Gathering Dust

Kits for Birdsong; Leftover Wool

I've been cutting and gathering, getting my kits ready for my class at Birdsong.  The little purple buds are lavender, if you hold your nose close to the screen, I'm sure you'll enjoy the scent.

The lavender has been my favorite part of putting the kits together.

Cutting the fabric wasn't too bad, but it took a long time- three pieces of fabric each for 35 kits was...105 pieces of fabric...plus cutting lace and ribbon.

But, believe it or not, the hardest part was taking the flowers off of this hat.  (Or, as Karla calls it, "deflowering").  It took about 3 hours. Everyone of those tiny little flowers was stitched on.

At some point, I was planning on pulling these apart, too- but I'm not sure that's how I want to spend the rest of my life.

One of the fabrics that I used in my kits was an old wool blanket that I felted.  I ended up with scraps, and of course, I couldn't bear to throw them away, so I started stitching with them.

The horse is cut from Charlotte Lyons' Rummy fabric.  The fabric design is based on old playing cards, and a fat quarter gives you a LOT of images.

Playing with these little bits of leftover wool has really been fun.  But I'm pretty sure that stitching on all of them is going to take a lot more time than pulling flowers off of hats ever would.

A Box Lot from Mom and Old Beat Up Leather Coin Purses

The other day I got a box in the mail from my Mom.  The box was about the right size to hold some of her wonderful oatmeal raisin cookies, I thought, licking my lips. 

But instead of cookies, it was full of old pictures and papers.  Old family pictures (and my high school graduation program) like the picture on top...

...baby pictures of me.

...and a BOX LOT!

Turned out to be a pretty fun box lot.  I know I would have bid on it an an auction.

Have you seen the red and blue tokens in the upper left corner before?  Almost every time I buy an old jar of buttons, I find some inside.  I did a little research (i.e. I went to Wikipedia) and found out that they were the "change" given out from World War II ration stamps. 

If a person took their $2 ration stamp for sugar to the store and only bought $1.80 worth of sugar, they got the tokens back as "ration change".  Red tokens were for perishable goods and blue tokens were for non-perishable.

There, doesn't it feel good to get a little education on a Saturday morning?

The beaded fob has my Grandpa's initials on it, but I don't know anything more about it.  I have to wonder who made it, and what it was for.

My favorite goodie is the tiny embroidered coin purse. Like so many of you, I've loved coin purses for a long time.

This is one of my all time favorite pictures of a collection of coin purses.

It's on my collections board on Pinterest.  I wanted to give you a link back to original website, Organon9worlds, but sadly, the website is gone.  The website belonged to Rebecca Purcell, who was the display guru for ABC Carpet and Home, and it was full of inspiration.

In searching for Rebecca's website, I did come across this blog post that shows some of her design work.

And here is MY collection of old, beat up, and well loved little coin purses.

I Found Instagram

Over the weekend, I found Instagram.  Well, I didn't just find it, I've been looking at pictures on the site for a long time.  I just didn't USE it.

When I thought of Instagram, I thought of big groups of people holding their cell phones in the air snapping pictures.  I never thought about using it until the cover fell off my Ipad and I realized I could use Instagram for more than just looking at other people's pictures. 

It was an "aha" and "duh" moment all at the same time.

So, I've used Instagram to post some of my crafting stuff and estate sale finds.  If you want to check it out, you can find me here:

"Low Color" Recycled Wool Patchwork

Earlier this winter, I showed you this patchwork that I'd pieced together from wool from felted thrift store sweaters.

I've done some work on it, but it's still a work in progress.

The problem I have with this kind of project is I'm never exactly sure when it's DONE.

There's always room to add one more piece of lace, one more button, one more section of stitching.

I have a feeling I'm getting close to "DONE".  That's a good thing.  I don't think I'm going to want to spend time this summer working with a lap full of wool.

I Craft Everyday, Really I Do...

Knitting, or playing in my journal or just random stitching...I do craft everyday, I just don't FINISH something everyday.  I tend to think of myself as a long-term crafter.

But I did get some projects finished in the past few days.

A couple of ditty bags.

I made these bags after I took Lisa's woven bag class at Birdsong two years ago, but I just managed to get handles attached last weekend.

Speaking of Bird Song, this is one version of the class project I'll teach. 

If you put your nose really close to the computer screen, maybe you can smell that these are actually sachets filled with lavender.

I finished my "February" journal and started a new one.  I think I've shown the cover before, but I added a red Dennison label so I could add a date.

And like so many of my projects, I've STARTED a lot of pages with bits and pieces that catch my eye.

Here's a little guy that still catches my eye.  Can you believe Button was THREE years old this weekend? He looks very serious in this picture, he's probably thinking about the rabbits under the deck.