Sunday, October 29, 2017

Meet the O'Lanterns



The land and its outbuildings are coughing up more treasures as we tear down walls, remove layers of flooring, and dig out the crawl space under the house.

Housed between the two sides of the rotting dry wall of a shed behind the house, there were dozens of printing mats, short for matrix. These are heavy cardboard sheets steamed over typeset newspaper pages so the words and images are made in impression. The cardboard is rolled and covered with lead to produce lead drums that fill in the impressions. The drums are inked and used in rotary printing of pages of the newspaper.  

One of the pages has a date of June 1956.





 


 And then the walls gave us critters. One whole skeleton and somewhat mummified squirrel and two more skulls and a spine and ribs.

 

But the land gives us more. Meet the O'Lanterns. Pumpkins for carving and smaller sugar pie pumpkins for eating. Seeds and string removed for baking tonight, baked with brown sugar, butter, nutmeg, ginger, and clove. Seeds are drying for snacking later.










Little friends visit and the pecans fall. 



And just before sunset, one last treasure of the day is discovered between lost pages of time on the land.


 Just in time for a creepy Halloween.

Saturday, October 14, 2017

Another batch of aprons


In the delicious mad dash to create fabric and stitchery "babies" for a local shop in town, I have had to absolutely reorganize my fabric hutch and supplies. 

It may not look different from any previous photo - except I now know where everything is. Because I have twice the amount of fabrics I did a couple of months ago, supplies were displaced to other areas and all the fabric is not in the hutch.

The lampshades are for mobiles. I've been taking the fabric/paper off and wrapping them and adding doodads. Some are too lovely though and will be embellished as is.


Windowsill collection.
 



Mr. True Love is building me a simple work table out of some plywood he bought to make himself a workbench for his man cave. It should be ready in a few days and I'm thrilled. When I did mainly hand work, the folding table I have was plenty of table, but with aprons and machine sewing going on, I need more work area to spread fabrics on.

I took a few more aprons to Mary's shop but forgot to take photos of them. But here's probably the last batch for awhile, hot off the press and ready to deliver.

These are all made from pillowcases and a sham. Vintage bits and bobs, table scarves, handkerchiefs, lace, tea towels, quilt blocks adorn them. 

Just in case it's spring in your hemisphere.

Poly/cotton pillowcase, linen napkin, cotton handkerchief, linen table scarf.




What an elegant sham. Rich colors and a bit of quilting and lacy bits.

Cotton and linen fabrics, cotton lace, otton ric rac.




I like the country, vintage, and cottage look. 

Cotton fabrics, linen napkin and tea towel, cotton embroidery.







The quilt piece came like that. Someone must have already taken apart a hand stitched quilt top using feed sack squares.

Poly/cotton fabric, cotton fabrics, linen table scarf, cotton doily bit, synthetic lace and ribbon.
 



The embroidered teapot is one of 34 embroidered squares I bought in a pack awhile back. It was likely supposed to become a quilt all together but had never been pieced.

I love the vintage fabric in the ties. I have about 2 yards of it and I'm wondering what to do with it. The green napkin is a pocket.

Cotton fabrics, linen napkins, cotton doily, cotton lace.
 




The large ruffled bit is a folded silk handkerchief. 

Poly/cotton, linen table linen with cotton embroidery, synthetic lace, silk handkerchief.
 




If you see any you'd like to buy, I won't be taking them over for a couple of days. Email me and we can arrange it. They are $25 each plus shipping.

Art aprons must be hand washed and hung to dry.