Gathering Dust

Seven Things I Did This Weekend

(Isn't that a great title for a blog post- so clever and original.)

1.  Finished the base of a small applique quilt with mini charm pack pieces from French General.

I still want to add embellishments, buttons, charms or stitching to each square.

 
2.  Brought in two tubs of stuff to my booth at the antique mall and redid a couple of displays.  Sorry about the distracting price tags, but you can't sell the stuff without price tags...

I think I've shown some of these pieces on my blog before, but I've moved them around.  Theoretically, that should make them sell.  You just keep moving stuff around until you sell it.

3.  Despite some of my knitting follies, I started knitting the LEFT SIDE of a cardigan.  The right side is done, the back is done.  I just hope that when I line them up, they are all the same length.  Is that so much to ask?

4.  Finished the second book in The Hunger Games trilogy.  I know, I'm late to the Hunger Games party.  But I did enjoy it and will read the third book for sure.

5.  Read Altered Couture magazine for the first time. There are some really imaginative and pretty ideas for enhancing and embellishing clothes, a lot of it by repurposing thrift store clothing.

6.  Was delighted to find a "Katniss" dress in Altered Couture.  (Katniss is the hero of The Hunger Games).  In the book, she wears a dress of fire.

This dress is embellished with painted matches.  What a clever idea.

7.  Listed stuff in both Etsy shops.

 All this can be found in SugarPinkMoon.

And all this (and more) in Gathering Dust.

Saturday Morning Flea Market

Last Saturday, Karla and I made a mini road trip to St Joe Missouri to two of our favorite antique malls Jesse James and The Rusty Chandelier.  There was a flea market in the parking lot, and a flea market on sunny Saturday with temps in the 70s is almost always a good thing.

After making several trips back to the car with our hauls from the flea market we headed inside. 

The Rusty Chandelier has always been a great place to get pretty stuff and inspiration.  The booths are carefully decorated and full of ideas for repurposing- none of those mantique booths full of tools or baseball cards.

The mall was so full of pretties and fun ideas, I ended up taking a lot of pictures.  When I started looking at the pictures, I realized that most were from booths belonging to my friend Joyce Gilpin who's business is called All That Jazz.

Joyce has a great eye for fun stuff and pretty ways to display it.

Joyce has a great mix of vintage, antique and handmade items, like this fun tintype frame used as a necklace.

Here are some more of my favorite vignettes.

 

It Started With a Bread Line...

A couple of months ago, the "Other Karla" asked if I had ever been to Fervere, an artisian bakery near downtown that was only open three days a week, and only stayed open until they sold out of bread.  People regularly lined up out the door to wait for bread.

I was intrigued.  I like bread.  This must be good bread.

Then I read this blog post.

Game on.  I must have bread.  Other Karla and I found the quaint little artisanal bakery in the Westside neighborhood of Kansas City. 

We arrived at 1pm and Fervere only had TWO loaves left. Well, I had been warned.

Actually, they weren't loaves, they were "box bread".  But that was okay, I was going to buy whatever they had.  This little box of bread is only a 4" cube but it is as heavy as a brick, and the bread is delicious.  With 10 grains, even a small piece is very filling.

The Westside neighborhood is kind of landlocked.  It's very close to downtown, but no major streets run through it, so you probably wouldn't find it unless you were looking for it.

I loved the old brick buildings with bright new paint.

The neighborhood has quite a few resturants and boutiques and a little walking tour showed a great mix of old, new and repurposed buildings and imagination.

But woman does not live by bread alone, so Karla and I had lunch at The Westside Local.  It was described as "85% organic" with its own garden in the back of the resturant.

It was a beautiful summer into fall day, and we ate on the patio, near the garden.

 I don't know how the organic food is.

I had the grilled cheese with parmesan fries. 

It was the BEST grilled cheese I've ever had.  The cheese may have been organic, or locally made, but my best memory of it is the creamy goodness mixed with a sharp tang from one of the cheeses and the perfectly toasted thick bread, along with a tomato basil soup for dipping.

It was a treat to find such a fun area and great food on a sunny fall day.

After stuffing myself silly with bread and cheese, I waddled to the computer to add a few things to both my Etsy shops, Gathering Dust and SugarPinkMoon.

Including ditty bags

Pinnies

and some new bags I'm calling "Stuffles", because they aren't big enough to be a duffle bag, but they are big enough to put some Stuff in them.

More Antique Show Vignettes

Besides having great merchandise, the Old Summit Antique Show that I sold at last weekend has dealers with great merchandising skills.  They set up beautiful and intriguing vignettes that make you look and linger.

 A soft and faded red white and blue display of ironstone.

Stacked frames on top of an intriguing portrait.

Black and gold- classic combination.

I love the upholstery and detailed woodwork on this chair.

Here's another view sans wildlife.

A bit of tatting still on the shuttle.

Old Summit Antique Show Tempting Textiles

After I set up for the Old Summit Antique show in September, I feel like fall has officially started.  Vendors bring in bundles, barrels and bowls full of bittersweet to decorate their booths.

Bittersweet says "fall" to me as much as changing leaves and the crisp morning air.

Before the show starts, I like to wander around, camera in hand and take pictures of whatever catches my eye.  This is from my booth- I do love brown transferware and old books.

An old store spool cabinet has been on my wish list for a long time.  I like this one because of the lettering on the windows on the drawers.  I started lusting after spool cabinets when the prices were in the $200 range- now it's hard to find one for less than $500.  I should have trusted my instincts and bought one five or six years ago.

This Santa suit caught my eye because of its faded color.  It's so different from the kind of Santa suit you'd see today.  Today's suit would be bright red, velvet and trimmed in lush plush white fur.

I'm sure if you dresses a Santa in a new suit and one in this old suit and put them side by side in a department store, kids would line up for the new Santa, but there is something sweet about this timeworn holiday costume.

This is the kind of doll that either makes you laugh or gives you nightmares.  I think they could make a movie about it.   "Attack of the Horribly Misproportioned Doll".

With my current obession with needle and thread, it's no surprise that textiles like this hooked rug caught my eye.

A log cabin quilt is a great background for this hobby horse.

It wouldn't really be a good post about a country antique show if I didn't show some penny rugs.

I've said it before on my blog, but one look at these and I want to start salvaging wool and cutting it into circles.

Heart Art Quilt Evolution

First I had some pink felt, fabric scraps and some thread, so I made pink hearts.

I put the pink hearts in a compote, but decided they needed a higher purpose.

So I sewed the hearts to a piece of wool.

But the hearts seemed too spread out, with too much space in between, so I stitched a grid behind them.

They still seemed kind of lonely and discombobulated, so I started adding some stitching.

And some salvaged bits from old linens.

It's better, it's closer, but it's not done yet. 

Antiques Outside: Patty's Garden

A couple weeks ago, the Sunday newspaper had a feature on using antiques in gardens.  One of the gardens they showed belonged to my neighbor at the antique mall, Patty Schere.

The next time I saw Patty, I congratulated her on the article, and on being in the promo for the Antiques Roadshow in Kansas City.

And then I asked her when she was going to invite me see her garden.  I'm pretty sure I read in an etiquette book that the best way to get an invitation to somewhere is to just be pushy and ask.

So Patty graciously invited me to her house to see her garden.

Moshe, Patty's orange cat joined us for part of the tour.

I loved the way Patty mixed in unexpected pieces like this mirror to her patio garden

and this ornate cast iron stove on the patio.

This wine rack is a great way to remember evenings spent on the patio.

Patty's patio and garden are full of potted plants as well as trees, bushes, ground cover, ivy and herbs.  There must be hundreds of different varieties, and Patty is a Master Gardener and knows the names, growing conditions and where and when she got every thing in her garden.

The garden has a huge variety- from bamboo...

to succulents.

One of the most enchanting parts of the garden is how the little paths, like this one made of grind stones, veer off...

...to ivy covered gates.  The garden gives you the feeling that you're always on the verge of  a new discovery.

Like these grapevine mushroom hidden under a copse of hardwood trees.

If it hadn't been such a warm day (95 degrees +), I could have explored the garden all day.  Instead, I took a cue from Moshe and headed inside.

Thank you Patty and Moshe, for letting me visit and bring my camera into your garden.