Portable Spring

This time of year, I, like most people, can't wait for lots of flowers in the yard.  Last weekend I stopped at a garden center to pick up a couple of pansies.  I wasn't expecting such a large selection of plants.  Wow.  Move over, dog, and make some room for plants!  

Sometimes I like to mix a variety of plants, and sometimes I don't.  I kept these primrose together, isolated, because it looked like one big bouquet.   I first tried them in a larger pot, farther away in the yard,  but they were so short they were hard to see.  So I replanted them in a purple metal pot, and set it on black elevated legs right next to a spot we walk past frequently.

Primroses are so hardy.  Even the ones you buy for the house can be planted outside and they come back reliably the next year.

Nothing says instant garden like a hanging basket.  I like this plant stand because it folds flat for winter storage.  Sometimes I put it on my outside table for a large centerpiece.

The daffodil and hyacinth bulbs were forced to bloom at just the right time.  By buying them potted, I didn't have to dig any holes last fall, nor worry about squirrels digging up the bulbs.

The fairy princess was outside all winter.  She had been next to a bush, and wasn't very visible, so I forgot about her.  One of her wires rusted and she fell off her perch, but I fixed her up good as new for this year.  This time I stuck her in a pot where I'll be sure to see her often and not forget about her this fall.

Both the daffodil and hyacinth came in these pretty silver buckets.  I like a little sparkle in a garden.

The Oesteospermum on the right came in that yellow pot.  I'll be able to use it again next year.

The nice thing about my portable spring is that I can move the plants wherever I want.  Since this picture was taken, these plants have already moved to a new spot that I can easily see from my sewing room window.

Plans often change when I get home.  I was going to plant the columbine in the ground, but I don't know if rabbits eat them or not.  You'd think having a dog and lots of dog odors in the yard would keep rabbits away, but no.  Now the plants are elevated and should be safe for awhile.   Being a perennial, I'll eventually move them into the ground.

Most of the flowers I bought were yellow and purple, so I threw in some orange accents for a little relief.

When the weather warms up and I get the rest of my flowers, I want to get some for the hummingbirds.  I think they might go for these.  I thought they only liked red flowers, but that's not true.  

Maybe they'll go get a drink of water since it's right in the neighborhood.  Last year we switched to a hanging bird bath because racoons kept knocking over the standing one.

As you can see, I came home with an almost instant, and totally portable garden.  Some hanging baskets, some flowers already in nice pots, and some that needed planting.  By the end of the day, everything was in a light enough pot that it can be carried into the garage in case it gets below freezing.

Tool Roll

I didn't have any intention of making another tool roll until I went to the bookstore.  I had made one for myself over a year ago and I still like it a lot.

But over the weekend I made this one out of flannel.

You know how it is with magazines - all shiny and colorful and inspiring.  I picked this one because it had lots of small projects that I could make for our guild to sell, and because it was under $10.  I have a really hard time spending more than that for a magazine.

The tool roll looked like a fun and easy project.  Plus I've been looking for ways to use up some of my material in short bursts.  I seem to have collected too many fat quarters that don't really go with anything else.

The way I made this wasn't exactly like the magazine's directions.  They have a narrow, batting-filled strip sewn across the width of the roll, between the top edge and the pocket.  I can't figure out what it's for.  It's not a skinny pocket - it's almost like a bumper to cushion the scissor handles.  Whatever.  I left it off.

I liked this pattern because it was one big square, 18" x 18".   You make a sandwich and quilt it,  then fold the bottom up to make the pocket.  My sandwich was a little smaller - 14" x 18" before folding.  The finished dimension is approximately 9" x 18", with a 5" pocket.

The other thing I like about it is the binding.  The roll I made for myself last year was sewn right sides together, then turned inside out and top stitched.  I like the extra decoration that binding gives.

The pattern calls for making your own ties, but I like to use non-satin ribbon instead - much easier.

Quilting was free-form horizontal lines.  Good thing the print was non-directional, because my stitching was a little slanty.  I picked the edge that was straightest and that was the one that got folded to the inside.  Because of the strong contrast between the aqua and orange, the misalignment would have been too obvious.

I machine stitched the binding on the top edge of the pocket, but hand stitched the binding on the outer edges.

There was enough leftover flannel to make another little project from the magazine.  More on that later.

Threefold Return

It's hard to get a good rate of return on an investment, but I think I did pretty well recently.  As part of my sewing room redo, I came across five spools of ribbon I bought at a dollar store.  When I bought them, I had a vague plan to use them on a tote bag project I had in mind.  But deep down I knew I wouldn't use them.  They were solid colored, satin finish, non-cotton, and incompatible design-wise and function-wise with what needed to be a washable item.  I think I bought them because I liked the colors.  

Not only that, but I no longer wanted to do that tote bag project.  I decided to return the ribbons for a refund.  The dollar store people told me I couldn't get my $5 back, but I could pick out five other items.

I found these two pots in the garden area.  If they had five, I would have taken them all, and gotten a 1:1 rate of return.

Then I found seeds, four packages for $1.  Ooh.  This was about the only variety that was left, but I was glad to see them, having recently read that birds like to eat Cosmos seeds.  Hopefully that means after they bloom and go to seed, not when I plant them.

I found a package of blank note cards - eight for $1.  I already sent one to a friend.

Now I only needed to find one more item.  Since I was there because I bought not-useful items in the first place, I was determined to only come home with things I was sure I would use.  I was tempted by a pink pig plastic spatula, but I had just finished watching Plastic Planet and was trying to cut down on my plastic consumption.

I went round and round and round that store.  After way too much time, I plucked a balloon out of the air.  I know this has plastic in it, and I do feel guilty about it.  

Anyhow, that's the story of how I got a threefold return on my investment:
5 spools of ribbon = 2 pots + 4 packages of seeds + 8 note cards + 1 balloon (15 items)

Or to put it another way, 5 things I wouldn't use turned into 15 things I love.

Thread Table Topper

I've been spending a lot of time lately redoing my sewing room for spring.  A redo in my book always needs to include a little reorganizing and reusing. 

I wanted more white in my sewing room, so I stole this table from another room.  At first, I put a plant on it and it looked pretty good.

But as part of the redo, I got distracted by my thread which was hidden out of sight in two small dresser drawers - one for cool colors, and one for warm.  I was hoping to consolidate them down to one, but they didn't fit.  I didn't want to put them back in the same drawers - what fun would that be? 

Then I remembered this wooden shadow box that my husband made many years ago.  For awhile I displayed some of my little purses in it, but I tired of that long ago, and it's been sitting, idle, in the basement.  With its shallow depth, I knew it would be just right for thread.

This time around I arranged by type (metallic, rayon, cotton) and spool size.

Once all the thread was in there, I realized it had to be stored horizontally, to make it easy to grab a spool.  But with limited space, where to put it?  That's when I moved the plant off the table and put this on it instead.

On an episode of HGTV's White Room Challenge last week, a contestant pressed live flowers under a piece of Plexiglas to make a table top.  My husband remembered we had two sheets of tempered glass, leftover from a fireplace we used to have, in the basement.  He brought them up, and they fit good.  Now it's perfectly functional as a table top.

You can see there's some empty area in one of the slots. 

This seemed like the perfect thing to set on top of the empty spot, especially since I was nearing the end of my redo and hadn't yet found a spot for it.

It worked especially well since this table sits next to my rocking chair.  When I'm not in it, guess who is?

Not Just Another Pretty Face

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
                                                                --- William James

Vintage Paper Dolls

Ever since I got in the mood for fashion illustration, I pretended to myself that I could draw cool clothes and then color them with paint or pencil, or maybe even make one-dimensional clothes out of fabric.  But lately I've had good luck finding vintage paper dolls, so I think my work is already done.  The hard part was finding adult dolls - there's plenty of children paper dolls, but I wasn't interested in their clothes. 

I bought this 1940s-era set, already framed, at a flea market last month. It's big!  The doll is 13" tall and the frame is 18" x 24".  I don't think this was ever played with.  It's not like other paper dolls I've seen - this set looks to be hand illustrated, based on the clarity of detail and the overpainting into some of the tabs.

When I was young, I went to a circus and watched, amazed, as an interminable number of clowns climbed out of a Volkswagon beetle.  This box, and its contents, were a recent flea market find.  I was pleased that this vintage box was filled not with stockings, but with paper dolls.  

The seller thought there were a few sets mixed in there.  The box measures 7.5" x 9.5".  At only 1/2 inch thick, it held all the paper dolls (and more) that you're about to see.  Most of them seem to be from the 1950s, based on clothing style.

A friend came over this past weekend, and helped me sort through them all.  I was glad for the help - who knows when I would have gotten around to this without her?  

First we started with the dolls, then did our best to find the clothes that fit.  This poor doll lost her legs from the calf down.

This doll has the same face as the previous, but she's facing a different direction and now she has legs.  I believe that green outfit in the lower left is for ice skating.  Who designs such an outfit for cold weather, I'd like to know.

The poodle duster at the top definitely dates this as 1950s.

This is the third and final doll of this swimsuit set.  She's the party girl - lots of fancy dresses.

I have a Roy Rogers paper doll, can you believe it?  His robe has an "RR" monogram, not that you need that to tell you who it is.

And yea, I have Dale, too.

No Trigger or Bullet, darn.

Next we found lots, and I mean lots, of clothes without a doll.  We called her Skinny Lady because these clothes were too narrow for the swimsuit dolls. 

We threw away some fur, but I see we missed a couple.  

Skinny Lady had a wide variety of clothes, and her wardrobe was my favorite.  There had to be more than one Skinny Lady, based on the orientation of the clothes and arms.

The last set was for a wedding party.  All the tabs were labeled: bride, groom, maid of honor, bridesmaid, flower girl.  No dolls for this set.  Unfortunately, these dresses were longer than the box and were folded to fit.

I had one outfit for the groom - his jammies and robe.  Guess he doesn't go out much.

This is the last of the bride set.  

There were a few other straggler clothes, not very exciting.  And I just remembered that I do have one doll from the bride set - it's the flower girl.  She has an outfit that makes her look like Little Red Riding Hood, so I'm not sure where she'd wear that.

There's no way I'd be able to draw clothes like this, so true to an era.  I'm not even going to try.