an accordion update

despite the cat's objections:



I am continuing to practice & have learned some new songs:







{have a lovely weekend!}

thursday = embroidery

a custom hoop:


and this week's vintage embroidery transfer:


happy stitching!

1955 elan sewing machine ad

recently thrifted

found

recently thrifted

thank you so much for your wonderful comments this week on the bees & handmade things! you all are so sweet to stop by here & visit with me :)

{have a lovely weekend!}

made for baby - day 3

the third & final handmade gift was based on the woodland theme for the baby's room:









I used images from a vintage coloring book, scanned them, re-drew them in illustrator, added color, printed them out on printable fabric I bought at joann's, then hand-embroidered them. for the back I used a cute flannel dot fabric & for the stuffing I opted for the bamboo fiber, both also purchased at joann's. here's a closeup of the stitching:


today is thursday & I couldn't not post a vintage embroidery transfer even though this is already such a long post:


happy stitching!

made for baby - day 2

to create this alphabet wall-hanging I wrapped a previously thrifted quilt onto a wooden stretcher frame then just attached the hand embroidered letters. the felt icons at the bottom are from a thrifted felt board toy.


tomorrow a rainbow of softies...

made for baby - day 1

so I can finally share the things I made my friend patty & her husband jay for their baby shower last friday!

first - a clock made from a vintage child's record I thrifted, I just added one of those clock mechanism from the craft store:


tomorrow something embroidered & repurposed...

swarm!

did you know that when a hive of honeybees grows too large for their nest they create another queen & she takes half the hive & they go look for a new place to live?


did you also know while they are waiting to find a new place to live they hang out all together & they call it a swarm?


furthermore, did you know that a large hive started at this time of the year will probably not survive because there will not be enough time for them to produce sufficient honey to make it through winter?


and, did you know that they are fastidiously clean...to the point that they "hold it" all winter until it warms up & they can leave the hive?


and finally, did you know that bees have a collective temperament that is determined by the queen?


I didn't know any of that until nate the beekeeper came over saturday to remove the swarm that had appeared on our shared back fence {mostly on the neighbors side}. I knew a little about colony collapse disorder so I wanted to make sure that the bees wouldn't be harmed before all the options were clear {luckily the neighbors were nice & understood}, which is what led me to find nate online at the entomology website of kansas state university. he volunteers his time to collect bees in situations like this & man does he love doing it - he came right over & was downright giddy at how many bees were in the swarm {he guessed about 80,000}.


it was a two day process, made much easier by the fact that the queen was very nice so as a group they were very easy to deal with. in the end he took the box full of bees away to live by a field of clover where he will subsidize their food source with sugar water so that they can produce enough honey to get through the winter. he assured me that any stragglers who didn't make it into the box would rejoin the original hive {which is in the limb of our tree} and hopefully they will all live happily ever after :)

meet enrico

I found him on craigslist...he needs some work but I think he was a good deal.

no one will ever take the place of big red though...he's my main squeeze :)



{have a wonderful weekend!}

thursday = embroidery

a little experiment combining a stamped design & embroidery:


and this week's vintage embroidery transfer:


happy stitching!

carefree crochets

{copryight 1972 columbia-minerva}

recently thrifted

{paper label on back reads marlow woodcuts americus, ks}

I heart...

sulky pens!


they're great for transferring images for embroidery, or just to transfer accordion images onto thrifted t-shirts because you want to make something fast & easy over the weekend :)

p.s. happy birthday wendi!

recently thrifted

{have a wonderful weekend!}

thursday = embroidery

I thrifted an unfinished stamped baby blanket top last weekend at the thrift store. it makes me sad to think no one may have ever got to see this stitcher's work...so I wanted to share it here so it could be appreciated:



{there are two more on my flickr if you'd like to see}

for this week's vintage transfers I'm sharing scans of the two animals that had not been worked on:



I like the idea of someone stitching these up & symbolically finishing the project for the original stitcher...

happy stitching!

out & about

{emporia, ks}

good looking but unreliable

I admit it, I fell for him the minute I saw him. and I thought things were going really well...I made sure to spend time with him every day but one day he just wasn't the same & he went away. we were only separated for a short time before he came back & things were better than ever though. I thought we'd be okay. but then it happened again just this past friday - he was gone for the whole long weekend & I don't know when he'll come back. and even if he does I don't know if things are going to work between us - if his reed can't be fixed locally I'll have to take him into kansas city to be repaired. man, it's hard to love an accordion!

p.s. after dropping the accordion off at the repair shop I went thrifting & found that little gnome...haha universe, very funny.

update: once again my local repairman has come through & my accordion has been fixed! I like to think that by being completely over dramatic about the whole thing the universe took pity on me :)

recently thrifted

{have a lovely weekend!}

p.s. long holiday weekend here in the states so I'll be taking mon. off :)

thursday = embroidery

if you are the owner of a dog who's scared of fireworks, like I am, then you dread this coming weekend. as much as I appreciate the historical significance of the 4th & enjoy the extra day off from work, for his sake I'm just always really happy when it's over.

so I thought it fitting that this week's vintage embroidery transfer be dog related:


happy stitching!