Whimsical Tea Cozies from The World Knits Collection

Available on my website here

and on Ravelry here

It's the weekend! Here we are at Number 11 of the World Knits Collection. It's my pattern for Tea Cozies, French Press Coffee Cozies, and more. 

Old fashioned as they may be knitted tea cozies can be a real conversation starter. Bring a pot of tea to a table dressed in a knitted cozy and see what your guests say. This tea cozy pattern comes in many sizes to fit many teapots.

Also included in the pattern is a French Press Coffee Cozy in the three common sizes of Bodum pots. 

There is also a knitted trivet that can be used as a pot holder or a trivet to protect your table from the heat of the teapot. 

And because I was dressing up kitchen objects, there is also a pattern to cover a square tea tin. 

As with all the World Knits Collection patterns, there are lots of charts so that you can customize your project to fit your own decor. My favorite chart is the Sunflower Tea Cozy shown on the right. The top of the cozy is a flower with leaves on the main part of the cozy. Bobbles decorate the ridges. 

Available on my website here

and on Ravelry here

Webs Tomorrow + Kim using my Mod Suzani Fabric on a Very Cool Chair

Tomorrow I will be at Webs in Northampton from 2 to 4 doing a "Book Event" for my new book Crafting A Patterned Home. I will have many of the projects from the book with me and will answer questions and share some of the techniques I have used in the book. You can sign up here but please - if you want to come and cannot figure out how to sign up - come anyway. I would love to meet you. So far, there haven't been many folks signed up. It is a tough time of year for an event with all the graduations and family things going on. But I will be there with bells on! Here is the link.

A couple of years ago, my friend Lucy introduced me to Kim and Bill Chagnon who run an upholstery business in Greenfield. Not only do they do upholstery but they also have an on-line teaching website called Kim's Upholstery. Kim is a creative dynamo and Bill is behind the scenes making the videos and more all run as smoothly as possible. They have so many fantastic videos on their YouTube channel here. They also have a Membership site to teach upholstery to anyone who wants to learn. Kim also travels the USA teaching upholstery at different locations. 

Kim and Bill are building a Community of Upholsterers and Wanna Be Upholsterers. I was fortunate to be asked to be on one of their Facebook Live videos where I demonstrated fabric printing. It was lots of fun. 

Now - I have the thrill of watching Kim upholster a beautiful chair with my Mod Suzani Linen/Cotton Fabric in the Orange colorway which you can see in my Spoonflower shop here. She painted the wood base of the chair in a chalk paint from DIY Debbie in hot pink and a second chair in turquoise. The chair is turning out fantastic. Check it out on their YouTube channel. 

I love that I am meeting lots of new people who do interesting things through branching out beyond the world that I am most known in. There are so many great things to learn and share with others and I feel fortunate that I have the platform here on my blog, at the Farmers Markets, and in stores such as Webs to share with others. 

Hope to see some of you tomorrow at Webs! 

Brimfield - May 2018 - Things I Saw and Liked

A couple weeks ago, I took my friend Kay to the Brimfield Flea Market. Actually Kay drove. It was the first show of the season and we had a great day - walking through the aisles, talking to vendors I have purchased from over the years and looking at all the people. I saw lots and lots of lovely and not so lovely things. There really is nothing else like the Brimfield Flea Market. It is a circus and if it is a good day weatherwise - no rain and not too hot which is was the day we went - it makes for a stimulating - if exhausting - day out. 

If you plan to go, I suggest getting there very early to get a decent parking spot and to miss the crowds. We arrived just after 8 a.m. at the J&J Field. Perfect timing as the line was gone but it was still early and there was plenty of STUFF left. We headed home after two and by the time we were leaving, it was a virtual madhouse with so many people and carts and dogs and craziness. 

A special part of my visit was the stop at a favorite textile dealer's booth. I have purchased many of my cherished World Textiles from a woman named Linda. This visit, I brought her a gift of a copy of my new book Crafting A Patterned Home. I wanted to show her how I have used the many World Textiles I purchased from her as decor in my home. She was thrilled to see her textiles in use and to see many of them in the photos in the book. 

Here are some photos of things I found inspiring at Brimfield this May. 

Gorgeous Ikat Textile $350

The back of that textile above

Beautiful colorful tin tray $350

Loved this wacky box

Antique carnival knock down dolls

More carnival knock down dolls - this time cats

Still more - this was a trend

Loved how a vendor covered her metal tent with gorgeous patchwork fabric

Lamb livers anyone? 

This pug has her own Instagram page!

Embroidered throw - I wanted this! Incredible

More embroidered fabrics and clothing

Majolica cat pitcher

Gorgeous ethnic clothing

More embroidery. Love. 

Sew Much More Podcast with Ceil Diguglielmo + Kim's Chairs

I was delighted to be asked to be on the "Sew Much More" Podcast hosted by Ceil Diguglielmo. Ceil has been a maker of window treatments and began her podcast a few years ago as a way to branch out beyond just making. She is a great conversationalist and we had a fun chat. We talked about all kinds of things. It is a bit of a long episode - maybe I talked too much. Here is the link to the episode. 

You can check out all her podcast interviews on her site here. Thanks so much Ceil for helping to spread the word about my work. I was especially excited to be on this podcast because I would be reaching a whole new group of folks who do not know anything about what I do. The nice thing though is they are all very into fabric and design and so they might be interested in the things I am doing now. 

In other news, my friend Kim from Kim's Upsholstery is doing up a set of Victorian chairs. She purchased my new Mod Suzani Fabric for the upholstery. Here is a link to Kim's YouTube Channel where you can find many amazing DIY videos. Kim painted the chairs with a paint line I had never heard of called Debi's Design Diary's DIY Paints. There are so many great women out there doing interesting things - aren't there? 

Here is a small picture of the Mod Suzani Fabric that I designed and Kim will be using. You too can purchase it on over 25 types of fabric, wallpaper and gift wrap over on my Spoonflower shop here. 

Hope to see some of you at the Webs Tent and Fleece Sale in Northampton tomorrow. The event happens rain or shine.  I will be set up with our local lamb. I will be bringing my books and other products with me but if it starts raining like crazy, I will put them away - books, paper and rain do not do good together. 

My Handpainted Library "Wallpaper" in Photos

Happy May Day everyone! Only a few days until the Crafting A Patterned Home Book Launch Party here at our antique farmhouse. I hope to see some of you here. Photographer Rikki Snyder will be here too to greet you. And I have some friends helping out too. Here is the Eventbrite site for more information. It is FREE. Books and some other things will be for sale (hint, hint - Mother's Day is coming.) You do not need a ticket but I thought it would give me an idea if anyone is coming. 

You all have seen the cover of my new book Crafting A Patterned Home. It features the handpainted wallpaper I did back in 2003. This was before I had a digital camera and before this blog (which BTW started in 2006). But I did have a regular camera and amazingly so - I documented the steps of handpainting the wallpaper. Please excuse the lousy photos - they will help you get the idea. 

I'm not a fan of stenciling - although I know many people love to stencil. I've tried it but the paint always seeps under the stencil and I have a real mess. My handpainting technique is kind of the opposite of stenciling. I use cardboard templates and with a pencil, trace the templates directly on the wall. Here are the templates I made out of Fedex envelopes.

Here is the room before the painting began. 

I began at the corner of the room and traced the center cross along two walls. Then I filled them all in with red paint. 

Next I took the largest shape - the square with the points coming out four sides and traced that in the center of each opening created by the crosses. I painted them an apricot color.

Next I traced the circle motif inside each large square. I painted them in alternating shades of butter yellow and turquoise.

Lastly I added a pointy cross shape to the center of each circle in a pretty orange shade. After all the colors were laid on, I outlined the shapes in black with a small liner brush. 

Here is the room completed. All the directions and templates are in my new book Crafting A Patterned Home. I know my color choice may be too out there for most but with a little experimentation, you can develop your very own colorway. 

In addition, you can find a digital version of this wallpaper design available as wallpaper, fabric or giftwrap in my Spoonflower shop here. It comes in two sizes - as seen here and at half scale. 

Books, Before and After DIY + The Power Of Paint

Photo by Rikki Snyder

Thanks everyone for all the orders for my new book Crafting A Patterned Home. I'm up to 209 copies sold - only 291 copies to meet my goal. That sounds pretty impossible but I will keep my fingers crossed and hope the word starts spreading. I'll be packing more orders this weekend and getting them out to all of you who will be ordering over the weekend. Here is the link to order directly from me. You will receive some exclusive freebies and I offer Free Shipping. 

The other day, a reader commented that she would like to see some decorating DIY here on my blog. Considering my new book Crafting A Patterned Home is full of all kinds of DIY on walls, fabrics, ceramics, and more, it sounded like a great idea. Lots of the work I have done in our farmhouse was done many years ago - before the days of digital photography and blogs. I did a little digging and found some before photos that I can share with you all. This is the first of 3 posts with some befores and afters. 

For today's post, I'm heading to New Jersey - to my Great Aunt Jennie's house at 1 Locust Ave. Aunt Jennie was everything a kid could want in a Great Aunt. She was kind and loving. She always welcomed us with open arms and a giant hug and a kiss. She usually had one of those old-fashioned aprons on - the kind that pretty much covered up whatever she was wearing in the front and back - like the header page on this blog all about Apron History! (Whoever knew there was a blog on apron history - fascinating.) She wore dark black leather shoes and her gray hair had a tinge of blue in it. Uncle Harry was always sitting in "his chair" watching the television. We were frequently invited for Sunday dinner. But the thing my sisters and I remember most was the sideboard in the dining room. On it there was an orange lidded dish and inside there was always some kind of candy or chocolate. We girls always bee-lined there. 

Dinners were spent around the massive table in the small dining room. Next to the table there were 3! sideboards and a set of 6 chairs. The wood was a dark oak and there was odd hardware on all the heavily carved pieces. When you sat at the dinner table, you always tried to get a place away from the massive legs that were just plain in the way. But that was hard to do because the kitchen chairs were pulled into service and there would be 11 people jammed around the table. The room was small and I'm not sure how they fit all the furniture in the space. 

When Aunt Jennie passed away, her son - Uncle Don - although he was really my second cousin - had to break up Aunt Jennie's home. Noone in the immediate family wanted the dining set and he called an antique dealer who offered him $200 for it all. He knew we had just purchased our farmhouse and so he offered the dining set to me for the cost of moving it. It cost $698 to get it from NJ to western MA.

When the furniture arrived, I knew it was going to be perfect for this house. It was big and clunky and had a handmade quality to it. I couldn't fit it all in the dining room so I moved one of the sideboards to the living room. The sideboards offer lots of storage space - perfect for a farmhouse which doesn't have many closets. From what I can tell, the dining set was made in the 1920's or so in the southern US. They copied the style of English Jacobean furniture. 

Once I got the furniture in place, I realized I just couldn't live with the dark brown oak color. It just wasn't my thing and so I decided to paint it. I wanted to cover the brown oak and for the dining room, I wanted it to be almost black. I decided on a oil based wash of color which I did by adding turpentine to black oil paint. I brushed it on thinly so the grain would show through. It looks like this now. 

Photo by Rikki Snyder

Photo by Rikki Snyder

For the living room piece, I painted it with Benjamin Moore's Satin Impervo oil paint in a color that looks like Fire Engine Red. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the color. That piece looks like this now. I just love how it looks in contrast to the chartreuse walls. 

 

Photo by Rikki Snyder

So that is today's DIY story. If you find a piece of sturdy old furniture, don't turn it down because you don't like the color of the wood. Choose a color you like and then paint it. I didn't prime either of these pieces - I just put the oil paint directly on the wood. Both pieces have held up well although the dining room table could use a refresher coat of paint. It serves as my shipping table so it gets used quite a bit. Parts of it are getting worn and maybe one day I will get to re-doing it. For now, I just throw a tablecloth on it. 

I hope everyone is looking forward to a nice spring weekend. Here in western Massachusetts temperatures are still rather cold and raw and the spring rains are sprinkling the earth. The daffodils are starting to grow and blossoms will hopefully happen soon. All I see outside is the junk left from winter that needs to be picked up and hauled away - leaves, twigs, broken branches, the dog's treasures that she brings home from who knows where. 

Hop on over to my website to order a copy of Crafting A Patterned Home which is chock full of over 30 DIY projects. You can also order it on my Etsy shop here if you like to order on Etsy.

A Visit to Boscobel + Make Do Collection of Andrew Baseman

Almost twenty years ago, I purchased this pitcher at an antique store. I fell in love with the blue and white color and the incised design. What really caught my eye though was the handle which had been repaired with metal staples painted white to match the ceramic color of the pitcher. 

Every year I have loved using this pitcher for summer flowers.

Fast forward a few years later or so, I read an article in Martha Stewart Living Magazine, where I was introduced to the "Make Do" world of Andrew Baseman. (Gee, I miss the old version of MS Living - do you?) You can see that article from 2001 here. Andrew had collected antiques that were repaired with clever treatments. Wood and metal turned bases that were attached to glass stemware, ceramic pitchers repaired with metal staples, teapots with metal handles and knobs and platters and plates repaired with metal staples. I was intrigued by the clever way that someone had taken the time to repair these pieces so that they could still be used. 

I have been following Andrew's blog Past Imperfect for many years and learned that his collection would be displayed at Boscobel in Garrison, NY. This past August, Julia, Mom and I hopped in the car and visited Bosobel, a historic house built in the late 18th/early 19th century in NY. Boscobel has a fascinating history. The beautiful antique home was actually moved to a site right on the Hudson River in the mid 20th century. You can learn more about Boscobel here. 

Today, I am going to share with you this beautiful home. We had a fantastic tour guide who was funny and smart and let us in on many of the secrets to the home. Throughout the home, Andrew's  Make Do collection was placed on tables, mantles and sideboards. 

I was so happy to get to see this home and collection. In the basement of the home (the former kitchen), there is a second exhibit of more of Andrew Baseman's Make Do collection. I'll share close-ups of many of these soon. 

If you live close to Boscobel or are looking for an adventure, I highly suggest a visit to both the house and the exhibit. It is on until October 1. On September 22, Andrew will be doing a special presentation. More info here.

The view from the entrance to the house of the Hudson

Entrance hall

Wallpaper detail

Parlor

Parlor fireplace detail

Dining Room

Make Dos in the pantry

Upstairs the bedrooms are a little less opulent but just as beautiful. There were many Make Dos scattered throughout.

This candlewicking bedspread was incredible.

Upstairs there was also a gorgeous library with a table loaded with pottery Make Dos.

I'll share more of the exhibit of Make Dos soon.