onto an old potato bin (at least I think that's what it was) that I got second hand somewhere. We fill it up constantly. It makes me feel good knowing that I am helping the planet, and I just cannot figure out why some people don't care! I am also working on some eco-friendly craft projects like fusing plastic bags and then sewing them into a handbag, and weaving magazine pages and/or potato chip bags into purses. (I also apparently have a mild obsession with bags. I take them with me to the grocery store now instead of taking home those annoying plastic bags.)

I'm also going to be learning some beading techniques from a friend of mine. A few weeks ago we found some necklaces at a garage sale for ten cents apiece. Some I like as-is; some I will dismantle and make into something cooler. Either way, you can't beat ten cents!

Well it is now about 4:30 AM, so I should probably go to bed. I am finally getting tired. I don't know why I have been so wired this week. Usually I got to bed around eleven, but ever since school let out (I teach middle school), I have been up until the wee hours of the morning. Insomnia sucks, but at least I got to work on a few sewing projects while hubby slept. I'm in the middle of making two handbags (hopefully to sell on Etsy in the near future). One is pink and brown and is entitled "coffee," and the other one is kind of tan and salmon-ish and will have a tall brown boot on it. The pattern for the boot was among my great-grandmother's belongings. I also got a lot of fabric from her after she passed away, so it has sentimental value also.

Off to bed, so good night!