The Devil Is In The Details…

February 16, 2015

Charming is, as I write this post, putting some finishing touches on the kitchen…caulking various seams and touching up paint on the walls that got marred by falling broom handles and such.  He’s dealing with his final details and I’m dealing with mine.

This past week, I spent some time working on making a quilted table runner for our table and creating a design for some embroidered tea towels that I wanted to make.  The quilted table runner is a basic design of squares with borders and a few apple appliqués thrown in for good measure.  In coming up with a design for the towels, I was looking for something that would express my love of gardening and “putting up” the harvest.  Since I have a peculiar affection for canning jars, I came up with a sketch of a jar and added a slogan of sorts.  After putting the design on paper, I took a plain thin tea towel that I purchased from Walmart (3 in a pack for $2.97) and laid the towel on top of the design.  I then used an “invisible” marking pen to trace the design onto the towel.  (The “invisible” pens can be purchased from Joann Fabrics for about $3.00.  When you use the pen the ink comes out purple, so you must do your embroidery shortly after you trace your design onto the fabric as the purple ink will fade and become invisible overnight.)

Because I love the kitchen style of the 1930’s and 40’s, I wanted to incorporate as much of that “retro look” as possible.  The embroidered towels and quilted table runner will add a bit of that “old timey” look to the kitchen.  Most of the items in my kitchen will be hand made or hand done, including the braided rug, curtains, chair bottoms, table runner, tea towels, and (of course) my beloved wash tub prep table.  Although the finished product will not be the standard “dream kitchen” of today with stainless steel appliances and marble counter tops, it is definitely turning out to be the kitchen of my dreams.

An example of the embroidered tea towels that I'm working
on.  I used variegated embroidery floss because that's all I had
on hand.  I will use solid colors on the remaining towels as I think
that will look better.

A close-up of the tea towel design.  (I didn't use the "Ball" logo
because of the legalities of infringing on patented logos and trademarks,
so I just made up my own "Home Made" logo.)

The "top" for my quilted table runner.  Those three red things in the
center are supposed to be apples.  They will look more like apples
once I add stems and leaves to them.  The table runner will be shorter
than average and will not hang off the sides of the table, as we have
pets who like to pull on things that hang off the edges of tables.

I have to congratulate myself on purchasing the swirled
brown/black/grey fabric that I used in the table runner (on the right
side of the picture).  I happened to be shopping in Joann Fabric
about a year ago and this caught my eye.  This fabric was
actually purchased before we picked out the counter tops.  It is
a super close match to the counter top on the left side of the picture,
don't you think?