Shirt to Planter Cover

I finally got around to moving the newly chalk painted table into the bedroom.  I had intended to put a third coat of clear wax on it, but after procrastinating on that task for a full month, I decided to skip it entirely.  

See how that works?  Put it off long enough and sometimes it doesn't need doing after all.

First I had to take the aspidistra on the old table outside and give it a spray with the hose to wash the dust off its leaves.  

Did I ever show you the old table? 

I trash picked and refinished this table in 2003.  The veneer on top was badly damaged and peeling, so I removed it.  There were some pretty significant gouges in the underlying wood, so I used wood fill to smooth those out the best I could.

Then I painted a faux marble finish on the top with some craft paints and stained the lower part of the table a mahogany color.  I think it turned out pretty well for a novice.

Around that same time, I also repainted a little half-round table I'd picked up at a garage sale.  I used craft paint on that as well, with some water-based poly on top to seal it.

It turned out like sort of a faux verdigris patina.  I really just kept slapping different color paints on until I liked it.

Back to the recently chalk painted table, after I hosed off the plant, the shabby basket over the inner plastic pot was looking, well, rather shabby.  I thought about repotting the plant, but the pot I was thinking of using happens to have geraniums in it for the summer.

So how about covering the planter with fabric?  

Enter this shirt my daughter recently cast off.  Instead of putting it into the Goodwill bag for donation, I asked her if I could have it for the fabric.   She said sure.

I cut off the upper bodice above the band.  Then I just pulled it up around the planter like a skirt, pinned it up in back, and tied it with a length of some vintage rickrack from the sewing room.

The bottom is just tucked up underneath and the whole thing is set on a thrifted plate, originally from Target, I think.  

There's no drainage hole on the basket cover (it is lined with plastic and the plastic pot fits down into it), so I don't worry much about leakage.  But if it does get wet, the cover is cotton and washable.

Here is the view of the corner of the bedroom.  The plant's a little droopy now, but it'll perk up.

Gotta love a quick, no-sew fix!

Sew First, Sort Later

On a whim—which is how the best and worst of things usually start, right?—I began sewing 16-patches last weekend.

Before the whim, however, I had been cleaning the sewing space.  All that fabric folding and fondling led to pulling various things from the stash and musing Whatever shall I make with this?  And this?  Or this?

I like my stash, I really do.  It's eclectic, just like my musical taste and my taste in movies.  Part Frank Sinatra, part Band of Skulls; Pride and Prejudice and The Big Lebowski.

Don't you love that crazy vintage print underneath this stack of modern ones?  I mean, what is all that business going on?  Must make something with this lot, I don't know what yet.  The suggestion box is open. I only have a FQ of the pink and the blue-green rectangles, so something small.

Back to the 16-patches, I mashed up a few fabric pairs and this is what I have going so far.

I don't know if I'll end up throwing it all together in one crazy-busy quilt.  I'm just sewing first and figuring things out later.

I gave Kathy, the friend who is having me make the chevron quilts for her grandsons, these two mug rugs or minis, so she can remember her grandson's quilts by.

In other news, our 31-year-old washing machine broke last week.  The washer and dryer had been a wedding gift from my parents.

We'd had both fixed once or twice through the years, a belt here or a heating element there, but they otherwise ran like champs up until the bitter end.  This time the washer went out literally with a bang.  Lots of banging, in fact.  It sounded like a ginormous load unbalanced situation, but when Norm went down to see about it, he found a six-inch metal plate laying inside the washer, having sheared off from somewhere in the inner workings, and all the clothes spattered with some kind of rusty schmutz.  In other words, it wasn't pretty.

So we bought a Speed Queen set and take delivery of it this Wednesday.  I'm stoked!  Speed Queen, that standard of laundromats and college dorms.  It feels kind of old-fashioned, no digital controls, no front loading or steam jets. Just a regular ole agitator and plenty of swishing water action, but I needed another workhorse pair.  They still make Speed Queens with all-metal parts, something I like about my vintage Singer and newer Juki sewing machines as well.  And they're a "Sconnie" company, built right up the road about 40 miles.  Check out this vintage ad from the 1970s. 

(Image Source)

Silver metallic pants and go-go boots!  Groovy baby!

R-U-N-N-O-F-T

I peeked in on the duck nest yesterday and this is what I saw.

I hope I am looking at the remains of at least a couple of hatched eggs (versus some other kind of calamity), having happened a few days ago from the looks of it.  As of early last week, the hen was still sitting on the nest.

So it appears that Mama Mallard and her ducklings have r-u-n-n-o-f-t.

Image Source: National Geographic

And they didn't even leave a note!

More Old Things

Continuing with the other stuff at Aztalan last weekend, I'll try to focus on the "stitchy" things.  You can probably imagine the rest of the usual items seen in a museum.

Stitchy thing number one, treadle sewing machines.  Check out the generous harp space on the one on the left.  The thoughts I was having while looking at these ran along the lines of, "Someone really needs to clean and oil these; I bet they might still work," and then wondering if the general population knows that quite a few sewers and quilters still use a treadle today.  More novelty than necessity, true, unless you're Amish.

I am not a treadler myself.  I messed around on my grandma's when I was a kid, which she mostly used as a plant stand.  A couple years ago, I had an opportunity to get a treadle machine cheap or free, but passed on it.  For one thing, I can't get my extra-long legs under the machine to do what they need to do without my knees banging up against the underside of the cabinet. 

This interesting machine was used for sewing hats.  I'd never seen one of these before.

I wish I could have seen this signature quilt close up, a simple yet striking on-point setting with the signatures stitched in red on the diagonal in the white blocks.

There was a sign next to this display that indicated this dressmaker did the hand embroidery down the front of the bodice.  That is some intricate stitchery.

I'm not sure what the significance of the old cutlery was; I was more interested in the crazy quilt it was sitting on (no info on that, unfortunately).

This Native American buckskin bag featured some wonderful bead work.  It was purchased from a Chippewa elder born in 1784 who lived to be well over 100 years old. 

It was hard to get a good image with the reflection on the glass and the fact that it was displayed high on the wall.

There were a number of arrowhead and other types of ancient implements  to see, alongside a woolly mammoth tooth. The tooth is probably around 12,000 years old, dating to near the end of the Pleistocene.

In North America, the mammoth died out at the end of the last Ice Age, which in Wisconsin included the glaciation of approximately two-thirds of the state.  This mammoth tooth was found in what is known as the Driftless Area (unglaciated), where the tundra landscape would have provided the mammoth diet.  As the thick ice sheet receded, the tundra was replaced by predominantly pine forest, an ideal food source for the mastodon (relative of the mammoth). They too became extinct, around 10,500 years ago, probably due to hunting by the rapidly expanding population of Paleo-Indians, as well as continued climate change.

Outside there were various buildings from some of the first settlers of the area.

Can you imagine living with six children in this cabin?  We couldn't step down into it, but that's okay; I would not have been able to stand up in it.

I'm going apartment hunting with my daughter tomorrow and will bear this in mind when I look at those small studios, which will undoubtedly cost more per month than a couple hundred acres of land cost here in the mid-1800s.  But no trees to fell, and there's indoor plumbing, so that's a plus.

This building was representative of a general store (note the selection of fabric under the counter).  I had to laugh at the list of goods and their prices posted on the door, from an 1850 ledger (click to enlarge).  

A pint of whiskey cost less than a skein of thread—and a lot of other things!

We didn't spend much time in the tool shed, but I wouldn't have minded carrying tools in this beautifully painted box.

So there you have it, a little sampling of the other sites at Aztalan village.  So tell me, do you like to visit museums, or learn about history in any other kind of setting? 

St. Paul and The Broken Bones

I heard this song on the radio in the car the other day and I thought it sounded familiar, like an oldie from back in the day that I should know, but I couldn't place it.  Was it Wilson Pickett?  No, maybe Al Green?  Otis Redding?

Then I forgot about it until I stumbled upon it randomly on YouTube this evening.

Not what I expected, but I like surprises.


Good song.  I listened to a few more from them and liked them all.