I’m thinking about Sugarplum Fairy Christmas cards this year. That’d be cute right? This gal is floating around in the craft room waiting for her partner Gum-Drop to be done at the salon.
parts to fix anything
Oops, sorry blog. Sometimes time just flies like that. What can you do. How about to make up for it I’ll try to post every day for a while. So I was hoping I’d have something super fun to show & tell for my time away but all I’ve got is a botched-to-hell project that Tim and I spent all our free time last week on. The botching was on my end, not on Mr. Workshop’s so I don’t know how happy he will be to read this post which is me lining up his next project…
Oscar and I found this doll cradle in a barn sale and decided that he and daddy would like to fix it up. I’m thinking it’d look great in this crib’s perfect purple. Or maybe a gray blue. That’d be so pretty! I’ve got a soft spot for doll crib’s these days. Phoebe’s room already has two and there are another two in the basement waiting for fix up. Poor girl has the smallest room in the house and I’m cramming it full of toe-stubbing stuff.
All that time Tim spent in the workroom didn’t go to total waste though, it inspired him to finally take the camera down there and document the very cool workshop the previous owner of our house left intact for us. All the pics are here on his flickr. This room has everything you’d ever need (minus the scary 1950s chemicals!). Makes me wish they’d left the entire basement, and maybe the attic, full of treasures too.
picking buttons out for her new sweater
supplies
Check out our new Rosa ribbon.. Goldilocks! I love it! Thanks Rosa for making such super cute ribbon for me to hoard 🙂
While I’m on the topic of supplies indulge me while I do a little bitching about my fabric stash will ya. I have two ginormous closets full of fabric, two!, and still I cannot put together a simple little patchwork without a mountain of effort. All my pieces are too small or the color is okay but the scale is wrong. Too many things on white backgrounds. Too many novelty prints. Too much japanese fabric that doesn’t work for anything (hello storybook prints). Too many scraps of vintage fabric that are too scrappy to make anything from. Not enough stripes and dots. Not enough basic florals. And somehow I can never find just that right green. Or gold. Or pink. Or lavender I’m looking for. I feel like I spend a ton of money on fabric but maybe I don’t spend enough. I need to live near a quilt shop so I can fill those little here and there needs on the quick instead of making the biannual trek to the stitches and stuffing and hope that’ll get me through. No, I need a fabric store to sponsor me! And send me giant boxes of samples every month. Oh, wouldn’t that be heaven. Or maybe I need to just move into a fabric shop. Some giant emporium with stacks to the ceiling of every print imaginable. Somehow I imagine I’d still have quilters’ block when it came to picking my patchwork pieces. Or maybe I need to just take a day to sort my stash by color so I can flippin find anything. Anyway, here’s what I came up with. I just picked one color to go with, blue, and then it made things a little easier.
Picnic Fairy Stitchette up in the Shop
The Picnic Fairy Stitchette has made her way to the shop this morning.
I’m kicking around some ideas for what I’m going to do with my finished embroideries this time. I think it’d be so cute to make some sort of picnic basket cover out of them but I don’t have a nice basket yet. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll make another garland or apron.
So a note on the pattern: all the detail in the samples I made up is not on the pattern. This way you’re free to add detail but don’t have to get all teeny tiny nitpicking if you’re not feeling it. The gingham pattern on the wings is not on the pattern. That I did with criss crossing running stitches. Same with the details inside the squares on the quilt. I think that’s it. Oh, I did some dots on her dress, those aren’t on the pattern. Again, a running stitch. Everything else is done in my usual split stitch or backstitch for tiny details. French knots for the eyes and dots. Oh and detached chain stitches worked well for the watermelon seeds. More info: I stitch mine up on muslin with half a strand of DMC floss (3 out of the 6 threads) and as I mentioned before, with whatever needle is on hand, you know.. the one that’s not too big or too small. Shoot me an email (hillarylang at gmail) if you have any other questions. Thanks!!
more vintage doll clothes
I’ve added the rest of my mom’s old dolls’ clothes to the vintage doll clothes pool. Since we’ve determined 80’s are vintage maybe I’ll add my old Darci doll clothes. Get ready for disco glam!
sugarplum fairy giveaway
It’s not really sugarplum fairy season but maybe the abundance of smore making around here has brought about this early visit. Or maybe she’s just hanging out waiting for Gum-Drop and Lolli-Pop to make it out of the craft room. Either way, she’s only here for a brief stay. I’ve been trying for a while to make something fun for a giveaway (maybe the good giveaway karma will help my odds in winning some of the amazing fabric giveaways that I keep entering!) but things kept getting in the way (popped seams, sloppy stitching, people needing presents, etc) but (I hope) this gal is good to go! If you need a smore eating companion leave a comment to be entered in the drawing. I’ll close comments on Monday or Tuesday and pick a winner. Fun!
*** I closed up comments now. I’m going to go hunt down that random number generator and I’ll have the winner later this afternoon. thanks! ***
