Embroidery WIP

Slowly but surely I've been chipping away at this (mostly during my lunch break while I watch Mad Men)

It's been fun trying to figure out where to put things and trying out new stiches but I really want to just finish it!

I thought I'd throw in this close up on the first time I worked with high-texture embroidery

I didn't finish the whole thing but I'm still in love with this tiny piece

The Table part 2

(Click here for Part 1!)
Finished my table! I'm so happy with it.  I didn't expect to love it so much but it's really become a part of my room.  Soooo! heres the fun part!

Before....

                                                    

and After!

I bought raisers because the table is surprisingly low to sit at at it's regular height.  

(I must be a giant compared to people from the 1950s or those termites ate more than I thought they did...)

All the hardware was bought at Anthropologie, I think they add a nice simple touch to the table! 

(and it helps that I get an employee discount on them!) 

The only problem is that top handle is a little bigger than I would have wanted it to be but since I won't be using that little sliding table top very much everything works out!  

So there you have it! My new little-

okay well old huge would be a better way of describing it I guess...

-worktable is all ready to go!

The Table part 1

This may or may not be sacrilegious to some artists but...I got rid of my old drafting table.  It was all for a good cause though! Because I really needed room for my newest find - This lovely old girl!

(Okay well trust me, the charm is under the grime...)

So here's the story... My grandmother is moving out of her house and its a pretty big place (I think 7 out of 9 of my aunts/uncles lived there at one point of time) It also doesn't help that I think I got my touch of pack rat tendencies from that side of the family, so the house was still pretty well furnished with odds and ends.

The Table was actually found in a shed hidden in the backyard and the strangest thing is that my grandma doesn't even recognize it.  My guess is that my grandfather might have found it in the trash at some point in time (another trait I picked up) and stuck it in the shed and forgot about it.  We think it may be from the 1950s (this is going on my mom's Antique Roadshow knowledge which I have to say is pretty legit)  

After a rocky move, which involved an open car trunk and me holding on to The Table while my mom drove, washing off and scrubbing down the table was one of the most satisfying things I've done in a long time.

I wasn't there for the unearthing of it but apparently some mice made a home out of the drawers and it looked like some hungry termites might have gotten to the legs so I took it upon myself to give the whole thing another good scrub but this time with a bleach solution.

The thing that really drew me to The Table had to be the table top - I think it's made of porcelain but it's got this strange silhouette scene inlaid into it that's just so bizarre that I can't help but think of a story every time I look at it.

Day two was sanding day - Which as it turns out, is a pretty darn good upper arm workout! I was throughly surprised to find a white coat underneath the green paint and even more surprised that even with me putting some elbow grease into my sanding - it was a real pain to get down to the wood so I decided to cut my chances and just take off the top coat. To finish out the day I used some wood filler to fix up the legs where the termites had nibbled on, let it dry and then sanded again to fix up the wood filler. 

To be continued in The Table... part 2! (dun dun DUN!)

Jumping right into it now! As a heads up you guys are going to see a lot of projects that are combinations of grays, yellows, white and black because that's the color pallet of my room.

I bought a couple of tureens and candle votives for an art project that didn't make it all the way to the finish line so they've been laying around gathering dust in my room.  

I finally settled on making a pincushion with the largest tureen since I didn't have any nice ones for my workspace.

I'll admit, I didn't measure out any of the fabric (I'm terrible with measuring, it's one of my downfalls) so that's why it's a little puffier than the glass.  I used felt cloth all around and for the inside I was worried if I just used plain pillow fill the smaller sewing needles would slip through and be lost in the cushion so I filled over half of it with cotton balls which would be just as soft but add some stability to it.

For the flower on the top I tried out a new stitch, the long and short stitch, and now I'm in love with!

I'm going to have to use it in another project soon