Happy Halloween!

There's been less time for Halloween fun and Halloween crafting than I had hoped for this year, but we did make some cool foam pumpkins with our wonderful houseguests a couple of weekends ago:

And we made a trip to the local pumpkin patch:

And on Friday night I channeled Louise Brooks at a very wild and scary Halloween party:

I hope you're having a marvelous Halloween this year, too!

Reclaimed Vintage Dress Fabric

Earlier this month, I found a phenomenal vintage dress in a local shop. It didn't fit me very well, but I fell in love with the fabric and the shop owner graciously dropped the price until I couldn't resist it. At first I thought about taking it in until it was my size. But after examining the dress more closely, I decided to rip it apart at the seams and harvest the fabric to sew it into something else. 


I'm still in the ripping phase, but I thought I'd give a little peek at it while I'm figuring out my next move:

Pretty fun, right? 


It's been a few years since I tried to sew anything major, but I've really been drawn to any craft ideas that involve sewing lately. And I've got lots of inspiration for this project. I'll never forget the beautiful brocade outfit that Michelle Obama wore on inauguration day:

via life.com

And of course I drool over the examples on Mad Men:

via pennydreadfulvintage.blogspot.com

via amctv.com

But I know my sewing skills are too rusty to make anything as elaborate as the items above! So maybe a pencil skirt like this one?

via theoutnet.com

I could order this vintage pattern to get me started:

via etsy.com, seller bluettecourt

Wouldn't my fabric make a festive skirt for an upcoming holiday party? Wish me luck!

Wedding Ring Pouch

Earlier this month I was very excited to share the prayer flag that I embroidered for my girlfriend's wedding on 10/10/10; today I'm going to show you the little pouch that I made to hold the wedding rings during the ceremony. 


I drew my inspiration for this project from the AMAZING wedding invitation, which was designed by another friend of the couple. The invitation had a beautiful, boldly colored floral motif, which was even incorporated into the stamp on the envelope:

Here's the invitation itself (the type design was quite lovely but I erased the details in the interest of privacy; can you guess who's pleased with herself for learning how to use Photoshop today?):

Here's a close-up of the design element that I wanted to feature in this project:

And here's the pouch itself:

I should mention that this was my first time stitching on linen, and it was an absolute dream to work with! Now that my wedding-related crafts are done, I wonder which project I should focus on next...?

Embroidered Wedding Prayer Flag (with pseudo-tutorial)

As I mentioned in a couple of recent posts (here and here), I have been very much looking forward to the October wedding of my best friend. The wedding weekend has finally arrived, and the big day was yesterday, 10/10/10!


The brides invited their guests to decorate squares of fabric that would hang as prayer flags at the site of the wedding ceremony, which was held outdoors in the beautiful Hudson Valley. Here are a few of the flags:

I'll show you the one I made in a moment, but first I have to gush over the flag made by my girlfriend's grandmother (AKA Grams):

A craft-themed prayer flag with an embroidered Care Bear and a wee knitted sweater?! (Pardon me for a moment while my head explodes from its awesomeness.)


Like Grams, I decided my prayer flag should feature embroidery. I was a reader at the wedding, so I decided to stitch the first two lines of the poem I read, which was W.H. Auden's O Tell Me The Truth About Love:




I'm pretty darn enthusiastic about the method I have been using recently to transfer designs onto fabric, so I snapped some photos as I worked so that I could give a bit of a tutorial in this post. 


Here's the fabric before I started working. It's cotton, and vulnerable to fraying so I protected the edges with tape:

Then I drew my design on a bit of Sulky Solvy Water Soluble Stabilizer. (I love this stuff: it's super-easy to stitch through, and when you're done stitching, you just submerge your piece in warm water and it dissolves like magic! It's perfect for transferring a design onto something that's too dark for fabric marker). I taped the Sulky to the fabric so that it would stay in place while I basted it on.

Then I basted the Sulky into place:

Then I stitched! Here's how it looked before dissolving the Sulky:

And here's how it looked afterwards! I did get some fraying on the edges when I ripped off the tape, so I just used my pinking shears to tidy it up. (I am just now noticing that Grams did the same thing!)

Sassy insisted on inspecting the piece before we left for the wedding. Doesn't he look ominous here?

Getting a closer look. 

Happy, happy wedding, M & L! I was also very honored to create a little pouch that held their rings during the ceremony -- you can expect to see photos of that here in the coming days!

Blumenthal Gallery, Post Number 3

Today in the Blumenthal Gallery I'm going to feature our most recent acquisition, another painting by my father-in-law, Jack:

This one also hangs in our dining room. I love the warm tones and the way it feels like the sun is just coming up on a beautiful new day. Here's my favorite section of the painting:

"Juan Flora del Valle" -- does this sound familiar? Juan = Jack, and Blumenthal?

blumenthal Name Meaning and History

Jewish (Ashkenazic) and Swedish: ornamental name composed of German Blumen ‘flowers’ + Thal (now spelled Tal) ‘valley’.

from Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com/facts/blumenthal-family-history.ashx)

Blumenthal = flowers of the valley = Flora del Valle! Genius!