Wooden Thread Spools

It appears that I am "the keeper of

the spools." People have recently given me old boxes of wooden thread spools. Not that I know what to do with them, but they are just too good to throw away! (I know, I'm a pack-rat!)

I've recently received two batches. The photo above shows the tiniest spools. I placed an ordinary spool of thread with them to show the difference in size. They were little spools of silk thread, only ten yards in length. And they were in this box (below). I honestly do not know if this box contained those actual spools, but it's how I received them.

I needed to remove all the thread from the spools, as old thread just doesn't cut it after all these years. So I ended up with a lovely mixture of thread tangles.

These are the larger spools, mostly cottons, a few silks. It was interesting to notice the prices on the spools--stamped right onto the wood. 30 cents, 19 cents, and the lowest I saw was 15 cents (for 125 yards of size 50 thread). Imagine buying a spool of thread for that amount today!

Most of the threads proudly boasted that they were "fast to boiling" or "boilfast."

Also inside these boxes of thread spools there was also a fair amount of detritus. Some bent needles, dust bunnies, a scrap of fabric, and these two stamps. They say they are "Deutsche Bundespost" stamps. Now that was interesting!

Quilt for BabyStitches

Here is the quilt that I just finished and sent off to BabyStitches, our granddaughter. (See her own blog on my sidebar or here.) When she and her parents were here for Christmas, DaughterStitches really liked the quilt that I had made for BabyStitches to use while at our house. Something about it was just the right size for her little bed. It's kind of an in-between size, similar to a lap quilt.

She asked me to make one that they could use in their house in the same size, and in colors that would match the

nursery. I offered to make a scrappy quilt, as I did here. My reason for this was that this is a pretty fast quilt, and I might get it finished before BabyStitches goes to college!

Here is a close-up of the quilt, showing some of the fabric detail, and how the edges fray. All these little squares are just sewn (raw-edge) onto the quilt front in a random order. After the quilt is washed, all the small pieces of fabric fray around the edges, making a fuzzy edge to them.

And another photo. I like the pinks and greens that DaughterStitches and Son-in-Law-Stitches chose for this quilt.

For the binding I used some beautiful light green twill fabric from HarmonyArt. I'm proud to call this amazing fabric designer a friend. She lives near me, and I am always amazed to see her fabric collections--check them out!

This final photo shows the back of the quilt, as well, which is a pink flannel print. Nice and cozy for BabyStitches!

Another Fabric Basket

Here is a second fabric basket/bowl that I made recently (see earlier post here). This time I made it with all of my selvage trimmings from fabrics I've used. (Never did know quite why I was saving all those, but now I have a use for them!)

It was a lot of fun to make this basket, because the fabric strips were just chosen randomly, no color planning went into it at all.

Usually, strips a little wider, say 3/4" are best to make these baskets. And since I am fairly stingy when it comes to cutting off my selvages, many of my strips were more like 1/2". But that only meant that I had to use a few more strips.

Here is a close-up that shows some of the printing and the "color dots" that appear on the selvage.

And here's another close-up. You can see letters quite clearly here.

Now, this clothesline is available for purchase in a few different sizes. It ranges from about-enough-for-a-basket-with-some-left-over to GREAT-BIG-LONG.

And the clothesline doesn't come in a nice, easy skein (as in yarn). It's just a big loop, and that can get fairly hard to handle at times. After sorting out this 200-foot mess a couple times, I knew that I had to do something about it.

Thank goodness the FedEx man had just left a package that day, and I used the box to make a sort of spool on which to wind my clothesline. It's nothing fancy, but it works pretty well. At least it's not some long snake of a thing getting all wound around itself.

I can't wait to make more baskets now! I'd like to try something in an oval shape.

Redwork

I have finally tried doing some redwork! I've always admired it, and meant to try it, so I finally did.

I bought some plain white toweling fabric at a fabric store, then set about looking for redwork (or any uncomplicated embroidery) patterns on my computer.

My light box is a piece of paper and fabric taped onto a window. I used a brown Micron pen to trace the image.

Drinking tea is one of my favorite pastimes, so I found a cute little picture of a teapot. (I added the steam coming out of the spout.)

On the other end of the tea towel I embroidered a messy little jam pot. I thought that went very well with the teapot. The little seeds on the strawberry were fun to make!

My thanks to MisterStitches for helping me resize things on my computer, so the jam pot wouldn't be bigger than the teapot!

Up-cycled Denim Skirt

Here is a little tiny skirt that I made for BabyStitches with some recycled blue jeans. I found the directions at Tea Rose Home.

After I followed the directions on the blog for cutting out the skirt pieces, I called DaughterStitches to find out how long to make the skirt and how big around the waist should be. I had to cut off more than half the length or this skirt would have been dragging on the floor!

I especially loved the directions for the flowers that were given on Tea Rose Home. By using the right side of the blue jeans, the wrong side, and the part underneath the pocket, I was able to have three different colors of blue for the three flowers I put on the skirt.

I sewed them together just a little ways from the edge, so that they would fray when I washed the skirt.

And here is a cute little label I put inside, "Grandma Made It," alongside an extra, single flower.

(SisterStitches gave me these labels--aren't they fun!?!)

This marks my 100th blog post! Woo-hoo!! Wasn't sure I could last this long, but it's been almost a year now. So glad I have this blog. It's a lot of fun.

Sneak Peak of a Quilt for BabyStitches

My quilt for little BabyStitches is coming along. It's a scrappy quilt like this one which I made a few months ago. I love the pink and light green fabrics that DaughterStitches chose for the quilt. I am almost done sewing the little scraps of fabric down to the front of the quilt. Hope to get it finished up real soon.

AccuQuilt Cutter

Our quilt guild recently purchased an

AccuQuilt Cutter for our use. It is basically a die-cutting machine which cuts different shapes out of fabric. It's very cool--cutting several layers with awesome accuracy in a jiffy without having to use a rotary cutter. A wonderful machine! The photo below shows the machine plus some of the different die shapes that can be cut. The bottom right-hand diagram is showing how 2 1/2" strips can be cut all in a row.

I used it the other day to cut some diamonds for my Tumbling Block Quilt. I took several stacks of fabric with me over to visit the AccuQuilt cutter. What I came home with is shown below.

I have four different tumbling block sets, with 24 of each of the three diamond colors. That adds up to 288 diamonds. It took me about 45 minutes to cut all these, with no aching in my wrists or shoulders. It's amazing! This is not a power machine; it cuts when I turn the crank and roll the fabric through, with the particular die shape I've chosen, of course. And the crank is easy to turn, too. I had four layers of my fabric lying out to be cut through all at once. It is capable of cutting more than four layers of fabric. I think I've found a new friend!

Above are my two stacks of diamonds, with a playing card to show you how tall they are. This machine cuts like a hot knife through butter!

This many diamonds might actually keep me busy for a while. The pieces are all wonderfully accurately cut, too,which should help with my hand piecing.