Townhouse Homestead Tuesday

Well, another long and busy week is behind us and the learning continues along with confusion and wonder as to why things are the way they are. 

I finally found time to enjoy the process of baking my pie pumpkin last week. It's one of my favorite vegetables to put up and it makes the townhouse smell so wonderful. I roasted the seeds and can not wait to start cooking this week. My $2 pie pumpkin yielded six cups of puree and one cup of seeds. 

It's coming up on the holiday season and I'm always looking for home made things to do. I enjoy working with textiles and have been learning more knitting stitches and making more ornaments. This is the first time ever that I have knit with five needles at once and this star is the result. I was intimidated at first, but it is really easy once you are familiar with the pattern.

Here they are in red. It uses so little yarn and I am using the leftover from my knitted sock adventure.

I also found a few minutes this week to work on a Christmas fabric ornament. I have a personal collection of red, white, and green folded fabric ornaments. These are three inches square and are the Cathedral window quilt design. I will add a bead to the middle and attach a hanger. I love folding and manipulating fabric and this is using up a lot of my scrap holiday fabric.

Isn't this the most beautiful picture of fruit, vegetables, and snacks? There are 2 large heads of cauliflower, 15 cucumbers, 5 oranges, 4 bags of baby carrots, 4 snack packs of graham crackers, 6 yogurts, 25 apples, and a large container of guacamole. Well, this was all rescued. Headed for the landfill. Yes, this is what makes me wonder why things are the way they are. It is a liability to give this food away. I am grateful that it was rescued and given to us. There's been cooking going on, sharing going on, and healthier eating going on. It can only do good if we overlook the liability. I find that as I'm maturing there are fewer things physically that I can do, but if I can be gifted food because people know I won't waste and will put it all to good use, then that will be the direction I take. From the townhouse, a great big thank you for stopping by to visit and please have a wonderful week. 

Thursday's Threads

Quite a few years ago now I downsized to move in with my eldest daughter. In the transition I believe many of my holiday decoration were accidentally donated and the items I thought were donated I'm still finding in buckets and boxes. I can only hope that someone else is enjoying the items. So that leaves me with the task of getting new decorations or decorating at all. Since fabric is the medium that I enjoy most and with a pile of scrap fabric that some times gets out of control I made one decoration.

I found this vintage doily that was a star. I decided to maybe make a dream catcher style decoration, but it wasn't working for me. Then I decided to mount it on fabric to put in an embroidery hoop. Well what color fabric? I tried everything and baby blue was the choice. Then I began folding fabric stars. They mounted nicely  on the hoop, but it needed a little something else. That something else was ribbon and I just tacky glued it on the back to hang down. Not fantastic, but one of a kind and it looks nice on the door. This is inside because we don't have screen doors and anything we hang outside has to be wired down to stay in place.

From the folded stars I have now created another pile of scrap pieces. I wanted to make holiday mug rugs, so I cut a few triangles and tried my hand at a star. I need to practice more because I had a hard time getting them to line up. This practice star will not go to waste. I'm sure it will be something, but the decorating is still on the cutting table and it may be next year before they become something. 

Then comes the socks. This is pair number 12 and I managed two pair a month for the first half of the year. My goal was to learn two new things this year. Socks was one and I think that's a success story. Now it's on to learn the second craft and that is cheese making. I am excited to try this and look forward to posting the progress. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday. Ours we are hoping is quiet and relaxing. We will have a few food treats and watch some movies, but will probably just enjoy the nice weather they are predicting and listen to the distant fire works. Thanks for stopping by for a visit.

Holiday Sewing

Sewing projects for the holidays all made from reclaimed fabrics and scraps.

To start, there is a wonderful 34 inch square tablecloth or lap blanket made entirely of reclaimed fabrics and scraps. We cut fabric down to 4.5 inch squares when we can and let them just accumulate until we can make something with them. The holiday colors are so cheery. The folded fabric stars are made of leftover scraps. I make many of these for my family and friends, but this is the first time I've listed any on the store.

This 16 inch pillow is made of new green cotton fabric, but the quilted flower and doily are reclaimed. We try and make good use of our favorite fabric pieces.

This has been our favorite piece of reclaimed fabric and we are still using pieces of it. These are two quilted place mats that are 18x12.5 inches. We had a wonderful time Thanksgiving weekend sewing and folding fabric. We were in our element. We did get some thrift shopping in and we'll be posting the items found at a later time. Please stop by the stores and see what's new. Have a great week everyone.

poetcharms.etsy.com and butterflyplace.etsy.com