Friday Finishes

My quilted tablecloth is finished, and it is my first 2015 finish. I'm so pleased with how it turned out. I must admit to be wonderfully surprised and thrilled at how soft became after washing. It was pretty stiff feeling before but the bamboo batting really softened after the soak to remove my markings and a run through the washer.

Vintage linen collectors or hand-quilting purists may not be pleased with my finished project and that's okay. We all must do what brings us the most joy. I hand quilted using the big stitch method with Aurifil 12 weight thread in areas that were visible. The thicker thread really stands out perfectly, which is what I was going after. I also practiced my free motion stitching and machine stitched in areas that are not visible from the front but needed more quilting to hold the quilt together and keep the batting from shifting/separating from repeated use. I'm planning on loving/using this tablecloth for many, many years. It will become a December tradition to pull it out and grace the table with it. I may just have to extend that length of use through out January because it looks so pretty on the table.

I hope that seeing this project from the beginning to the end has encouraged you to breathe new life into one of your own favorite linens or rescue one from a antique shop. They are not difficult to find.

Additional photos are included below. Click on the photo to see a larger version.

In this first photo, you can see the border area I mentioned when I first started (bottom left corner). The manufacturer stamped the cloth just a bit off which made the cream border not as wide on that one end. To fix this, I would have had to cut down the border all the way around. I decided against doing that because I wanted to keep as much of the cream border as possible. I'm so glad I did because I stitched funky trees in it, and I just love how it looks.

Spirograph transformations & tablecloth pictures

In case you missed my last post, hubby gave me an early Christmas present -- a 50th anniversary Spirograph. It arrived on Friday but I couldn't play because I was working on customer logos.

I cracked open the box today which really isn't a box per se.  Instead it is more like a briefcase which I really like. It has a flap that folds over and is secured with Velcro. Each section has a plastic covering that keeps each dial safely in its section.

You can start playing immediately because it comes complete with everything you need (paper, pens, dials, instructions, and even some play-dough type substance that is supposed to hold the outer dial to the paper). In the olden days (yes I'm that old), push pins worked just fine thank you. The sticky dough doesn't do a good enough job in my opinion and you will end up messing up your creation right as you near the end of it. It can make a grown child weep I'll tell you!

I was mesmerized as my eyes watched each creation come alive and at the same time my head exploded with thread possibilities. What if....and if I did this...and how cool would this look. I could hardly stand it and immediately had to see how the ink spiros would look in thread and how it would look in different stitches.

Here are 6 different versions of the same simple spiro shown in the above picture. Isn't it incredible how such a simple object transforms into something more when done in thread!

Here are a few more photos of my favorite one. It took a little extra time creating this one but I love the look and yes it is still the same simple shape except that it has an extra twist with long jump stitches.

 And as of last night I am now onto the next border on the Christmas tablecloth. TADA.... isn't it looking great!

I hope I've encouraged you to to breathe new life into one of your cherished linens. If you don't have any linens yet, you can start hunting around locally or head to Ebay and even Itsy. Most are pretty inexpensive. Just read the descriptions well and really look at the pictures looking for stains. A few light stains are fine because your stitches will camouflage a lot of flaws.

Quilted Christmas

Does anyone else do what I do when I look at old linens? There is something about them that makes me want to touch and ooh over them. My mom would always pull out her best tablecloth for the Holidays and maybe that tradition made me appreciate them even more. Do you have any family linens that have been stored away for that perfect setting? Or maybe you are like I once was and believed that they should be admired from afar and never used.

How did I ever get into that silly tradition? Years ago, I would pull out my best dinnerware to use for the holiday and then put them away not to be seen or loved on for months on end. About 10 years ago, I stopped that nonsense, and I am not sure why I did, but it may have been a discussion that my husband and I had about the subject. Since that time we use our best dinnerware everyday! Each meal is special now and not just the few times a year that I made up in my mind.

If old linens could talk, can you only imagine the stories they could tell us. I would like to hear them for sure. I have several old linens that have been given to me and I have a goal of pulling them out and using them or using them to make something new. Is that sacrilege? I don't think so. In fact, I think that the original owners would be happy to know that they are still giving happiness to us.

Check out this tablecloth from the 50's!  I thought it was kind of special because it is on the small side at 50 by 51 inches, but then tables from the 50's weren't huge. I remember my parents had a red melamine table that had chrome legs! We were styling. I'm pretty sure the red seats were a red vinyl. I remember in the summertime, my legs would stick to the seat.  Yep...that must have been a vinyl plastic material.  

It has a few light stains on it, but nothing too noticeable. Our kitchen table is a small 36 x 36 inches so I thought this would look pretty dandy on it. Then I decided that I could add to the charm of the tablecloth by adding a border to it and a backing with batting and make it sing even louder.

Here's the next step.

Pretty sweet looking, huh!  Don't you think the red border really made it pop. Now the thing is with these pre-stamped tablecloths from this age is that the ink may or may not have been stamped square. This one missed the mark on the outside border so there is less cream on certain edges then on the opposing corner. I could have trued it up, but then I would have lost a lot of the cream which I wanted to keep. I figured that if it didn't bother the original owner I wouldn't let it bother me either. 

I did try to square the inside red border as much as possible and then basted it to the batting and backing and am now in the process of hand quilting it using the big stitch method. I'm using red Aurifil thread in size 12 and it is adding a lot of definition. The batting is a new-to-me bamboo batting. It was nice and flat which should lend itself well for a tablecloth. 

More pictures to be posted soon. What are you working on this week?