Flour Sack Towels

I've been looking for affordable 100% cotton Flour Sack towels to use with my craft group. We'd like to "play" with them using dye, fabric paint and/or stencils. Since we're experimenting with this craft for the first time, we don't want to invest a huge amount of money.

  (Maybe when we get really good!)

I've checked out flour sack towels at a local quilt shop, on Amazon, and with friends who own a screen-print shop. Until now, I've only found the 30" towels at $3.00 to $6.00 each.

Imagine my surprise to find these at Target on Saturday!

Four for $4.00!

They are good quality, 30" square and 100% cotton. I thought they must have been mismarked but they did ring up at $4.00 for 4, all neatly wrapped in a grosgrain ribbon. I bought two packages . . .  and went back the next day for two more!

 They were located in the new Target section of products called "Made By Design".

Now I'm looking forward to having my crafty friends over to see what we can create with them.

I have a few ideas from last year's Fiber College of Maine. These ladies used a combination of fabric paints . . .

 and stencils.

Another technique I'd like to try is shibori.

This shibori towel was a gift from a friend.

There is a good tutorial on the Japanese tie-dye technique here. Thanks to Tammy at her blog, Honestly WTF, for her great fiber art ideas!

The finished towels could be used as curtains for a small window, a table cloth for a small table, fabric for a sewing project, or as, well . . . dish towels!

Yours in flour sacks,

This post is linked to:

Inspire Me Tuesday at A Stroll Through Life
Talk of the Town #131 at Knick of Time

My Tobacco Basket

This is the tale of a tobacco basket.  It survived quite a journey to get from Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina to my home in Maine. Thanks to some good karma and two good friends, it finally arrived.  

Here's the story . . .

I first saw "my" tobacco basket at this antique shop on our camping trip "Down South" in March.

The shop, Linda Page's Thieves Market, is right over the Ravenel Bridge from Charleston in the town of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. It's a fun place to stop if you get to the Charleston area.

I looked up, saw the big tobacco basket, and I knew I had to have it. DH did not exactly agree.  And his arguments were pretty sound:  Tiny camper; HUGE basket (40" square!), long ride to Maine. As those of you who have been married for a while know, sometimes you do have to "know when to fold 'em". So . . .

I left South Carolina basketless.

Back in Maine, I was still  pretty bummed about missing out on my basket.  "Maybe", I thought, "I'll just make my own." I found a good tutorial on a blog called Anderson & Grant. But once I figured out the cost of the materials and the time it would take to make, I got discouraged. To weave the size basket I coveted, I'd have to mold the reed around a card table top (per another site I found). How was DH not going to notice me doing that???

So I looked online. I liked these vintage tobacco baskets on Etsy. . . until I saw the shipping charges. . $300.00! No way. Looked like no tobacco basket for me.

And then the BIG IDEA hit me!

While we were "down South", our Maine friends, Bob and Peg, stopped by our campsite to visit. They had "followed" us to Florida and said they were planning to stop in Savannah and Charleston on their way home in April.

Hmmm . . . Maybe Bob & Peg could go to the "Thieves Market" for me and sneak the basket home in the back of their car.  Then I'd just have think of a way to slip it into the house, nail it to the dining room wall, and act as if it had always been there.  (DH would never notice.)  So I texted them.

Here is Peg's reply from the Thieves Market; the basket was still there!

Good friends not only go along with our crazy ideas, they dicker. Bob and Peg saved me 20% , bringing the basket down to $80.00. They texted me this picture of Bob holding the basket with the caption, "Mission Accomplished".  Yes, the basket is almost as  big as Bob!

The last photo they texted was this one. Final challenge was met:  The basket fit in their car. And, the next day, it was on the way to Maine!

I figured that if anyone could figure out a way to get that huge basket into a fully loaded Subaru it would be a physics teacher like Bob. Those skills helped him win Survivor Gabon in 2008. Bob and I taught high school together for years and remain friends.

Here are Survivor Bob and Peg, my "basket buddies", in Gabon, Africa.

Yesterday, DH and I drove to Bob and Peg's farm and picked up the tobacco basket.

It was a bit tricky to hang, but it's up now and is the focal point of my dining room.

I think this tobacco basket and I were meant to be together.  

And we are  . . .thanks to good friends.

I love it!

This post is linked to:

Amaze Me Monday #259 at Dwellings

Happiness Is Homemade Link Party #215 at The Painted Hinge

Metamorphosis Monday #480 at Between Naps On the Porch

Sundays at Home Link Party at Little Farmstead

Inspire Me Tuesday at A Stroll Through Life

Talk of the Town at Knick of Time

Wow Us Wednesday #382 at Savvy Southern Style

10 Tips for Organizing All That Bling

Still inspired by Marie Kondo's little book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I decided to go through my stash of costume jewelry. It was everywhere . . . some in an official "jewelry box", some in a junk drawer, some in the bathroom cabinet . . . you get the idea.

I didn't even know what I had.

Here are some tips I learned during the process.

A Quick DIY Retirement Gift

Teachers have LOTs of required paperwork to complete. So does everyone who works. So I came up with a gift idea for colleagues who were retiring that was such a big hit that my supervisor asked me to make them each year for our district's special education retirees.



 

Got Keys? Upcycled Wallet Card Organizer

If you've got a junk drawer in the kitchen or garage, you've probably got a bunch of these . . . old keys and rings. I found this batch in my husband's desk;  he didn't know what any of them unlock but, like most of us,  is afraid to throw them away.

And I bet we all have one of these . . . an over-stuffed wallet. Why is it that every restaurant, movie theatre and store wants us to have a plastic card to get sale prices? Add to that library cards, frequent-anything cards, membership cards, even a blood donor card, and even the roomiest wallet no longer closes without a fight.

 

Here's a junk drawer solution to the problem - all of your wallet cards on that one little key ring. They'll now be easy to carry, easy to find, and organized.

 

 

So grab one of those old key rings and dump out all your cards.

 

 

The only tool you'll need is a standard hole punch.

(If you absolutely can't find a long-forgotten key ring around your house, you can buy one at any hardware store. A package of four is only 97 cents at WalMart.)

 

I bet you can guess what comes next.

Yup, punching a hole in the corner of each card.

Just be careful to choose a corner that doesn't have either a bar code or your account number on it.

I learned this the hard way!

Slide your cards onto the ring and you're done.

I keep mine in the side pocket of my purse where I can grab it in a hurry.

 

 It currently has 23 cards on it . . . and counting.

 

 

I can't believe how often total strangers admire this simple idea when I use my cards. Yesterday, the librarian checking out my books called all the other librarians over to marvel at my little key ring;  I keep my library card on it. Then I stopped at the Hallmark store to get a birthday card and both clerks, as well as the customer behind me in line, wanted to see it. (Yes, I have a Hallmark Gold Crown card on it too!).  It's crazy . . .

 

I feel like a wallet-card rock star!

Now you can be one too.

  

 

This post is being shared at:

Upcycled Party Junk at Funky Junk Interiors
The Sunday Showcase at Under the Table and Dreaming

Nifty Thrifty Sunday at Nifty Thrifty Things
Tutorial Tuesday at Hope Studios
The Inspiration Board Creative Party at HomeWork
Inspire Me Tuesday at A Stroll Through Life
Tweak It Tuesday at Cozy Little House
 

Wine Cork Nativity Tutorial

I had so much fun making these little nativity sets that I thought I'd share a tutorial.

They would be fun to make with grandchildren or in a Sunday school class.

I plan to give mine as little gifts. (Full disclosure: they're so cute, I'm keeping one set for my mantle.)



Why a wine cork nativity? When our friends Anita and Fred downsized to an RV (lucky them!), I was the recipient of a huge bag of wine corks they had collected over the years . . . lots of years judging by the size of the bag!

So I headed to Pinterest for some "wine cork crafts" ideas and found this photo on an Italian blog called Creamamma. It was love at first sight! I knew I had to make these. The blog is written in Italian but Google Translate took care of that. There was no tutorial so I just used the photo and figured out my own way of making the figures.  

 

I started by purchasing a couple of inexpensive packages of small wooden doll heads at JoAnn's Crafts These are optional; the blogger in Italy did not use them. She used champagne-type corks with wide tops but I didn't have enough of those.

I made a platform with thumbtacks sticking up between two layers of corrugated cardboard, set my corks out on it, and sprayed them with white primer. You can skip this step for the nativity but I am planning on painting some of my corks for future projects so I just primed them all.

Then I hot-glued the heads on.

(Children could do this with craft glue.)

I played around with a piece of fabric until I came up with a simple pattern for the felt robes. Here is the shape that worked for me. My pattern is approximately 3 inches tall and 4 inches wide.

I hot glued the felt "robe" to the head first, then just folded the two sides over each other in the front and glued the robe shut. (Oh dear, just realized it looks as if Mr. Winecork is flashing us - pretty funny but totally unintended!)

 

To make the baby, I cut a Q-tip into a piece a little over an inch long and wrapped it in a small square of felt - like you would swaddle a real baby. A little glue holds the "blanket" shut in front.

I glued on a little face out of tiny circle of flesh-colored felt and drew on eyes and mouth with a thin Sharpie. The cradle is another cork cut in half lengthwise; a serrated kitchen knife did the job. Another dab of glue holds the baby in the crèche.

Finally, I tied gold cord around each figure - as a belt on Joseph and around the neck or head for Mary.

These are quick to do.

Once I had the materials together, I was able to make four 3-piece sets in an hour.
 

The set I decided to keep is already on the mantle on a piece of fleece "snow" next to the little LED tree I found at Goodwill yesterday.

 

So very simple and sweet.

 

Enjoy!

This post is linked to:

Party Junk at Funky Junk Interiors
So Darn Crafty Party at Sew Many Ways
Show & Tell Saturday at Be Different, Act Normal

Make It Monday at Distressed Donna Down Home

 Link Party Palooza at Tattertots & Jello

Found & Foraged Linky Party at House of Hipsters
Sunday Showcase at Under the Table and Dreaming by SL
Show & Share at Coastal Charm
Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps On the Porch