Thrift Store Gold...

Sometimes going to the thrift store is very unrewarding, and sometimes I strike thrift store gold!  Six vintage aprons, mostly hand-made (one entirely hand-sewn) and one vintage sewing basket:




Left to right: pinafore style cover-up, linen with embroidered flowers, delicate yellow cotton with fine lace on hem, purple cotton with rickrack and an attached towel.



Left: black floral with pink bias tape binding, right: red gingham with chicken scratch embroidery.  This one is all hand-sewn and beautifully done.  I'll have to take more photos when the light is better--it's very gloomy today!  There's a detail of the embroidery below.



And the sewing basket.  It has a box of old hook and eye fasteners and snaps inside.  It also has a top tray for organization and a green satin lining. It's very nice and in good condition.



I always wonder how these things end up at the thrift store.  I imagine some old woman died and her family donated these things when they cleaned out her house.  I was just delighted to find them, and put every last one of the aprons on the shelf into my basket.  For $16, these finds made my day!

Practicing Smocking

This is some fabric I received in a swap on Our Little Darlings.  I smocked it with red embroidery floss.  The pattern is one I modified (resized, etc) from a Rosemary Ionker pattern.  

My chickens are still laying at age 7!  This is the first egg of the season.  I still have four chickens left from the original 11.  The remaining four are Prudence, Ivy, Poppy and Buttercup, all Buff Orpingtons. They appear to be in decent health, with the exception of arthritic joints!

This weekend I've spent a lot of time outside, clearing out the garden and preparing it for planting.  It's been unusually warm, and we seem to be having April weather in March, which is OK with me!  My crocuses are up and I was able to fill up the ducks' kiddie pool today for the first time since about November.  Hooray for springtime.

Beautiful Anne and Happy Birthday to Me

My Anne of Green Gables, painted by Geri Uribe in about 2010 or 2011, started to have slightly foggy eyes, as can happen with a few of the older dolls.  I sent her in to Geri and she touched up her eyes, but also touched her paint up generally and she's like a new doll!  I was so happy.  She's beautiful, more beautiful than before, even!  I was just stunned when I took her out of the box because she's so much prettier.  I love her even more now.  Here's a photo:




And a picture of her before her touchup job. The photo is a few years old so her eyes were not dull at all in this photo:



She arrived yesterday.  Today is my birthday, so it was a lovely birthday present!

I have had a great birthday this year!  My little Olivia has been such good company all day. We opened presents this morning (she helped unwrap them, of course) and we made a chocolate cake with raspberry filling and raspberry buttercream frosting.  After lunch we went for a walk and then played outside for a while.  It's been over 50 degrees here today, which is unprecedented in my memory for February 28.  It's usually still definitely winter.  This afternoon we had some visitors, which was a lot of fun, especially since they brought homemade cookies!  I had two different renditions of the happy birthday song over the phone sung to me and some lovely flowers were given to me on Friday night in honor of my birthday.  This year I feel very appreciated and loved by all those around me.

To make the day more unique, this afternoon we watched a mink in the backyard poking around.  It was a unique sight since I don't see them that often.  They live in the beaver pond, and sometimes when they are hungry enough they come up.  This one was digging into a chipmunk hole repeatedly, trying to get the little chipmunk.  He had no success and finally ambled back down into the swamp.

So today I am 37.  A good age to be, and a new year of life to start with my ever-present optimism.  It was a hard year last year but I've come through it better than ever.

Pipos Pang

This cute little ball-jointed cat was a limited edition of 15.  I could not resist.  She's too cute!

A new girl by Nelly

This little brown-eyed girl was painted by Nelly Valentino.  She has red hair and beautiful dark brown eyes and a smattering of freckles. I love her gentle little smile!  I have to make her a new outfit of her own soon!

I'm a bad blogger lately...

But I'll try to be better.  Life has been a little bit tricky lately, and a little busy.  I haven't been sewing much or photographing my projects much.  But here are a few photos.

This is the dress I received as a lovely Christmas swap gift on Our Little Darlings.  It was made by Maureen.  So pretty!



And I have received two new dolls last week:  a Pipos Pang and a new #3 Little Darling painted by Nelly.  I promise to photograph them soon and share!

Made this little fox today from a pattern by Little Dear, Aimee Ray.  I have had the pattern for several years and love all the critters.  If I feel ambitious at some point, I plan on making all of the little Woodland Creatures and then a little treehouse to keep them in, but sometimes my ideas are bigger than the amount of time I have to invest in them!  :)

I've been on Instagram with most of my photo-worthy projects lately, so if you are interested in seeing what I'm up to lately, feel free to follow me there: @elizabethswhimsies.

Hopefully I will be back soon with more photos!

Doll Sewing and Random Pretty Things

My old camera finally died.  It was just an inexpensive Canon Powershot camera with minimal frills but it always took good photos!  The shutter button quit working, so I decided to get a new one.  It's a more powerful Canon Powershot SX520 HS and it has more functionality, a bigger lens, and takes nice photos!  Here are the first few I took:

Littlefee Ante in a new dress made with fabric I received in a swap:




Devon Marie (Little Darling by Dianna Effner, painted by Nelly Valentino) [I think this photo would have come out better against a lighter background. The face of the doll is a little washed-out.]


And here I was interested in seeing how the macro focus function does and got some beautiful photos of the mums I was using as a background.  Any of these photos can be clicked on to get the larger version at Flickr.

Some summer projects and photos

I've had a busy summer with not a lot of project time, but the pouch above was made from Bonnie and Camille's Daysail fabric with a pattern from Amy Sinibaldi's book Sweetly Stitched Handmades.  The embroidery is my own design.




This potholder was made for my kitchen and it's from a vintage pattern.  I made it with Dishie yarn from Knitpicks, which I have found to be the BEST worsted weight cotton ever!



This little kitten was fostered and adopted out of our clinic this summer.  He was a cute one!  If anyone knows anybody in need of a cat to adopt, I'm currently fostering five or six lovely adult cats.  :)




My garden has been a flower bonanza this year, but also sort of weedy!




And lastly, this fabric needs to be made into something!  It's Bloom and Bliss and I love the colors.  The print scale, for the most part, is perfect for small projects like doll dresses but also for larger ones.  This is a fat-quarter bundle but I may need to get yardage of a few prints, too.

Another hexagons project

I'm loving the book Sweetly Stitched Handmades by Amy Sinibaldi.  This is the second project I've made from it for a sew-along on Instagram and I'm having such a good time with it.  This particular project seemed to take me forever and I wasn't sure of my fabric choices until after I got them together and now I love them!  I'm not usually a fan of red, but I like this shade of red when combined with aqua.  I liked it so  much I made a special trip to the craft store yesterday to get ruby red #10 crochet cotton so I could do the lace on the edge.  Now I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it...either keep it and use it myself (it's technically a mug rug and a teabag will fit in that little pocket there that's labeled "Tea Time") or save it and gift it for Christmas to one of my family members?  I'm not sure any of them would like the colors, though...I'll have to think about it more!

This was a good project to do with little Olivia around because she could play while I did the handwork parts in the living room (the hexagons, appliqued leaves, quilting and edging were all hand done).   Olivia's getting old enough now that she can self-amuse for a while, which is great!  She'll play with my 1980s Care Bears for hours while I sew on my sewing machine in the craft room.  The Care Bears live up there just for that purpose and when I was about 20 I bought myself the Care Bears Care-a-lot Playset in mint condition and she's loving it.  It's not in mint condition any more, but oh well!  She's having such a good time with it!  Here she is with her bubble machine last week.

Olivia's quilt is all finished!

I finally finished it up completely.  It's made from patterns from Alicia Paulson's book Embroidery Companion and it was a lot of fun to make, but took me forever.  The majority of the fabric is 1930's reproduction prints.  I attempted to photograph it by clothespinning it to the lovely goat fence, but Anza tried to eat it so that didn't work too well!  All the photos are also on my flickr, so you can click to see them larger.

Full Quilt:

Closer views below of the embroidery:

My favorite color....

Today I whipped up a doll dress in my favorite color, aqua, because I was having doll-playing withdrawal!  I found this piece of fabric at Joann's the other day.  It would be sort of low quality for quilt making because it's thin, but it works really well for doll clothes!  It's a simple pattern but the dress just sets off Chloe's eyes so well. This doll is another Little Darling, painted by Joyce Mathews, and she's just gorgeous.  I adore her painting style so much.

Another project

I have been working on this quilt since before Olivia was born!  I was all set to get it done, and then she came three weeks early and I didn't finish it up till just recently.  It's from Alicia Paulson's Embroidery Companion book and I used 1930's reproduction fabrics to finish it.  I have to quilt it and then bind it but the majority of the work is done!  Click through for a bigger view.

Hand sewing lately...

I haven't been doll sewing lately.  I've been working on some quilts.  I also have been making myself a new tote bag.  I am using Pam Kitty fabrics that I have hoarded for a few years to make some hexagon flowers to put on the front of the tote.  This type of piecing is perfect for warm days on the deck.

My Birthday Presents

This is Chloe Grace, painted by Joyce Mathews.  She was kindly sold to me by a fellow member of Our Little Darlings.  She's gorgeous!  She kindly also shipped her fast so she arrived on my birthday and she included the lovely dress she's wearing, made by Trish.  I was a lucky birthday girl!

I also was a lucky birthday girl to receive this great serger!  I have practiced a little bit with it but still have lots of learning to do!

On a happier note...

I got a new lightbox.  I took some photos of Janie, a Little Darling (sculpted by Dianna Effner, mold #2, painted by Lana Dobbs).  She's wearing an "experimental" dress.  I used some plain white muslin because I didn't want to waste any white batiste, but in the end I think it came out alright and  maybe is better in muslin because it's not so sheer!  I used a Rosemary Ionker pattern from one of her books.  I wanted to try pintucking combined with hand-embroidery.

Hazel

Losing my feathered friends one by one...goodbye to Hazel.  I euthanized her today.

Baby Hazel in April 2009



Adult Hazel (front, red) with Prudy (back), her friend:

Long time, no posting!

Sorry about that!  I haven't had a lot of time lately to take photos or post.  I received a new doll, though, and would like to share her beautiful face.  Her name is Ruby and she's painted by Pat Green.  She's a 13-inch Effner Little Darling for those not familiar with them.  You can click through to my Flickr account to see more photos of her.




And I rewigged my Nelly Valentino doll, at least temporarily.  I'm still going to have a naming contest for her, either here or on the Our Little Darlings ning site.  I think the doll looks great in the darker wig, too.

Merry Christmas!

This is the close up from the little outfit (sweater and dress) I made for my swap partner on Our Little Darlings.  This little doll sets it off perfectly!

Huggy Bear by Dianna Effner

I think I have blogged about this little guy before but he's so cute he's worth a new post!  I haven't had a lot of photography time lately to take any new photos so here's an older one . He's painted and made up from a blank kit (by me) and is so cute!

Old Chickens...

The chicken ladies are almost six.  I euthanized Rhoda this morning.  She was not well and had a tumor in her abdomen, likely an ovary.  I don't think I mentioned it here, but Matilda died of the same thing on February 26th.  Sometimes it's easier not to mention sad news, but I wanted to share a few photos of them in their prime.  It's sort of silly, but I still cry over every one when they pass away.  They're good girls and have been good pets. It's just hard when our pets get old.  I will someday get some new chickens, but not until the majority of these girls pass away.  I have 8 ladies left, and they still lay pretty well for old ladies!  And they don't need their spectacles any longer (you can see them in some of the lower photos) because they are old enough now that the drive to feather pick each other seems to have greatly reduced.

Rhoda (4/1/09 - 10/12/14):

This is Rhoda, being broody, when she was still a young chicken in September of 2009.

Here is Rhoda two winters ago, hanging out with Rosie, who is preening.

And Matilda (4/1/09 - 2/26/14):

Matilda, resting, in the winter of 2012.