Saturday Digest

• The butterflies have been abundant in the tank garden.  New yellow ones showed up yesterday.  I planted fennel for the caterpillars, but they have also devoured the dill, the parsley, and the small snapdragons.  The fluttering life is worth every plant sacrificed!

• This 2 minute 15 second video humbles me.  This is recycling that makes a difference for a people who live in a world I do not know.
• This preprinted sampler, also seen here would be neat to highlight vintage fabrics or a collection of small objects!  Thanks Vanessa!
• I hope you're having a great weekend!

Warm 'N Toasty Pumpkins

Well sweater pumpkins seem to be pretty popular and I know why, they are really neat!  There also are a few tutorials available on the internet to make them yourself.

You can find one here at hummadeedledee.  And, another here at Small Fry & Co.

I found 4 great sweaters to use for pumpkins at a huge garage sale last weekend.  All sized kids to teens.   One went to my daughter's closet though when we got home.  :)

I certainly don't want to reinvent the wheel, but I will show you a couple of pictures of how I made them just because it's a combination of the two tutorials linked above.

For the small pumpkins in the cloches I cut a sleeve off one sweater and then cut it into five pieces.  Each is somewhere between 3"-4" long.  The bigger pumpkins were from pieces of the other sleeve about 6"-8" long.

To make the bottom of the pumpkin:

1. Turn the piece wrong side out. 

2. Gather the wider end with a long running stitch and pull tight. (no picture, sorry.)

3. Pull the gather stitch up and with your thread still intact begin stitching your gathered bottom together, forming the bottom of the pumpkin.

4. Turn the pumpkin right side out.

5. Fill with a ball of polyfill. I used batting because I have two big bags of scraps of it that I want to use up.  I just pulled the batting apart and formed it into a ball.

6. Gather the top of the pumpkin together and hold with clothespins or have someone help you...or be very coordinated and hold it with your hand while you tie the string around.

7. Tie it up tight with string or twine, yarn, etc....whatever you want.

8. Continue to wrap the stem with your choice of  fiber.  Since I'm a string fan, that's my choice.  

9. Secure the end with a bit of hot glue.

10. Thread a big needle with strong or double thread again and take stitches down from the top of the pumpkin, out the center of the bottom of the pumpkin, back up from the bottom and out the top.  Continue pulling tight and taking stitches until you have shaped the pumpkin to your liking.  I took about 6 stitches in each.  Then knot the thread at the bottom.

Your done.

I think you'll have fun making some!

The same but different:  I made these out of an old feed sack.  However didn't take stitches to form them.  I broke two needles trying to however.  The fabric was stronger, the pumpkins bigger, and my batting really thick on the inside.  Its OK because they shaped really well anyway.

More on the orange pumpkin on next week.  I used inkodye!

Update: Another fall project can be found here. (felt coasters)
And a fall wreath project here.

I'm linking up with:

 Fix It Up Friday 

I'm Lovin It at Tidymom.com

A Couple of Sweet Buys

I've had the pleasure of an auction and quite a few garage sales over the past 2 weeks.  I haven't taken pictures of all the treasures, but just had to show you two of my favorites.

This table was holding items for sale at a garage sale.  Usually when you see a piece used for display and ask if it's for sale, it's not...but, this time it was!

It's has a beautiful rust patina and get this, it's collapsible!!  It's a folding table and the legs easily fold down into the top.  It needs a good cleaning followed by a spray coat of finish and will be just perfect.

On the same outing, I found a LARGE bag of vintage fabric scraps!  The table is 4' by 2' so you can see this a quite a pile.  They were all compacted too.  Once I started "fluffing" them the pile grew!

I picked out a few of the scraps to show you why I was excited.

A great variety!

Just some seriously cool vintage patterns. 

It is possible this may not excite everyone :)

Besides all the scrappy projects that I will use these in, I'd like to come up with some sort of display to just showcase vintage prints.  I keep thinking of small squares of the prints on a canvas.  I'd love to hear any ideas that you may have!

Texture Tuesday

The theme this week for Texture Tuesday was "free & easy" or themeless... just use one of Kim's textures.  I wasn't going to post a picture today because I hadn't had time to take and process a photo.  But, when I got home this morning from dropping off the girls, the sun was shining in on one the many shoes around here that don't seem to find their home.  And, since I'm always taken with shadows, I grabbed the camera.

I used a layer of Kim's "brushed linen" and one of "yesteryear".  

Now, misplaced shoes take on a whole new light!