Around My House

Woodland Splendor by T.C. Chiu

This painting touches my heart because it reminds of the lake where I grew up. When my mother was only about 23 years old, my father, who as 25 or 26, built her a little row boat to take on rides across the pond to pick the water lilies and bring them home to put in a bowl on the table. She often left the house while everyone was still asleep and did her morning "rounds" in her boat, observing what was going on in the surrounding forest, calling out to the loons and ducks, and enjoying her young life. She had a big family and she taught every one of us how to observe and appreciate our surroundings. To this day I cannot go to a fabric store without "seeing" the nature around me, which excites me very much, so today I am showcasing the beautiful pumpkin field which I see outside my window, and sharing a bright craft.

pumpkin field

I was not the only one taking a photo opportunity in this field: there was a constant stream of people stopping and posing their children, sitting on top the pumpkins, and getting their own pictures taken amongst these colorful squash. Others posed beside tractors and harvest machinery, and there was an occasional lady in a matching orange dress getting her picture taken.

fabric pumpkins

The pattern and instructions for these cloth pumkins are here. These were made for a friend, who asked for them. She uses chili-pepper red in her home decor. These were made from a McCalls craft  pattern that I got last year, but I found that my old way of making a huge circle and putting a running stitch around the edge, and gathering it, was much easier and makes a pumpkin so similar, that it is really not necessary to sew 8 persnickety pieces together.  You can get the same effect with the circle, which is much easier. The tendrils are green chenille wires, and the leaves are of the same fabric ( a woven metallic, which was quite inexpensive) with an iron on interfacing, stitched on the machine in a satin stitch edging. Patterns and instructions will follow, eventually.

I used real pumpkin leaves to make patterns for my cloth pumpkins.

These velvet pumpkins are from Victorian Trading Company. A lot of crafters are using the real stems from pumpkins, for the craft pumpkins, as they are like wood, but I was not able to make this work for mine, so I used brown felt.

This site has free pumpkin leaf patterns (shown in the picture, above)  and shows how to make the tendrils from florists paper-covered wire.

These are the fleece fabric pumpkins I made last year, now on my mantel. Somewhere on this blog are the step by step instructions to make them, by tracing a large circle from your largest round bowl or pizza pan.

An autumn oil painting sitting over my fireplace mantel, painted by a local artist many years ago. It looks so much like my lake in autumn!

This is some fabric I used for a dress, inspired by that pretty pumpkin field in the background. It is a rather wild print but in the country, anything goes.

Garment has a wide obi belt that goes with it (not shown)

This little fellow, Henry, comes from a neighboring farm to crow right under my bedroom window each morning. Then he goes and crows somewhere else, til he has done the rounds. I give him the left-over communion bread when I'm cleaning up the communion after church. There are usually a few little grains left, and he waits at the bottom of the steps for me to come out. He seems to follow anyone wearing a skirt, probably because they are the ones with the scraps of food. Sometimes he waits at the front door and greets the church members with his cheerfulness as they go in the door. Both the peacock and the banty rooster have made the mistake of following people into the meeting house a couple of times.  We would prefer not to clean up after they leave their calling cards. Once in the summer when the windows were open, this little rooster crowed all during the sermon, which just happened to be about the apostle denying Christ before the rooster crowed three times.

Henry walks around in the garden here and crows at people as they enter the meeting house. It was built in the early 1900's and appears to be similar in style to some of the Amish meeting houses.

Hmm...wonder what kind of fabric would remind me of this sunset taken just last night:

It reminds me of one of the paintings by Jesse-Wilcox Smith, and another by Besse Pease Gutman,  of a mother and child looking at the moon.

Sweet and Low by Jessie Wilcox mith

This painting has similar colors to the sunset pictured above.

Moon Beams by Jessie Wilcox-Smith

I recently used a couple of coupons at the fabric store and got a very good bargain for some foam to make a seat for this old, long wicker couch. Temporarily, it is covered with a quilt, but later I hope to get time to cover it with upholstery fabric and welting (piping), possibly with something like this:

In the meantime, it is easy to make a change of looks for this couch, by wrapping a quilt around the seat, and adding matching pillow shams.

I have been looking at these giant magnets at Collections, Etc. which has a mail order catalog and one online, and finally got one on sale for about $5.00 for my dishwasher. They are available with scenery and still life paintings for washers and refrigerators too. I have my eye on the rooster/farm scene magnet for the side of the washing machine in my laundry room.

From the same catalog I ordered this little rug, which puts some brightness in my monochromatic living room:

Some brands of applesauce have apple barrel shaped jars. Here's a collection of these kinds of jars, from relish, baby food and other products, that all look like the old fashioned apple barrels. I've always wanted to make some canisters out of them, so this year, I painted the lids, and found some water-slide decals from The Decal Cottage online, and made myself some homestead style canisters. The decals show up better on a white background, but look okay on clear glass.

Here is the finished product:

Like some of the other homey bloggers I've been culling and sorting things, and when I got my magazine collection, I found this picture on the back of a quilting magazine. It is made of photo- quality shiny cardstock, so I cut it out to make a card for someone, to share the intensity of the season. We are having a warm autumn, temps in the 70's, with lots of sunshine.

One more photo before I mail these treasures. Autumn is nearly gone!

These are all projects I have been working on in small snatches of time since my last post, between housekeeping jobs. Autumn seems to have inspired a lot of bloggers to de-clutter and deep clean, gutting out entire rooms and giving them a good going-over. I read somewhere that autumn is God's reward for surviving a long, hot summer! 

" Thou crownest the year with thy goodness..."

Psalm 65:11