I married my wool today

Easter dinner will be at my house this year. My two brothers and my sister, with their families will be here. This week will be spent getting ready for that and putting some finishing touches in the kitchen. My husband and I completely gutted our kitchen this past fall and finally finished it up right before Christmas. I still haven't made curtains or added finishing touches to the kitchen, mostly because it's painting that needs to be done outside, in nice weather ...which we haven't had too much of lately. This is my sewing project for today.
I'm going to turn this fabric into 2 window valances. Still not sure exactly what the design will be, but it will get done today. yessiree, it will.

Ok, marrying wool doesn't require anything but some wool, some string, a pot and some water. Basically marrying wool is using one color of wool to bleed into a lighter color wool, creating a nice mottled mix of colors in the lighter wool. So here, I've a red piece of wool and scrunched up a piece of white wool.

 **NOTE:  This works well with most recycled wool...wool from skirts, jackets, etc.  It doesn't work most times with hand-dyed wool since the methods used to dye will set the dye into the wool so that it doesn't bleed.**

Fold the two pieces up together. I prefer to wet the wool beforehand, but dry wool works too.

Use some string to tightly tie the wool. I don't use rubber bands because I've learned from experience, that the rubber bands can break during the cooking process.

Using tongs, carefully place the wool bundle into boiling hot water. Let it simmer on low heat for ... I dunno, maybe 30 min or so. Carefully take it out of the water, rinse with cold water, cut the strings and open up your surprise package.

Voila! This is what it turns into...a nice mottled blending of colors. Reds always marry into shades of pinks. At least for me it does. I never get a true red. It's nice to use this method when you need several different shades of the same color. I'm planning to use this for tulips and roses.

Ok, kitchen curtain time. I'm dusting off my sewing machine RIGHT NOW!

Busy Sunday

Sundays should be relaxing, right? I had so much fun yesterday visiting all the Pink Saturday sites that I'm behind schedule so today it's catch-up day.
K and Jen are coming over for dinner so I'd like to get everything finished before then. More Ebay things will be listed tonight (hopefully). I'll be listing the Strawberry Candle Mat for sure and hopefully, I'll finish up another strawberry pin cushion to list too.
So here's a picture of the grass dish that K helped me make a week or so ago ...
This is just a little one and prim with small tulips and wool bunnies.
I've had a lot of questions about growing the grass and the post HERE
gives a quick how-to for it. Basically, you fill a container with some potting soil, moisten it well then place a thick layer of grass seed right on top. You don't need to cover the seeds. Moisten the seeds, cover it with some plastic wrap and set it aside. In a couple days, you'll see that it's sprouted. Uncover it ,keep it moist and in about a week, the grass will be thick enough to decorate it any way you wish. Watch that it doesn't dry out and every once in a while cut the grass with some scissors to keep it neat! That's it!

Oh and in my last post, I gave too much credit to my daughter, Jen, and said that she would smile that smile but was too sweet to tell me that my grass growing was silly. I take that back! When talking to her on the phone yesterday, I was gloating to her how so many people liked the grass in the basket and that I mentioned in the blog about her and her sister thinking it was all so silly and that someday she will do it herself. Her response, to ME, her MOTHER, was "Mom, even back when I was 12, I thought it was stupid." Haha, she made me laugh with that!

Also, I had a question about Penny Rugs and how I make them. They are called penny rugs because back in colonial times, women would collect all their scraps of wool and use pennies and other coins as a pattern template to cut their circles for the rugs. The circles are made of different sizes and are stacked and sewn together. The penny rug shown above underneath the Easter grass container is an example of a traditional type of penny rug with stacked "pennies".
My penny rugs and pin cushions are all hand-sewn/stitched I never use a machine for any of it.
So, my cupboard is finally cleaned out. The picture shows an empty shelf but that's for my bin of threads. I've found some things that I haven't seen in years ... a cute little wool needle case that I made back in 2004, my leather thimble thingy that I used for quilting...a tulip pattern that I thought was lost forever. So, I'm thrilled to finally have the cupboard emptied out and organized again. I've learned some things from this too ....

One thing is to always remember to label my patterns. I found this unmarked pattern and I've no idea what it is. Usually I at least write the name of it on the outside baggie, but this one has nothing. I know whatever it is has 3 differnt shaped spots, a tail tip and something that looks like it may be flowers. Now I know to be sure to properly label my designs so this won't happen again.

There's one more very important thing that I learned from all this. I've organized all my threads, separating the different sizes and types and I've always felt that one could never have too many threads. Well, take a look at this picture and you can see why I've come to the conclusion ....

I NEED TO STOP BUYING THREADS ! !

Have a terrific Sunday!

Pink Saturday!

Pink Saturday was started by Beverly. Anyone can join in ... It's simple. Let Beverly know that you are participating and then when Saturday comes, post something PINK!

Today, my Pink Saturday offering is my basket of pink wool tulips on a penny rug of pink circles.

Yes, that is real grass in there.

Every year, I grow grass in containers. I then decorate the containers in different ways. As Easter comes closer, I will be showing even more ways that I decorate grass containers.

My daughters have always teased me about this yearly grass growing project. Every year, I get, "oh sheesh, there goes mom, growing grass again." They really do think it's silly. But I like it and I betcha when they get to be my age, they will be doing it too. And when/if they read this, I imagine Rach rolling her eyes and chuckling and then making some wisecrack comment and Jen grinning that dimpled grin of hers in a way that shows me that she thinks I'm silly, but is just too sweet to actually say it.

The wool tulips are new this year. I've always used "dirtied" up prim tulips in the containers, and I still will but I thought some fresh spring-like colors would look nice in this old vintage basket.
For anyone that would like to make these, just cut out the tulip shapes, sew two together around the edges, leaving the top open. Stuff a little fiberfill inside the tulip to plump them up a bit and then insert a wooden skewer down through the center of the tulip. Tie a strip of green wool around the skewer for the leaves and there ya go. The tulips look really nice gathered together in a bunch too. I like these so much, I'm going to make more.

Happy Pink Saturday!

Thanks to Lisa for the Pink Saturday connection and also for letting me know that I had commenting disabled! All fixed now, thank you Lisa!

This is "No Procrastination Friday"

It was actually a "no procrastination Thursday" for me too. I finished up four pin cushion projects yesterday. I'll put these up on Ebay ... probably on Sunday. If anyone wishes to purchase any or ALL! of these, please let me know so that I won't have to list them.

I'm almost done with the cleaning and organizing of my cupboard. I need to get out today sometime to purchase some kind of containers that are big enough to hold my threads AND fit easily into the cupboard too.

My sis, Carol, called yesterday. She read my story about the cupboard, while she reloaded my blog several thousand times, thinking it would look better to have my "hit counter" a little higher. I think that's cheating! I find that really funny though.
Anyway, she nagged me about getting the cupboard finished, so not only have I humiliated myself by posting a picture of the mess, but my sis is going to bug me until it's done!

So on this no procrastination Friday, I will finish up the old cupboard and after that's done, I'll measure my kitchen windows so that I can get started making curtain valances. I have the main fabric already ... a nice deep red and mustard checked fabric with cherries. I need to buy a yard to two of matching plaid fabric to use for the accent and I need to buy some rods too. I'm thinking of making and painting the rods myself though, so I better put some more thought into this ...
Happy Friday, y'all!

Spring Cleaning

I just finished up the strawberry candle mat last night. I'm really pleased with how nice it looks now...after struggling with the whole design layout and countless hours of sewing. I stuffed a little fiberfill into each one of the strawberries to plump them up and that made a huge difference in the overall look. This will go for Ebay sale on Sunday, probably.
Now I can move on to finishing up pansy orders and ...I'm anxious to get started on a new tulip candle mat design of mine.

So this corner of my living room has been ignored. It needs updated...has needed it for quite some time. I know the reason that I've procrastinated. It's the problem with the cupboard. Now, mind you, I love this cupboard. It's been in my family forever. I remember when I was little my mother, who at the time, sold Avon, would keep all of her Avon products stored in this cupboard. The scent of Avon has lasted forever in it and even now, sometimes, when I open it, I get a quick whiff of that special smell and it makes me happy.

Anyway, back in those days, the cupboard was painted a dusty rose color. When the cupboard came into my home, I cleaned it up, painted it and have since used it to store all my sewing supplies ... like my threads and rulers and scissors and pattern templates ... you know, like everything you'd see in a notions section at Joann's. That was the initial purpose.

Since then, it's become a catch-all and a disorganized mess. Sometimes it's so bad that I have to open the door slowly so nothing falls out and then cram something else in and close the door quickly so that nothing falls out!

So, I've put off updating this corner because I just don't want to take the time to clean out that precious cupboard!

I decided that the best way to give myself a boost into finally doing it is to embarrass myself by showing a picture of how bad it really is inside.

So now, I present the internet world with ...

The inside of my sewing cupboard!

Ugh, how embarrassing. Please don't click on the picture to show it even bigger!

This is my next spring cleaning project. I hope to be able to show pictures of a clean, organized cupboard in the next few days!

Tonight, Jen and I are going into Pittsburgh to see David Sedaris. He's one of our favorite authors and we've both wanted to see his show for a long time. I'm treating her for dinner at a place of her choice as long as she's willing to do the driving in Pittsburgh. I'm a country girl and big city driving makes me nervous! Fun, fun fun!