a vintage birthday...

Lately everywhere I look in the blog world I have seen those little vintage inspired pendent banners. So I thought it was about time I made something incorporating this fun little touch. Scott’s Grandma’s birthday was coming up giving me the perfect opportunity to add a vintage touch to her birthday card. Since she is a fellow crafter I knew she would appreciate it. So here is what I came up with….


The front of the card is the pendent banner. I thought about adding more to the background with colored circles or something to that effect, but in the end I stuck with the simplicity of the muted toned banner. My favorite part being the touch of red in the string!

For the back I found a vintage photograph (I believe it is Shirley Temple) of children blowing out candles and printed it on an off white linen paper; giving it the perfect aged look. Then I wanted to bring in the red touches again so I sewed a border around the picture. Last I pulled in some of the colors form the banner by adding a personal message, and of course I used a vintage typewrite font!

I must admit well making this card I asked myself multiple times how would Meg add a vintage touch to this and that is where I got the idea for adding red string and sewing a border around the picture- Thanks Meg you are my inspiration :)  All in all I am pretty happy with the results. Enjoy ~ Julie

Owls taking shape...

I've had the owls finished up over the weekend, but I never posted them. Here we go...

First I finished sewing on the wings on and face of the small owl. At first I couldn't decide if I wanted to go with a bright orange beak (because I am partial to bright orange), but I'm very happy now that I decided to go a neutral color instead. I think he looks very darling.

hoot.

From there I started on the second owl. I used a dark grey fabric with a lighter grey casual flannelwear fabric for the wings. It's very lightly striped with purple. These eyes were a little trickier to sew since the pupils were larger and you could easily tell if it wasn't a circle. It while while sewing this owl on and sewing the eyes that I sewed it to my pants. Hahahahahaha, oops.

 Staring contest.

I finished the owls! Great success. I think my favorite part of the owls are their eyes, the thick white fabric that I used already had a tendency to fray to I used that to my advantage and purposely frayed the edges of the eyes more. It was easy as running my nail a few times over the edge of the fabric.

Now I just need to finish sewing the straps and back on so that it's a complete pillow and not a bunch of small pieces. I also need to go find some great buttons for this (I will be using a button closure for this).

For now, I hope you are all enjoying some crafts and the great weather - it's a beautiful 60 degrees here in Chicago.

-Meg

Bit of a mishap...

I have to learn to pay more attention to what I'm doing because one minute I'm sewing my pillow and the next I'm undoing my work because I've sewn it to my pants. Shoot!

-M

p.s. The cable and internet are out at the apartment though, so it'll give me plenty of time to finish up the pillow cover and if I'm really productive maybe the pillow form, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. One day I will figure out the sewing machine I bought off craigslist, but for now it's up to my hands to do all the work.

Here we go again...

I began my bird pillow again. Here's hoping I don't loose various pieces as I had before. I wanted to make an 11x17 pillow, so I measured the front and back pieces with a 1/2" border and then sketched out the tree branch on stiff white linen and transferred it over to the brown flannel casual wear fabric that I bought at Vogue Fabrics a while ago.

Snip snip!

Pinned and ready to go...

I have yet to finesse the technique of holding a pinned together project without stabbing my hands a million times, so my poor hands look like I ran them through rose bushes. Oh well...

Once I had pinned the tree branch on I began sewing it and the little bird on...

I love contrasting thread.

Not quite finished and trimming is desperately needed...

I still have to finish this little bird by adding the feet, beak, and wings as well as add a second, larger one beside it. Then I'll sew on the back and I think I'm going to button close this on the side...so we'll see how that turns out as I have no fully thought it out just yet. I'll also have to make a pillow form for this since. I will finish this bird, and hopefully the larger one as well by the end of tonight.

-Meg

A quick addition to Meg’s post....

Last night I was lucky enough to be the recipient of this exquisite floral arrangement made by friend and budding florist, Colleen. Just thought I would share with you… Enjoy ~ Julie

Desperate for Spring...

Obviously, I have not posted about the bird/owl pillow I was making because sadly my owls have gone missing. I suppose it would have been easy enough to just make them over, but I kept thinking that they would be under the pillow, couch, pile of clothes, shoes, etc...So instead of redoing them I slowly cleaned my apartment looking for the ones I had already made. Alas, I have no idea where they went and despite my best efforts they remain ellusive. Perhaps, like me, that have become tired of snow, ice, and dirty slush and flew the coop. How I wish I could follow them! In the meantime, I bought some cut flowers at the grocery store so you can look at these arrangements while I go back and start my owls over again.

Do you love these old milk bottles as much as I do? I found them at an antique shop in Davenport, IA (Antiques on Brady). They have tons of bottles, but these are the ones that I've picked up so far. Also, I found this old metal bottle crate in the alley by my apartment last summer and now it finally has a purpose. Yay!

Are you as ready for Spring as I am?
-Meg