>To cut or not to cut…

>I got this serape about 5 years ago at a thrift store for about 3 to 5 dollars.   I held on to it becasue I love the bright colors on the embroidery.  This is vintage probably from the 60’s or 70’s.  I have seen similar ones on the internet for between 175 dollars and 200 dollars. It said it is made out of wool so I had hopped it would felt and make a nice thick fabric to make a pencil skirt or suit skirt out of.

May still make the skirt but it would not be as warm as I had hoped it would be becasue it did not felt at all trust me I tried several times.  So here is my question is it a bad idea to cut up this.  I know it has a ton of embroidery in it and I know I will never wear it as a serape. I would wear it as a skirt.  Should I feel bad about cutting into this piece of fabric and in that process tossing some of the embroidery.  I really would like some feedback on this. There are more photos of this on flickr sorry I had a hard time getting a good photo of it.

>Part 7: Seven More butterflies done

>Two more butterflies to go on this curtain. Number one is almost done; too bad there are two of them, which means a total of 19 more butterflies to go. Yet this was a good amount to be done for one day. My six year old is excited that I am working on this; it’s a good thing she still likes butterflies or my sewing room would get its old curtains back with butterflies on them. On some of these photos you can see the weave of the fabric real well; that is because that is a real small butterfly on the curtain and I am zoomed in real close. The ones that you can’t see the weave as well are more the size of an adult female’s hand. So there is a variety of sizes and styles all over this curtain.

Part1: butterfly 1
Part 2: butterfly 2 and 3
Part 3: butterfly 4 and 5
Part4: butterfly curtain patterns
Part 5: butterfly 6
part 6: butterfly 7 and 8
Part 7: butterfly 9 – 15

>Part 6: Revisiting the Butterfly Curtain

>

Today is Conference Saturday for my church, and we are listening to the afternoon session of it. I listened to the morning session while at work. Whenever I listen to conference at home, I always work on a project. So I decided I needed to get back to my daughter’s butterfly curtains for her bedroom; these are the two butterflies I made today. I will do a few more tomorrow.

Sneak peak of one of the curtains in progress. Also one of the butterflies in the last photo has a quarter next to for a size reference to give you an idea of scale.

Part1: butterfly 1
Part 2: butterfly 2 and 3
Part 3: butterfly 4 and 5
Part4: butterfly curtain patterns
Part 5: butterfly 6
part 6: butterfly 7 and 8
Part 7: butterfly 9 – 15

>Re-purposed Dress into Butterfly Slip / Prize awarded

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So the butterfly girl wants a butterfly bedroom, but that all has to wait a little. Because she is having a real big growing spurt, we made a butterfly slip yesterday and today. I found this yellow piece of lace at an antique store and bought it just because it had butterflies on it. I love the butterfly silhouettes on this.

Then, three days ago I realized my daughter had grown out of all three of her slips. So I came up with an idea to correct this.

Re-purposed

At one time we had a dress that had tulle on it that kept ripping off, and I got tired of repairing it. So I cut off its underskirt, and sewed on lots of lace to give the slip volume to fluff up her dresses. Then took the pattern from the yellow lace, used size 10 thread and a size 5 steel hook and made three repeats of the pattern, also 3 solid rows so I had something to sew buttons to. Then I added crochet straps and attached to skirt. Wish I had taken a picture of the before dress; trust me, this is an improvement. My daughter is happy to have a so-called new slip, especially since it has butterflies on it. The lace is actually sewn on straight; it just looks funny in the photos.

500 Post Prize goes to:

“Javajem said…
Congrats on 500!!!
I always get inspired when I read your blog 🙂
Wed, Oct. 31, 2007 10:49:00 AM”

You can check out her blogs here, here, here and here

I will be sending out fat quarters, vintage mother of pearl buttons and other items. I need your mailing address to mail this to you. My email is on the side bar so you can send it to me privately. I would love to see what you make with any of the items.

>25 motif challenge cont..

>Here is the next little bit of this challenge; it’s not as big as the other items I have done. I really haven’t had much time to work on this or the butterfly room as of late, so I combined the two. Here are two butterflies that I tatted out of antique size 10 crochet thread. These are actually the size of quarters; I just took my photo in macro mode so these look much bigger than they are. Together I will call them item 11 for the challenge.

>3 down 33 to go

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I joined a winter quilt swap at MJF. I signed up twice, which equals 32 blocks, plus I have 4 others I am swapping with other people for a total of 36 blocks to be embroidered in less than one month. That is more than one block embroidered a day; I must have been crazy to do this to myself. But here we go. I am embroidering the trees and will leave them blank so the person getting them can decorate them or leave them plain. I am also doing snowmen; I haven’t started embroidering them yet, even though I have all the blocks drawn for the snowmen and the trees too, for that matter. The blocks all equal 12 1/2 inches square except for the butterfly; it is 8 1/2 inches square and one other that I haven’t drawn yet is also 8 1/2 inches. I will post these as I get them made. Might be boring to see so many or the same block, but nice to document my progress. This butterfly is one of the patterns I am also using in the butterfly room, too. Tree pattern is actually a quilting pattern that I modified for embroidery line work. That I modified with the help of my computer to make it about 10 inches tall instead of 7 inches.

>Butterfly Pillow

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butterfly pillow, originally uploaded by sunshine’s creations.

This pillow is made out of fabric napkins that have been embroidered on the edges. I didn’t do the embroidery, Leezard did; all I did was sew the napkins together, add the yoyo front and back, and stuff the pillow. I think it makes a cute decorative pillow for the bedroom. Still hand made, so to speak, even if someone else did the embroidery. I think it is sweet. Top photo is accurate to color of pillow bottom photo was taken at night and didn’t come out well.

>E is for…

>Excitement of a five year old. We, as most of you know, are working on decorating my five-year-old’s bedroom, and a few people have sent gifts to help decorate it. Every time a box comes with a little butterfly, squeals of excitement ring through our home. We have a long way to go before the room is done because most of the things I am getting for it are being hand made and not store bought like the lady bug room was that is in our house. A lot of the gifts she has been given are store bought, so those she already gets to enjoy in her room. That is just great with me!

1. gift from alee, 2. gift from sister, 3. gift from cinnamongirl, 4. gift from sister, 5. gift from alee, 6. gift from her aunt, 7. gift from her sister, 8. gift from mommom, 9. gift from old neighbor

I am just curious; how long can a 5-year old stay excited over a half done room? I hope for a while anyway. This is my little butterfly girl wearing wings from Mommom over at MJF. Her favorite song to sit and play at the piano (kid playing, of course) is called, yep you guessed it, “Butterfly Girl,” and yes, she is very happy to tell everyone she wrote it herself. It consists of her singing the words “Butterfly girl” over and over again as she hits keys on the upright for about 30 minuets. Then she goes around the house singing it for the next two or three hours; we are all so used to it we hardly notice it any more. When we do, we all usually end up in hysterical fits of laughter as the never ending song continues. So yes, we are encouraging this behavior by doing a butterfly girl bedroom. Why not? You are only young once, so you might as well have fun being young.

>#8 of the 25 motif challenge started

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This is number #8 in my quest to complete the 25 motif challenge. This pattern came from a circa 1900 salesman tatting sampler that I have hanging in my front room. You can see a corner of it in this post. I will make this as long as the thread will let me; I only have the one ball, so not too long. This is size 80 vintage variegated yellow tatting thread that was given to me as a gift.

The pattern is
R= 4, picot,4, picot, 2, picot,4,picot, 4, close ring make joins on 1st and 4th picot of rings
ch= 5, picot, 5

For those of you who are lace makers, yes, this doily has a coronation cord edging.

I wanted to make 25 edgings, but that may change now to bugs. My daughter, as most of you know, wants a butterfly bedroom. So the idea came to me of the curtain and now a new idea has come for a wall decoration. She is a little girl who likes bugs but doesn’t want to kill them, so I am thinking I will tat, crochet, needle lace what ever I can think of to make some lace bugs for her. Then we will put a pin in them and place them in a shadow box just as you would a real dead bug collection. But in this case she gets to name the bugs and nothing dead is on her walls. If any tatters or lacers want to help me and make a bug or two for her room, we would happily put your name below that bug as the creator of it. If not, then it will just be our own bugs.

DO NOT USE THIS PATTERN TO MAKE THINGS TO SELL FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY!!!!

>Part 5: Butterfly curtain

>Butterfly number 6. I wasn’t feeling good over the weekend so I didn’t get much done. I got this one and half of another done.

Part1: butterfly 1
Part 2: butterfly 2 and 3
Part 3: butterfly 4 and 5
Part4: butterfly curtain patterns
Part 5: butterfly 6

whipup