Stencil paint a tea towel with fabric medium and cardstock

 I am using fabric medium, which is a clear fluid meant to be mixed with regular acrylic paints in order to turn them into 'fabric paints'.  You could use straight fabric paints if that is what you have.  Remember to heat set them as directed.

I chose an old tea towel that had been through the wash quite a few times - for practice, and to see how long this fabric medium will wash.  Since I could not find my Xacto knife, I cut a simple botanic border in chunky geometric shapes using a pair of craft scissors.

I painted along the edge of the bottom between the 'leaves' and 'flowers' to create a border stripe and to help to line them up so I could repeat the pattern across the bottom of the towel.

When it dries, I will heat set it and throw it through the wash with something that won't matter if it bleeds through - like garden jeans etc etc.  I really like it, and hope it lasts well.  Wondering if maybe to mix up a second color and make some splotches and dots in a few of the shapes, or to leave it all one color.

a second time around, with a straight piece of paper laid out to create the border diagonally across the corner of a worn teatowel.  Use a good flat brush and place something absorbent behind the towel, like cardboard - or something tough, (as shown) like the top of a Sterilite or Rubbermaid container.  I used the container top because it is easy to wash off and as it is used for fabric storage, doesn't need to be pretty and perfect anyway.

Be creative, Enjoy!

 Esme helping out after she came home from school.

 

Thanks to Daddy for sweet pictures :) 

indigo 1.5 yards

1.5 yards of indigo fabric makes two pillowcases They needed a freshening up - so this was a nice project for today. Esme clowning around because I have the camera, and now she is outside stomping around on the porch and trying to help Daddy with yardwork.

Unplanned, but they go quite well with the yellow pillow.  

A little fabric marking tag to show which one of them goes on the bigger pillow.   Yesterday I did some repair work on some upholstered furniture for someone - cutting and sewing patches from extra fabric to repair tears and holes.  That used a lot of pattern matching and color sense, and they could barely see the difference after it was repaired in several places.  Not a bad job to take on - and it helped them out.  Sewing this little applique on is nothing compared to appliqueing velvet upholstery canvas around covered buttons and trying to follow the curve of a sofa arm!    Esme said we needed to cook something in the oven with all the ingredients - not fish sticks, they don't have ingredients.  So, we made a carrot cake into cupcakes.  We'll see how it turns out as the mix was one Grandma had given us a good while back.     I did the laundry and handed Esme each of her things to describe, and she got it all right until she got to her sheet.  She said 'what's that - I don't hear that word - is shaped like blanket, what is not?'  So I had to explain what sheets were again... and we went and put everything in her room.  I found out how all the socks end up back in the hamper each time.  As she puts all of her clothes up on her dresser she knocks them off the top of the pile instead of putting them in the sock pouch on the wall -- and she didn't even notice until I asked her where the socks went... and then she picked them all up back into the pouch.  Hmm...  She dropped a cookie on the floor downstairs the other day and put her foot over it so I wouldn't see she had dropped it.  She is getting some bad ideas, there! Lots of other little projects going on - a patchwork 'lone star' type diamond thing I am working on, still the bed size afghan (made quite a bit of progress on that), a journal I covered with a pretty wallpaper sample, some dishcloths for a coworker's wife... I have no shortage of things to do.

A different kind of project for me

Esme got to watch her mom use power tools today. She drug her chair into the garage and watched from a safe distance, kept asking me 'Are you done yet?' I felt like we were on a family trip in the car, she asked so often.


Extremely rustic vanity cabinet, made by Mom
I've been in the mood to fix up things in general, and this room needed all the help it could get with the concrete floor and corner

I've had this in mind for a while, and decided to try hard at it today. Mark said he would be available if needed, but let me try on my own, which was good. I feel 'left-handed' when I am using tools, like everything is on the wrong side of where I need it to be and that often keeps me from attempting. I've been known to hammer a screw into a board, but that is a rare occasion. If I work at it hard enough I get what I planned sometimes, and I learn more about my own process to get something done.

This little cabinet was made out of some scrap materials we had in the garage. It does its job, and I think I can make something even better further down the road. Mark said we could have bought a little vanity - that most people would have found that easier. Well, I am not the average bear when it comes to that. Removing the perfectly good sink would have meant replumbing. And yes, I'm in the plumbing department, but that does not sound 'easier' to me than hashing and seeing what I can do with materials on hand. The curtain is on a wire between eye hooks and has a lanyard hook so the wire can be easily detached, curtain removed and washed. The whole cabinet fits snug under the sink but also pulls out for cleaning. I might paint it with the blue mistint paint or leave it in the oak plywood it is now.

So, not square, not excellent 'woodworking', but I'm still proud of it. And since all of the materials were already in the garage, it just cost me about three hours of on-and-off construction time.

Handmade Bed Bug Back Pillow in Use with the Wii

Caterpillar Back Pillow
Shown in use while Mark plays the Wii.

They say sometimes your back hurts when you play the Wii. Mark has this game 'Rampage' he has been playing for a few days, and the Bed Bug is getting some use as a back pillow.


Esme watches intently as Daddy plays 'Rampage' on the Wii.

Esme LOVES to watch the game as the creature tears up buildings in a city. There are lots of noises and the monsters have silly antics.