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| I've been working on all sorts of craft projects recently...making lots of new items for the fair I mentioned on my previous post, which is fast approaching, as well as stocking up my shop... |
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| At first I wasn't sure how best to utilise this old hand embroidered tablecloth, that sadly was torn and stained... |
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| The best thing about it was the neatly stitched flowers, so I thought I'd carefully cut them all out to use for a flower garland. |
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| Lots of lovely flower motifs. |
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| I supplemented them with some others I had saved from past projects. |
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| Taking a reel of cotton tape from my supplies, I then stitched the flowers randomly down the length of the tape using my sewing machine. |
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| Pretty garlands to add a decorative vintage touch to the home... |
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| Or shop! I made this longer length to decorate the shop, using some pretty hand embroidered pansies... |
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I bought a large array of country style pieces from a friend, so set about revamping them last week. I wax polished the lovely old trug/wooden basket and painted some of the other pieces in a soft cream eggshell.
A willow basket with damaged handle was made new again with a binding of cheerful gingham fabric glued in place.
This large laundry type basket had a lining made to fit, which I fashioned from an old coffee bean sack. I carefully hand stitched it in place around the top. Perfect for storing fresh vegetables perhaps, in the farmhouse kitchen?
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| I've put together another collection of garden gift sets, containing vintage garden tools, clay pots and useful gardening books. |
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| This rather sad copy of Beatrix Potter's Flopsy Bunnies was damp, tattered and torn when I discovered it at a flea market - Consequently, I felt OK about cutting it up to make a collection of greetings cards. |
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| I was able to rescue quite a few of the illustrations inside, trimming where necessary to avoid any watermarks. |
I made a second collection from a damaged Peter Rabbit book, too.
The 'waste-not, want-not' philosophy also had me salvaging scraps of antique fabrics in my workroom to make this final selection of cards...
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| - Each trimmed with a tiny dried rose bud. |
I may save these for the Devises Fair...I've been finishing off a collection of fairy dolls for that fair too, as well as a few other one-off pieces. I shall show these on a later post.
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Otherwise, everything else has slowly been making its way into my little shop. There is barely a square inch left free there at the moment (Having said that, I'll be delivering yet more pieces as from Thursday, as -and-when I complete a few more projects!) - I feel happy to have had some time away from my PC in order to catch up with all of these make-overs and to get my shop looking just the way I wanted... Please keep going if you'd like a short tour in pictures of my nostalgic space... |
Lots more photos of my latest handmade items can be seen on my other blog, which I have been keeping updated.
Thanks for stopping-by.
Have a great week,
Niki x
