A Twig Candle Holder

I’m feeling a bit foolish, almost embarrassed. The reason is that I fell for the Pinterest pressure: I made a twig candle holder, something I have thought was quite silly. Sigh. I will totally blame this on being ill.

I made it from material sawed off from the bunch of birch twigs that is the business end of the broom I made last week (something I still have to take pictures of and blog about), which pleased me, as I love not to waste perfectly good materials.

For the jar I used an old mayonnaise jar, as I don’t have anything fancier I’d like to waste on this. As it happened, I didn’t want to eternally commit this jar either, so instead of gluing the twigs on, I taped them. It was a bit fiddlier this way, but if I want to use the jar for something else, I can just peel twigs and tape off. I couldn’t tape all the twigs on in one go; four were as many as I could conveniently control. The tape is attached to the jar after every four twigs, and is anchored to the previously taped part at the other end. It makes the twigs very secure. I left the leaf and tiny twig as I thought they added a bit quirkiness to it.

To cover the tape I tied twine around it, something I had planned to do in any case as I like that better than just the twigs. I was thinking about using ribbon, but I didn’t have any that felt worked, or that I was willing to sacrifice to this project. Depending on the season I can add other embellishments as well.

So that was that: a quick little project to entertain me when being ill and not quite in the mood for serious crafting or sewing. In the end, it did actually turn out rather nice, I think. Tobias liked it too, but remarked how in our culture we take good light so for granted, that we spend time covering it up to get "mood lighting". There is much truth in that.

Have you ever fallen for the pressure and made something you saw on Pinterest, even if it wasn't really something you were too excited about? Did it grow on you, or was it a total fail?

A Forest in a Bell Jar

In my last post I showed some of the décor I’ve made for autumn, including a miniature scene of a forest in a bell jar. Here is how I made it.

First I “shopped my house” for a suitable bowl. The one I decided on is a fairly shallow ceramic one. I had picked some pleasantly knotty and twisted twigs from a plum tree. This particular bowl was obviously too shallow for the twigs to stand up properly, even when stabilized with soil, so I wrapped aluminium foil round the bottom of the twigs, then flattened the foil to make a base. Of course I forgot to take a picture of this vital step – if I remember I’ll take one when I take the scene down.

When I was happy with where the trees stood in the bowl I filled it with dry soil from my flowerbeds. I wanted this to be a very low cost project, and using mostly materials I could just toss back out into nature afterwards. The aluminium foil is an exception; that will go to recycling. A nice looking rock that I had selected earlier was also positioned in the bowl.

I picked a handful of grass from our slightly overgrown lawn. Some of it I cut into small pieces, the rest I let as was. I put it all on a baking tray and dried it in the oven on low heat. 

I took these strands of longer grass, divided it into five small bunches, that I “planted” here and there in the soil.

When I was happy with how the scene looked I took the finely cut grass and sprinkled this all over the scene, to cover the forest floor.

To give more texture and interest I then sprinkled tiny dried leaves that I had saved when trimming our boxwood, and the myrtle plants (daughter and grandchildren of the one I wore as a wreath at my wedding) I have all over the house. I let some leaves fall on the rock, to give an impression that they had fallen from the trees.

I then took small sprigs that I had saved and dried when I trimmed said boxwood. These were also planted.

As a finishing touch I added small toadstools I made. I’ll make a separate tutorial for those. These will not be tossed out; I’ll keep them for future decorating purposes.

I am so happy with how this turned out – the pictures don’t do it justice. Everything looks nice when in a bell jar, but there is something special about miniatures.

What do you think of it? Have you made something similar, or something different but also fun? Please share a link!

Autumn

It has been an unusually long summer here, and almost every day of September has been warm enough for wearing short sleeves and running barefoot, something the children have taken every advantage of. Now however, there has been a turn in the weather, and it’s decidedly autumn. While the summer itself wasn’t a good time for me this year, I love autumn, it is my favourite season, and I have decorated for it using lovely things found in nature.

I put all kinds of greenery and berries in an empty jar; there is oak, maple, rosehip, boxwood, and some things I don’t know the names of. In a glass container I put glasses that I use as candle holders and decorated with chestnuts, acorns, and cones from pine and spruce. The cones will be used for Christmas decorations too in a couple of months. 

Having the tealights lit would have made a prettier picture, but one has to 

consider the fire hazard an all that - they were too close to the greenery to be lit.

In the kitchen lamp I have hung hops, more spruce cones and a string of rosehip. There are various smaller plants, neatly labeled, hung there as well – these things are primarily for our Halloween party, but they look pretty for autumn as well. 

 In a bell jar I created a little woodland scene – here's a post on how I made it.

This month I’ll be teaching a class on making Empire/Regency working class dresses, and I’m so excited! It’s rather a small class (but for a small group of real nerds, lower class is not the most popular thing amongst those doing 19^th century in Sweden – not yet anyway), but I’ll be happy to see the finished dresses all the same.

Preparations for Halloween are coming along; the Hogwarts House wall hangings are up, as is the display of Muggle money. Plans and preparations for food is also being made.

I have joined a letter exchange role play, set in the world of Jane Austen’s England, 1816. I’m corresponding with an old “schoolfellow” and a young “niece”. The character I have chosen for myself is a clergyman’s wife by the name of Mary Carter in a village in Surrey, and it is great fun trying to think and express myself in a way familiar to anyone who have read Jane Austen.

See what I meant by fire hazard? 

My "niece" had a bit of an accident with my letter.

So far the autumn has treated me a good deal better than the summer did. I hope it will last :)

Cushion Covers for Spring

As spring was approaching I wanted new covers for the sofa cushions. With this in mind I had eyed an old apron that I made many years ago when just starting out making historical clothing, but has since been demoted to the fabric stash for not being period enough. It had a print of green checks on an off-white base, with flecks of beige giving it a "rustic" feeling. It just didn’t cut it as a 19^th century apron, but I thought the green would work well for spring cushions. Said and done, I cut down the apron, stitched up the covers, and added three green buttons from stash for closure on each. That sorted the two larger cushions, but I had three smaller ones that needed new covers even more. 

 I raided my stash, and found a piece of cotton blend upholstery fabric that I was given a while back. There seem to have been a problem with the loom the day it was made, as the woven in flowers are rather ugly – I have another piece of that fabric, where the flowers look as they should, but I have other plans for that. I don’t mind; in this age of wastefulness it feels good to put all fabrics to use, even the imperfect ones. The colour worked well with the green check, picking up the off-white and beige.

 

  I made the covers with a deep overlapping in the back so they would look nice even without additional closure, as I didn’t feel like making more buttonholes. As I only had just enough fabric for the covers without the deep hems I wanted, I faced the openings with strips of beige check cotton fabric left over from lining the bodice of my insanely pieced dress a few years ago. Though it doesn’t really show, a detail like this makes me glad.

 The fabric had a few heavy dark stains that wouldn’t go away in the wash, and I didn’t have enough material to cut around them. As a solution I made a self-fabric appliqué flower with an orphan button from stash as the centre. The placement is a bit odd, but it’s way better than the stains.

 So now our old sofa looks pleasantly light, airy and ready for spring, just in time for Easter. 

The beige theme continues, as I'm working on a checked white and sand coloured 1920-23-ish house dress. More on that later :)

One Month Left

Last Saturday Tobias and his parents came up to my place, and we moved all of my things to what will be our home when we marry, one month from today. It was an exhausting day, with a lot of work, and little rest, but we got it done. My brother A and few friends helped out with carrying, so my mother in law and I could mostly concentrate on packing the last things and cleaning out the apartment. My Mum would have been there too, but she was ill, and had to stay home and rest. She did make us some brownies though, which was much appreciated.

I’ll be living in our apartment as soon as it’s finished, and Tobias will move in after the wedding, but there’s a lot of cleaning (the former tenants left the place in a mess…) and organizing that needs to get done first, so I stay at his parents’ at the moment. He has moved a lot of his things in already, and deciding what things will go where is fun, but a bit tricky. Right now it is a complete chaos of boxes, furniture in the wrong places, and some furniture that’s not been put together yet. In the hurry to get everything packed, I have lost track on where some of my sewing stuff has gone, which annoys me a little, since I really must get started on my wedding dress soon. Tobias said it’s a motivation for me to get unpacked quickly, and I suppose he had a point.

His Christmas present finally arrived last Friday. I’d ordered him a book on Russian wood architecture, which he’d mentioned to me some months ago. It’s out of print, so it took a little work to find a second hand copy. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d ordered the right book, but judging by the “Yes!” when he opened it, apparently I had. Whew. Another addition to our already large, and ever growing library. Let’s just say that a lot of our furniture consists of bookshelves…. On our wish list is a library, but that will have to be sometime way in the future.

And now, another day of cleaning and organizing :)