"Apron" Curtains

I love vintage aprons. I don't want to use them as a window valance, because the afternoon sun would destroy them. I have a small wire frame "mannequin" that I use to display them one at a time in my dining room.

Mom gave me the idea to use the basic shape of an apron as a valance, but made with new fabric. I decided to try it, and even found some vintage-look Christmas prints at Joann's. I made a pattern piece for a gently-curved half apron, sized to fit my window. Each of the "aprons" is 20 inches wide at the top, 25 inches wide at the bottom, and 15 inches long, not including the rod pocket, which adds about 1.5 inches to the length.

Basically, I hemmed the sides and the bottom, sewed the contrasting rod pocket to the top, added a matching decorative pocket to the left front, and sewed on rick rack. I did it in a single morning.

Yes, Virginia, that is a Kitchen Witch. I didn't set out for it to, but the new valance coordinates with her.

Note that they are not as full as more traditional curtains would be. Usually, you want your fabric to be about double the width of your window, but I wanted the apron shapes to be apparent. My window is 72 inches wide, the width (at the top) of my valance is 100 inches. It has a little fullness, but isn't bulky.

I also didn't sew all of the pieces together; each of those "aprons" is a separate piece, that can be rearranged and maybe more importantly, can be washed separately. I did prewash the material, but with all those colors with the off-white fabric...

I went with three solids and two print (that were the same background color) so that it wouldn't be too busy. Each apron has a coordinating rod pocket and front pocket; for the five aprons, there are eight different fabrics. (In part because I couldn't decide between some of the prints, so I found a way to use most of them.) They overlap on the corners, showing off the decorative pocket. If I was feeling really ambitious, I suppose I could put something lightweight in the pockets, like little artificial flowers, or something, but I like they way it looks as is.

I'm so pleased with the way this turned out, I'm going to make more for year-round use, using more retro prints.

nighttime

Current Obssession

I have a great affection for glass. Clear, colored, leaded, pressed, blown, cut... Some women go for glitter or diamonds, I like sparkly glass.

I had the nifty idea to use orphaned china saucers married with glass bowls to serve as whatnot dishes. I have a couple in my bathroom holding lipsticks and hairpins, but they could hold change, bracelets, sweetener packets, etc. I saw the idea for reducing clutter functionally in a magazine: You collect pretty cups and saucers, but have nowhere to display them, so put them in a dressing table drawer and use them to hold jewelry. That's all fine and good, but I don't collect teacups, and I don't have a dressing table. Also, the tiled-surface bathroom (where I put mine) seemed like a good way to shatter the pieces, so I used E6000 to glue them together, making it less likely that I'd tip the bowl off the saucer, making the assemblage more stable, reducing the risk that I'd end up with glass in my foot.

The center two are in the bathroom, holding hairpins and ponytail elastics, and lipsticks, respectively.

I was in Goodwill scrounging the pieces, and spent ridiculous amounts of time finding the right glass piece to go with the saucers I'd chosen. The base of the glass dish needed to fit in the depression that was for the teacup, and I wanted the look of the glass to compliment the saucer. For instance, the top right pair both have a swirled texture - hard to see from the picture, but the lip of the saucer has the same kind of texture as the little bowl.

So that's where my lunacy started. Then I looked at the piece of garden art my mom got me for my birthday: a "flower" of stacked glass (plate, bowl, vase, nested together and displayed on edge, perched on Rebar), and started looking online for other examples of repurposed glass. I found more flowers (most of them not as skillfully made as the one Mom got from a central Illinois artist), and I found "garden totems." Garden totems must be the official garden sculptures for the Royal Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things. Basically: vase, plate, vase, bowl, plate, vase. They can be perched on poles or set directly on the ground. (Here's a link for pics and how-tos.)

It seems simple enough, until you hit the thrift store and start trying the pieces together. It's a little tricky to get scale, color (if you're using colored glassware), shape and fit just right. Like my saucer/bowl pieces, I want the various pieces to fit together well, so that the fit will help the glue do its job - if the bowl on top of the vase is too small, it will be harder to get the pieces to glue perfectly vertically; if too large, it might make the overall piece tippy even on a stake, and might lead to breakage.

Since I wasn't sure what I wanted, exactly, I might have gotten a little carried away...

Goodwill haul after hitting three different locations.

Most of the pieces I picked up were 99¢ though some were more, some less; they average at about a buck a piece. Colored glass was much harder to find and some of the glass is painted not colored itself. The orange vase is painted, so it may not weather well, but it was so pretty I decided to take a chance.

Isn't that orange spectacular?!

I'll pair that orange vase with some amber glass, and a small ruby bowl, and get a warm little tower for my garden. The green pieces might seem crazy... green glass in a (hopefully!) green garden might be lost. But perennials are expensive, and I'm far too lazy a gardener to mess with annuals every year, so my garden art will serve as pretty little bits of color until the beds fill in.

Sparkly!

Making clear glass sculpture will be a cinch! Tons and tons of candle holders, vases, bowls, plates - some leaded glass piece, even. I'm looking forward to playing with this, and looking forward to spring, and making my flower beds look a little less sad...

Xmas Fabric

Here are all the fabrics for the star-shaped vintage tree skirt I have planned:

I'm considering appliquéing the Santas onto the green - or it may be too much (trouble, time, pattern).

And this is the candle fabric I couldn't resist, but don't have plans for. It's the least red of all the red fabrics, having a pink cast to it.

The pattern calls for sewing gold rick rack onto the tree skirt, and I'm considering that, too. Vintage pattern, vintage-inspired fabrics, vintage-style embellishment... all to go under my vintage aluminum tree! Stockings will also be made from four of the five reds under the tree, accented with the solid green, with cuffs.

Currently, the only fly in my eggnog is the fact that the pinup skater material has a much larger pattern than the others. I think it will be fine, but I wish that design was a little more on scale with the others. Nothing's perfect, right?

Revised Tree Skirt, Stockings

A couple of things happened today to make me revise my plans for that star-shaped tree skirt: 1) eQuilter sold out of the green fabric (the one with the ornaments on it), and 2) I didn't want to chase all over hell trying to find it. Talking to Mom about it, I decided and she agreed that plain, solid green might serve me better than adding yet another pattern to a design that will already have 5 different patterns on red backgrounds. So I got some plain green cotton... and a vintage Santa on green, and some retro candles on red... It was 75% off! I couldn't resist! NO IDEA what will become of it, but it's definitely a retro thing going on, even if the years don't much match up. I may use the Santas as appliqués on the solid green. It looks like old 1940s wrapping paper - it's great! Same with the candles, only not as youthful. Don't know what I'll do, but I'll use it for something. Eventually.

For the stockings, I found a McCalls pattern (free!) that I liked, and a paw print stocking at FamilyFun that I thought was cute. Only problem was, they were two different sizes, and frankly I thought the paw was too big anyway. Through the miracle of Photoshop, I spliced the two together, creating this: 

I resized the bottom of the paw until it met the sides of the regular stocking. Then I resized the paw pads to allow for a 1/4" seam allowance that the original did not have. Now the two patterns will be very similar in shape and size, since all I did was modify the foot of the stocking. I'll use the solid green for a cuff on both patterns, and for the paw pads on the dog's stocking. Since the first stockings I made in college for my sweetie and me were hand-sewn, doing these on a machine should be a snap.

I have hit another snag, however. The pattern piece for the tree skirt is about 26" long. The half-yard of the snowman fabric I ordered is too short, and the pattern of the material is not going to rotate 90 degrees and look right. So I either need to find another red background retro print to go with the others, or order another 3/4 yard of that snowman. *sigh*

Vintage Tree Skirt Pattern

I won an auction for a vintage tree skirt pattern. I've scanned all the pieces and uploaded them to Flickr to share with anyone who's interested.

The scanned pattern pieces are printer-friendly. Everything I received is in that photo set, except for the pattern piece made from a 1968 newspaper page. (All it is is the full-size diamond piece, rather than half the piece that is supposed to go on a fold.)

This is the pattern that inspired me in my Dec. 16 posting.

Found My Xmas Spirit!

(It was hiding in a pile of laundry.)

Here's my aluminum tree. Actually, it's my second one, but this one's in better shape. It's a long and uninteresting story as to why I have one of these antiques in the first place, so I won't bore you with that.

The color wheel is different from most. Each quarter wedge has a stripe of all four colors (red, green, blue and amber), instead of the wedge being one solid color, which is the usual arrangement.

This photo is blurry, but you can see how the multicolor stripes illuminate the tree with more color than just one as it rotates.
That's my dog, Cody, unimpressed with the tree, and a bit of a sleepy old man at 14. (He's a Border Collie mix, if you're curious.)

Oh look! A couple of wiseguys! Er, wise men. Here's Balthazar and Caspar - but where's Melchior?

Ah, there he is! These guys look great on a silver tree don't they? The metallic plastic is just the thing to celebrate Mithras' birthday. Who? Oh him...

Even the rubber tree got a little bling. In the background you can see, a set of "marbleous" ornaments (acrylic paint poured into glass balls, and swirled) and my daughter's very first xmas portrait.

The first year I tried decorating one of these beauties, I quickly learned that they just won't hold the weight of modern resin/plastic ornaments, so most of my Hallmark ornaments stayed in boxes. I began collecting older ornaments, the tacky plastic ones made by Jewelbrite and others, because they're so much lighter, and really add to the je ne sais quoi of an aluminum tree. My real prizes are the pressed aluminum snowflakes - they're fragile and not in great shape, but I love them! In the 3rd pic (from the top) you can see the bright pink and the green one toward the bottom.

Currently, I have silver and red metallic netting under the tree serving as a tree skirt. I have Plans for a new one, but no time to get it sewed between now and the 25th.