Stupendous Stitching

I am so bad at keeping up with this blog.  I love to blog, but for some reason I don't seem to be able to do it on a consistent basis.  It's been almost a month since I wrote here last.  Well, I'm not going to worry about it because when I start to think of it as a chore, then it's not fun anymore.  Mostly, I just forget to do it.  I'm not sure how many people, if any, are actually reading it anyway, so it probably doesn't make that much difference.  Anyway, I digress.

Last month, I discovered a new sewing technique when I took a class on www.craftsy.com from Carol Ann Waugh called Stupendous Stitching.  I was very intrigued by it when I saw a tuffet that was made by someone who had used the stitching technique instead of sewing strips together.  I wrote about it in my last post and posted a picture of the beautiful tuffet.  I noticed that, at the time, the class was on sale for $19.99 and had been around $24.99, I think, or maybe a little more.  I'm so glad I took this class.  I have had so much fun with it.  In a nutshell, it's basically starting your piece with some couching, which is sewing with a zig zag stitch some cording or other decorative trim to the main background fabric.  You sew it in a curve and the curve is the basis for the rest of the stitching.  After you couch several (usually 4 or 5) trims to the background, you then can start really having fun.  Following along the side of the couching line, you just sew curved lines using the decorative stitches on your sewing machine.  My sewing machine has 100 stitches, but to be honest, there are only about half of them that I really like and are useful.  You use different colored threads and when you are finished, you have a thing of beauty.  Here are a few photos of pieces that I have made.

 

 

When you have finished your piece, you can use it for many things, such as pillows or apply to purses.  My preferred method is to paint a wood artist's panel black and mount the piece onto the panel.  Then you have a piece of artwork ready to hang on the wall.  Here is another idea.  You can make a small piece and glue it to the top of a fabric covered box for a shabby chic look.  This picture is of a crazy quilt block, but one of the Stupendous Stitching pieces could be easily adapted and applied to a similar box.

 

 



Tuffets

I just recently discovered tuffets and I have fallen in love with them!  For the first time in my life I know what a tuffet is.  I mean, of course, I had heard the nursery rhyme, "Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet", but I never gave a thought to what a tuffet was.  Until now.  What got me started on all this was a post on my Facebook newsfeed from a quilt group that I am a member of.  Someone posted a picture of this beautiful tuffet that someone had made when they took the class "Stupendous Stitching" from the Craftsy website.  Before I go any further, here are some pictures of the beautiful tuffet that I fell in love with.  This is what started it all.

 

As soon as I saw this, I knew I had to figure out how to make one.  So, I started doing some research and found all kinds of photos, which I will share in a little bit.  But, I found a website that pretty much describes how to make tuffets.  There are round tuffets and square tuffets.  There is a free pattern for the square tuffet, but you have to order the pattern for the round one.  You can order it here.  You can also order a kit, but it's quite expensive, over $150.  There are many sources for ordering the kits.  Here is one.  There are a few others and you can do a search in Google for those.  My biggest issue is how to get the plywood cut into a circle and then getting the holes drilled.  We are having a quilt show here in my city starting on Wednesday.  There is a quilt shop that will be there that will have supplies to make these, so I'm really excited to go to their booth and see what I can come up with.

 

Now, without further ado, here is some more eye candy.

 

 

And here is the square tuffet, which is quite pretty too.

 

 

 

 



Everything Vintage

It has been so long since I last posted.  I have been really busy at home, working on various projects.  The main one being that I have been working for weeks on trying to get my den cleaned out and converted into my craft/sewing area.  The den had become a catchall room and was not being utilized in a good way.  My goal was to clean out the den and move all of my sewing stuff from the only spare bedroom we have into the den and turn the den into my craft/sewing room.  Then, the next thing was to turn the spare bedroom into a makeup/dressing room/guest bedroom.  I got the idea from my step-daughter, who turned her spare bedroom into a dressing room after her daughter moved out.  She painted her room pink, which was Valspar Signature paint in Art Deco Pink.  I saw her room and fell in love with it  I really, really wanted a room like hers too, but at the time getting my den and the bedroom cleaned out seemed like an impossible task.  But, I kept at it, it took me a couple of months, but I finally got it done.

After my mother passed away in 2013, I inherited her antique vanity table and Jenny Lind bed, along with a chest of drawers, all in a dark brown color, which I think is called mahogany, but I'm not sure about that.  I'm not sure what the color is called.  After we cleaned out her apartment, we brought those items home and put them in our storage building.  At that time, I was so overwhelmed with all that had happened, I couldn't even imagine that I would ever have a place for any of that furniture.  The, after I got the idea to turn the spare bedroom into my dressing room, I knew just where those things were going to go.  Last weekend, my cousin came and helped me paint the room.  We painted it the same color as my step-daughters.  I first thought I might paint it a lavender, but I bought a sample, put it on the wall and thought, "Yuck!"  I'm so glad I decided to paint it pink.  It's a very pale pink, but I love it.  I think it's beautiful.

 

 

After working on this room, I began to look for pictures of makeup tables, makeup, vanities and I ran across some vintage makeup ads.  While browsing through those, I saw some awesome retro pictures of Cristina Aguilera.  These photos were taken for some jewelry ads.  I love the vintage look of these.

 



Dressing Room/Vanity

I haven't posted to my blog in a little while.  I need to be more consistent in doing that.  I just get busy and forget sometimes.  I do want to post a little about what I'm doing in my home.  We have been getting things ready to redo our den/family room so that I can make it my craft/sewing room.  My main motivation for going ahead and doing this is that I really, really want to turn our guest bedroom into a dressing room for me.  Right now our guest bedroom is a real mess.  It's my current sewing room, but is not really functional as anything else.  Sometimes we have family or friends from out of town who would love to stay with us, but right now we have nowhere for them to sleep other than our sofa, which is not that comfortable.  So, we decided to turn our den, which gets no use whatsoever other than a "let's put it in the den to get it out of the way/junk room" recently.  We all have one of those rooms, right?  But, I don't want it anymore.  I managed to clean out the den, donate some clothes and other things to a local thrift store.  I also threw lots of stuff away.  Now, finally, our den is totally cleaned out.  We had to take up the gross carpet that was in that room and our plan is to lay some sheet vinyl in that room.  I just want something that will be easy to clean because I anticipate lots of scraps and stuff falling to the floor.  With vinyl it will be so much easier to clean.

I almost hesitate to put these pictures in, but here are a few of the den the way it is right now with the crappy floor that was underneath the carpet.  We had to take the carpet up and then scrape the padding off.  It was a really messy, backbreaking job.

 

 

 

 

 

Here are a couple of photos of the current sewing room in the process of cleaning everything out.



 

 

 

I am so looking forward to getting these rooms arranged and in shape so I can enjoy them.  I have my mother's antique vanity table and stool that I can't wait to put into the new dressing room.  I also have her Jenny Lind bed that I will put in there as well so the room can also be used as a guest bedroom if needed.  My step-daughter had a wonderful suggestion about that.  She said that I could put it up against the wall and make a day bed out of it.  I thought that would be great because then it wouldn't be taking up space in the middle of the room.  I can't remember if the head board and foot board are the same size, but at any rate I think it will work.  I can't show you the actual bed because it is in our storage building right now, but here is a picture that looks very much like it.

 

 

I'm really excited to be getting these rooms in order.  It took us awhile to get someone to lay the vinyl in the den, but I think we finally have someone to lay it at a price we can afford.  They are supposed to come next week, so I hope all goes well.  I will be posting updated pictures later on.

 

I'm going to shift topics now and show you some more vanity tables and sets that I saw recently online.  I am so enamoured with vanity/makeup tables.  I'm so glad that I have my mother's that I can put in the new room.

 

Here is a little bit of eye candy from old Hollywood to Shabby Chic.

 

 

 

 

 

Victorian Dressing Rooms and Vanity Tables

My step-daughter, Stephanie, recently told me that her daughter is moving out and she is planning to turn her bedroom into a dressing room for herself.  She said she is going to paint the room pink and put a vanity table, chifforobe and a few other furniture pieces.  She's also going to hang a chandelier in her dressing room.  She's planning to paint all the furniture white.

I thought this sounded so neat and I decided that I would also turn my spare bedroom into the same thing.  The difference is that I'm  planning to put a Jenny Lind bed in my room and paint my dressing room a pale lavender.  I love vanity or makeup tables.  I had a very small one when I was in high school and I used to put my makeup on every morning at that table.  I still have that table and it looks very much like this one.

I think I even remember tacking a fabric skirt to it, which made it look somewhat like this one.

Stephanie and I have been looking on Google for images of Victorian bedrooms to get some ideas.  I didn't really find very much under that particular search, but I did find a few inspirational ones.  But, alot of these are just of vanities.  I love looking at the vanities.  I have my mother's antique vanity that was in room room in her apartment.  When she passed away, we brought it home and I plan to use it in my dressing room.  Here is just a little bit of eye candy.  I can't wait to get my room set up.

Vintaj Embossing

Yesterday I went to a jewelry making class at the Museum at Four Squares in Cleveland, TN, which is about 40 minutes from where I live.  I always want to learn new things, so when I saw this class, I knew I wanted to go.  I make jewelry, but this is the first time I've tried embossing.  The teacher had a very upscale embossing machine called a Vagabond Embossing Machine.  It was great.  It was electric and I would love to have one, but it costs around $200, so I'll just have to admire it from afar.  She told me about another one that Hobby Lobby carries called Sizzix Big Kick.  This one is more affordable and I can see myself getting one of these in the future.  I was trying to think of something really affordable that I could buy and I went into Michaels and saw this one.  It's really cute and it looks like a purse.  I really think that it's designed to be used for embossing paper for greeting cards, but I asked the sales associate at Michaels if they thought it could be used for embossing metal and she said she thought so.  So, it was $29.99 and I had a 40% off coupon, which they let me use, so I ended up only paying about $18 for it.  Now THAT I can afford.  I wasn't sure if it would work, but I brought it home and it did work!  I was so excited.  I can use it for the short term, but I really want one of the Sizzix Big Kick's.  I don't know if I could use a 40% coupon on that one or not, but it's priced at $99.99, which I really hate to pay, but I could pay around $60 for it.  Anyway, after taking the class and saw how easy and fun it is to make these, I was hooked.

Here is a picture of the pendant that I made in class.  I love this Man in the Moon die.  It's from the Moonlit Night embossing folder from Vintaj.

And here are some pictures of some more things I made this afternoon.  The first one is another pendant that I made using a different die.

This one is another pretty die that I found.

The only store that I could find that carries the Vintaj brand was Hobby Lobby.  They had several things, but there are alot more dies and things.  I ended up ordering some dies from Amazon and Etsy.  I can't wait to explore this new technique some more.

Renaming My Blog

In my last post, I mentioned that I might just delete this blog.  But, I really don't want to do that.  I have been thinking about where I want this blog to go, and I don't want to limit it to just one thing, such as knitting or crocheting.  I wanted to be able to talk about whatever I want to without thinking that it's a certain type of blog and I really need to be talking about what it's about.  So, for awhile at least, I'm going to just talk about whatever the heck I want to talk about and not worry about it.


I recently read about a lady from Tasmania who takes used Bratz dolls, erases their faces and repaints them so that they are more little girl friendly.  The idea behind this is that the Bratz dolls are very sexualized and just give girls an image to aspire to that is not really for little girls.  So, this lady takes used Bratz dolls that she has bought at thrift stores and repaints their faces and they look so much better.  The name of the Facebook page is Tree Change Dolls.  When I first saw this and what this lady is doing I was very intrigued.  She has been very generous in telling others how she does what she does, even posting some DIY videos on Youtube.  There is also the original video telling all about what she is doing.


After reading all about this, I was very intrigued and as with almost any artistic thing I see that intrigues me, I wonder if I can do it myself.  So, I decided to go to my local thrift store and see if I could find some used Bratz dolls.  I couldn't believe  my luck.  I found about 10 dolls total for about .50 each.  They didn't have clothes, but that didn't matter because I had planned on making more modest clothes for my dolls, just like Sonia did for hers.  I can knit and crochet and can sew a little, so I managed to create a little knitted sweater and some pants and a skirt for my dolls.  The hair on some of the dolls I found was in great shape, but a few of them it was matted terribly.  In that case, I just tried to comb it out and what was unmanageable, I just cut it and tried to style it.  Here are a few pictures of my dolls.

I forgot to take before pictures of the first Bratz dolls that I repainted, but I do have one before and after pictures that I took.

I have really enjoyed this project.  I have not repainted any more at this time, but I hope to in the near future.