Thrift Shop Find

I visited my favourite thrift/charity shop yesterday and I found this lovely little cottage.  It is Eriskay Croft by Lilliput Lane from 1992.  It is absolutely perfect and I’ve added it to my small collection - I only have a couple of other pieces, but I do love the detail and quality of the craftsmanship.

It didn’t come with its original box or the title deeds but, as it cost me less than I would pay for a cup of tea, I’m not complaining.

Vintage Knitting

Three weeks ago, I posted about unravelling.  In an effort to reduce, reuse and recycle, I had decided to frog a garment which I had made a couple of years ago, but never really been happy with.  Once the yarn had been washed and wound back into balls, I was able to get knitting.

This is a vintage pattern which I found online.  It is knitting up really nicely, but I’ve had to make some adjustments to it, as the garment was far too short for me.  Yes, I finished the entire back before I decided this, then had to rip back all the way to the armhole shaping to add more rows. 

As I’ve never attempted to alter a knitting pattern, I’m not sure how it is going to turn out.  I’m hoping that I will have sufficient yarn to finish it, as I’m using a slightly different yarn to the original.  Watch this space!

Wishing you all a very happy Valentine’s Day!

Stash-Busting

What do you do with leftover yarn from various knitted projects?  When I've paid for quality yarn and end up with oddments, I've tended to keep it in the hope of finding a use for it.  Then I came across this pattern on Ravelry and decided to make a knitted bowl.

I had oddments of coloured yarn too, so I was able to recreate the look of the original pattern, but then I decided to use up some other colours from my stash and made a second one in earth-tones.

This yarn was leftover from herdy the hot water bottle cover.

I like both bowls for different reasons but, now that I've got the bug for knitting these, I think that there may be a few more made in the coming months.

Vegetable Stock

This has been a year of thrift and I've had to economise in the kitchen.  After buying some vegetable stock for a soup, I decided that it would be cheaper to make my own.

I discovered this recipe.  What was interesting was the suggestion that perfectly good vegetable stock can be made with the waste vegetable scraps that most people throw away.  I didn't have enough scraps to make stock this time, but from now on, I'm going to save them, put them in the freezer and make stock once I have a bag full of scraps.  

This stock is the base for a warming winter soup and makes twice the amount required, so I have a bag left over, which I can freeze for another time.

History In Silk

On a visit to our local charity shop earlier in the summer, I discovered a scarf tied to a rail.  The colours had caught my eye, as they were so vibrant.  I thought that it was silk and when I gave it a closer inspection, I found that it was.

What came as a bigger surprise was the information on the label, which stated that it was 'Made in Occupied Japan'.   

Not only is it vintage, but it must be more than 70 years old.  It is in perfect condition and I think that it will add some much-needed colour to winter.

Cushions

Those who read my last post will know that I was in the process of replacing some worn-out cushion covers and recycling the zippers.  I seem to have perfected my technique for inserting an invisible zip.

The secret is to stitch the seam on a long stitch, insert the zip and then unpick the seam.  

One invisible zipper.

Three cushions completed in record time and I'm very happy with the results.

The Three Rs

In this instance, we are talking about Reduce - Reuse - Recycle.

The question was what to do with three cushions with covers which were beyond repair?  For a long time, they had been stuffed in a bag until I had the time or energy to do something with them.  Now that we don't have the space to store them, it was time to put the cushions back into use.

The answer seemed to be to salvage what I could and throw the rest away.  As the fabric was torn and frayed, I could not salvage it.

I removed the zippers and put them to one side - ready to recycle.

This is the fabric that I chose to recover the cushions.  It is another remnant, which I bought at the church flea market some years ago.  At the time, I liked it, but did not have any ideas as to how I would use it.  It picked up the red theme of the original cushion covers, which matched the zippers perfectly.

I will be back with the finished cushions in my next post.

Fabric Find

This morning, I went to the church flea market that I mentioned last weekend.  My aim was to find fabric or craft items which I could use.  They had quite a lot of fabric and I had to dig through boxes under the counter, but it was worth the effort.  I bought this piece of upholstery fabric for $3.00.

The design is Delihla by Kingsway fabrics and features a pretty daisy design on a pale blue background.  When I measured it, I was pleased to find that I got 2.8 metres.  

One of the projects that I have in mind is to recover the chair pads for our dining room set.  I made the original covers about 18 years ago, so it is certainly time for a change.  I haven't calculated the amount of fabric required, but I am fairly confident that I should have a sufficient amount for this project.

Flea Market Fabric - Cushion Cover

I've always had a fear of machine stitching zippers in place.  I had some bad experiences attempting this in the past and lost my nerve, resorting to hand sewing them instead.  This time, as it was for a cushion, I felt that I should try this again, as I wanted a professional finish and a strong zipper.

I purchased a zipper foot for my machine, but still ran into problems with the alignment.  I found an online tutorial here, which proved very helpful.

After a couple of attempts and a bit of unpicking, I got the zipper in and finished sewing the cover this afternoon.  I think it looks great and there is enough fabric left over to make a second one, which is now cut out and ready to go, once I buy another zip.

Fabric Finds

This morning, we supported the flea market at a church close to where we used to live.  As we moved away five years ago, it was our first opportunity to visit.  This flea market supports local charities and was being held for the 52nd year.  Needless to say, with such a long history, it gets an incredible amount of community support and the church hall complex is very busy.

I went with one goal in mind and that was to look for fabric and/or yarn.  I know from past experience that they sometimes have good fabric off-cuts and knowing the layout of this market certainly helped in finding the bargains.  Although I didn't find any yarn, I did manage to track down some fabric. 

 The first piece is a blue cotton chambray which cost $8.00.  When I got home and measured it, I discovered almost five metres of fabric!  I thought that there might be enough for a dress and I am certainly not disappointed!  I've been thinking about making a blue chambray dress for a while - now all that I need is a pattern.

The multi-colour print is an upholstery fabric in shades of blue and beige.  Again, I thought that there might be enough to make a cushion cover, but found that there is probably enough for two.  This is a Jay Yang screen printed design called Woodco and the fabric is even protected with Scotchgard This piece cost $5.00.

The third piece is a cotton printed fabric, which measured three and a half metres ~ all this for $2.00.  This fabric is only 90cm wide, so I'm not sure what I intend to do with it at present.  

The last piece that I purchased is this red and white gingham for $3.00.  I thought that I would use this for something Christmas-related later in the year.

All in all, a good morning's bargain hunting and some additions to my stash, which I hope to put to use soon.  I set myself a budget of $20.00 and I had $2.00 to spare.  Now maybe I should put that towards next week's sale.  

Oh, did I forget to mention that the neighbouring church has their annual spring sale next Saturday?