Thrifting and Thank You's

It is such a treat to spend time wandering around one of the sweet little antique shops in town or perusing a consignment or thrift shop!  We have plenty of them to poke around in - in our lovely little valley.  (I've yet to attend a flea market, as we don't have any around here ~ but that adventure will come someday down the road!)

This adorable little striped apron begged to come home with me.  Look at the itty bity ric rac. And it's a Fruit of the Loom!  Remember those funny commercials with the men dressed up in their fruit costumes?

 Collecting papers for a fabric journal in the works...

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I have met the sweetest women in my circles of life.

A friend gave me this beautiful stack of hand knitted dish cloths

(they are one of my favorite things!!)

last week with the sweetest little note. 

 Our guild president handmade this sweet little sewing kit, 

just for me :)  It is a gem. 

(Even thought I failed at photographing)

I love seeing some scraps from our pillow projects!

Thank you, thank you!  

Love certainly makes the world go round!

Trunk Show

I was invited to share a trunk show at My Girlfriends Quilt Shoppe yesterday in their newly opened Attic!  What fun it was!  The store is adorable and they have done such a beautiful job with the space upstairs in "The Attic".  It will be a great place for them host events and functions and I'm really happy for them.  After jibber jabbing awhile about how I became interested in wool and a little chat about dying and felting wool and showing a few of my creations...we got to work making some cute little mason jar lid covers.  The ladies are a blast to be with! And much as I enjoyed the morning, the big treat for me was stepping in the room next door to see the group of rug hookers from the valley and some of their beautiful rugs!  Rug hooking was my first love affair with wool and seeing all of their amazing rugs gave me a shot in the arm!  Can't wait to pull out my frame and start stripping and hooking again!!  :D

Hope your spring is as beautiful as ours is in Cache Valley!

Thank You!

Karen was the lucky winner :) Her prize is this sweet little birdie. I made her

from a soft creamy piece of wool, cotton script fabric and embellished her with

buttons and and trim from the jar.  The spool she is perched on was also from the jar.

Hope you enjoy her, Karen.

Our Spring Open House was a success!  Thanks to everyone who came by for a visit.  It was so fun to chat and hear about your latest projects. What a beautiful time of year! I just love stitching in the backyard listening to the birds chirp.

 New threads and ribbons...

 Everyone who came got to take home a little kit to make their own

bird on a spool.  Here is a photo for reference.  They are quick and super fun to create!

(OOOPS! Please note that the body piece should be cut on the fold

I forgot to notate that on the pattern piece - sorry about that!)

 My cute friend Lisa shared a few projects she has done and is currently working on. 

Her stitches and embellished work is beautiful!

 Enjoy your Spring, feathering your nest and creating!

We Have a Winner!

Congratulations to Karen who guessed 142!  The items in the jar number 151.  Karen - I'll have your prize ready Monday and post photos of it then. Thanks for playing,  everyone!

One week count down until our Spring Open House!

Hope you can stop by! 

Del Rey B.'s Jar

Are you ready for some F U N ?  Today I found a wonderful treasure at one of our local antique shops.  It was a giant jar of really neat vintage sewing items.  Just look at that lid!  Did the owner of this jar catch a Caterpillar and watch it turn into a beautiful butterfly one day?

 

I am supposing the jar belonged to 

Del Rey B. because her name is written on the back of

a ruler...so whether or not all these goodies were hers or her

mother's, grandmother's or her daughter's, I am calling it Del Rey B.'s Jar.

I could hardly stand the excitement... hours later I am still smiling!  

So I decided it would be fun to have a little c o n t e s t !

The person who guesses the exact amount of items in the jar will win a cool prize!

I'm not sure what the prize will be...yet, but it will be inspired

by vintage and thriftiness and chosen or made especially for the winner! 

You can guess once.  

If more than one person guesses the correct number we will have a random 

drawing of those who guessed it right on the nose.

Sound fun?  OK! Let's do it!!

The jar is gallon sized.

I will give you a few more photos to look at so you 

can make a good guess! 

The view above will be one side and here are the three other

quarter turns of the jar:

 

Bottom of the jar...

 Top...

It was such a neat thing to empty the jar and pull the contents out one by one...

I will even go as far as saying reverent because I can imagine how precious

things such as needles and scissors were so many years ago.

Most of us have no idea what it is like to go without 

and feel driven to save every little scrap. 

This ball of string is many little pieces of string all wound together.

I have heard stories about people who saved bits of string...

but I have never actually seen one of these balls of string. 

It has stirred up lots of thoughts about excess, re-purposing & not wasting...

 I am fascinated that she would have saved a small length of tan thread and 

wrapped it over the blue - just in case she might need it later...

 This needle case is beautiful!

 Are you catching a few "clues"?  The jar was not filled with as many buttons as I thought it would be.
One other tip...if the needles or items were in a package - it counted as one item. I only counted loose items...except a couple of button cards that had a few buttons on them - each button was counted. If a needle was tucked into a spool of thread - I counted it, too!

 Good luck with your guess! 

The contest will be open until April 12th at 6:00 pm mountain time :)

Use it up, wear it out.

Make it do or do without.

Photo Shoot Special!

I believe the highlight of my business is meeting all the wonderful, creative, fun and inspiring people I get to meet!  A few weeks ago Stephanie came over to get some wool for some props she was making for her business...Stephanie Hyde  Photography.  She asked if we ever let people use the studio for photo shoots and I told her no one had ever asked....but that she was welcome to come and shoot away! She is having a special until the end of the month ~ $50.00 for a photo shoot! check out her blog HERE! She does a beautiful job and is such a delightful person! Here are a few of the pictures she took on Monday:

Beautiful photos and a beautiful mama-to-be!

Admiration

This post is l o n g overdue!  It's a story that happened back in December of 2010.  I made brief mention of it on our family blog and never took the time to get the photos uploaded. I have finally finished uploading them. With the class our guild had with Kerry Green this past week - I was inspired to share this.  It seems many of us have fallen in love with embroidery and embellishing wool projects.  As you will see, Sally should wear a crown in this arena. She is a master at it!

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Mark & I have made several pilgrimages to Boston. We love it back there. We love the American History, the quaint architecture, the amazing restaurants and my family roots from the New England area. My mom grew up about and hour south of Boston. This December Mark attended a conference there and we went with our dear friends the Harkers. It was their first trip to Boston and we had a blast seeing it with new excitement.

Months before the trip I was doing some poking around online to see what was going on while we would be back there. To my surprise and delight I discovered one of my favorite artisans, Sally Mavor, would have some of her work on exhibit at Danforth Museum near Boston and she would be there doing a book signing while we were there! What a treat that day was! Stacey & I got ourselves train tickets to Framingham and after one wrong turn and a walk through a dicey neighborhood - we got ourselves turned around and enjoyed the sweetest afternoon. Photos do not do justice to her incredible work. Seeing it first hand was remarkable and I was even quoted in a local newspaper article!

We looked around the gallery while we waited for her lecture to begin.  It was so  captivating to study the beautiful three dimensional illustrations!  They were incredible!

She was very warm and gracious as she chatted with us and signed books.

It was so fun to listen to her talk about her inspiration and the journey this project took her on.

If you have a few minutes - check out this link on Sally's blog.  It will give you a peek into her studio and her thoughts.