Last Minute Outdoor Christmas Decoration.

If you happen to have a bowling pin

and a nephew who bowls and wins-

And if you happen to know where the old wooden bat is and a baseball,

and find a few scrappy hats  in with the Christmas decorations,

and some wiggley eyes,

and if you have another nephew who plays the game and pitches, and

you stick bat and bowling pin  at the front door, well, the nephews will be amused that you didn't just go buy a Christmas decoration.

Snow Snow Snow

Well, You Folks out there in the Midwest, the good news is, snow snow snow for the Christmas holidays! The bad news is, you won't be able to go anywhere. Sorry Grandma.  LOVE MISS C.  

Angel Atop My Tree

Angel Atop My Tree
A little girl's creation
Bread dough angel
Sculpted, painted, and carried
Safely home from kindergarden
Thirty-four years ago.
This afternoon the  angel
is lifted out of the box of ornaments.
The putting up and taking down
Over many Christmases has worn away
Its shape and darkened the clay.
But it is still the first to be hung on the tree--
On the highest and the strongest branch.

Christmas Stockings and Children's Art

Stocking Mail Bag

big enough for Christmas Cards...inspired by my grandaughter's art.

(Santa leaping over a large stack of mail while the elves help--one of them Tawnia at the post office!)

Stocking Shoebag.

Friends ...
(All dressed up with bows and ribbons for holiday festivities.)

Christmas Stockings

A Lady who loves Christmas, tells, me about her family's stocking exchange. They have a large family and draw names. Each man woman and child must embellish a stocking and give it to the person/name chosen. (Inside, a gift.)

"It get's interesting!" she says. "In the past, the fellas used washers and bottle caps to decorate them!"

It seems like a good idea. Let the kids and the guys get into it-- their bent and inventiveness.

With bazaars ahead and a table rented, I start making a variety of Christmas stockings with whatever comes to mind, and with whatever materials I have on hand: The old Hudson Bay blanket, the army blanket just back from the cleaners. Stripe pillow ticking and feedsacks. Wool. Wool felt. Felted wool felt. Old lace trims.

Fall Bazaar

Fall Church Bazaar
Elderly ladies guild.

Here my mother quilts.

Collage

Vintage Feedsack Fabric Apron inspired by woodcutting outings.

Trees and limbs and the leaves fall one by one muting the colors. The predominant pattern is the leaf or branch that has just fallen or is about to.

Fallen birch rain painted onto the forest floor. Fiber art quilt and apron inspiration.

Picking Fall Colors

Warm Knitted Mitts for picking pumpkins.

Pumpkins at Hollyhock Junction (And one yellow hollyhock bloom. (End of summer.)

Piecing Together Fall Colors

Piecing Together Fall Colors.

...seed time and harvest...this is my favorite time of year.

Folk Art Garden Decor

After the Leaves Leave--
Don't throw away your old leaf rake-- or your garden rake either! (creative problem solving while cleaning the shed.)

Bluebird Pillow.

EMBROIDERED BLUEBIRD: vintage homespun linen pillow slip.

"The buebird carries the sky on its back."Thoreau

October Sky
The bluebirds are flocking together and ready to go!
Today is overcast, drizzle rain, and a little bit gray. Like linens after much use and many washings.
The whitest white on the painter's palet (the white of snow in winter), has a touch of blue in it, and on wash day, bluing is sometimes added to the rinse water to bring gray goods back to blue white again...

Vintage bluing bottle, and handmade Fimo clay bottle top: Wash Woman Tinting the Linens Blue.

Baby Shower

The invitation read, "For the new baby, bring a copy of your favorite children's book and share your good memories attached to it."

Duck and His Friends, a Little Golden book, "It's the first book I remember. I liked the funny duck and the colorful quilt."

Baby Quilt

Baby Quilt
A patchwork baby quilt with simple embroidery illustrations of cute critters-- cat, dog, fawn, and especially a frog. Most kids like frogs! ( Several days after my grandaughter had been here, and gone, a small frog hopped down the stairs, bringing back memories of fun frog filled days! )

A patchwork baby quilt that she received at a baby shower, was made especially for her, with fringed edges-- fun for little fingers to tangle in!

Putting Up Preserves

Plum Sweet

Today I cooked down
Wild plums
And poured hot rosy red jam
Into five gleaming pint jars.
Eight cups of sugar.
Eight cups of pulp.
(I’ll spread it thin on my toasty bread!)
It took me the better part
Of the morning
From start to finish, including
Cleaning up the mess and stickiness.
I don’t know how my grandmother did it--
Put up the preserves,
And still have time
At the end of a day
To take a leisurely stroll
Through the plum grove with me.

A plum sweet memory.

Vacation Goodbyes

You left behind

A tootsie pop

and I cried

because

you were here

and now you

are gone.

Teddybears

"Grandma," Miss C said, at a garage sale where the three bears sat, "These little guys look like they need a home."
And so home with me the little bears went.

Bears

(This photo was an email passed on. I'm not sure who to give the credit to.)

Anybody home?Housekeeping was easier when Goldilocks was around?
Just push a broom, and the house is swept out.
Today I vacuumed all the rooms...then realized my Hoover was plugged up with a ball of lint, broken threads, and one black sock, and so I've got to do it all over again with my glasses on.

Broomstick Skirt

Erma, a tween, around l945, sewed skirts to wear to school.
Yardage was gathered. A waistband attached. When she could afford it, a zipper added. Sometimes she just made a placket. Fabric of Calico cotton.
"We called them broomstick skirts!"
She had an interest in clothing styles, and picked potatoes in the fields in the fall and earned money to buy herself nice things to wear to school from Penny's catalog and for her siblings too, but that is another story I hope sometime to tell.

Lap Quilt

Squirrel Outside My Window

This is an Aunt Martha embroidery pattern- 7 whimsical squirrels, shoveling, hammering, and carting away the acorns ! Maybe a good child's quilt, mat, or lap quilt for the fellas...

Calico

Inspiration for quilt making!
Photo copyright 2009 J.H.

Quilt Construction

Catzy Zine--did I grow up listening to country western music...? Yes. Shown here are quilting construction steps in zine form:

5. Redwork?: gently wash fabrics that go together. (Red + white = pink.)

6. Iron Boarding! Press as I go!

7. Embroidery: Sampler Times.

8. Puzzle Pieces: Patching printy fabrics onto

squares or blocks. 8"X 8" or 10"X10". Flannel blocks because flannel is light and soft and inexpensive. Scraps arranged and sewn by machine or by hand, however the design, planned or unplanned. Yardage for the backing. (The flannel under the blocks becomes the batting.) Yarn for tying. And as my grandaughter once said when she was a little kid and we'd made a mess in the kitchen, "That's enough of that!" (Zine pages 1.2.3.4. in embroidery form below...). Now for a little Patsy Cline..."I'm crazy...(patchwork quilting!")

Quilt Pattern

Scrappy Cats and Pattern ?

Patchwork patterns with colorful names. Patterns created from the experiences of quilters patchworking long before me, or recently. There are many patterns...fanny's fan, log cabin, sunbonnet girl, schoolhouse, wedding ring...

But a novice, I choose scrappity of my own doing. No patterns to read--learning best by doing, trial and error, reinventing the wheel.

Tiny violets in the lawn to inspire.

Cat drawings created over morning coffee on a see-through clip board that I can trace...coffee cats, repurrposed, purrsistance.

A mix of fabrics and embellishments, repurposed. The gathering of bits and pieces that help determine a design for this time.

Patchwork

It’s Raining Violets at Hollyhock Junction.

JUNCTION: “the process of joining or the state of being joined. The place where two things meet.” (Webster’s Dictionary.)

Embroidery Paints

Ready To Roll, I Think

I'm old enough to remember the liquid embroidery paints in metal tubes that roller and paint, and mostly dry up instead. Sometimes their fumey oil base color squeezed out the other end.

My grandmother, now almost a century old...97, painted on feedsack dish towels in front of the oil burner in the dining room on cold wintery nights.
I watched her as I stood close to the stove turning from front to back, and back again to warm both my sides.

These days I use the plastic tubey fabric paints for crafts that blurb and splat and dry up just the same.

Embroidered Dish Towels

I'm an easily distracted homemaker. I go by what the dishtowels say...Monday, laundry. Tuesday, ironing, Wednesday, sewing. Thursday...I don't remember. Guess I'll go check the towel.

Old Buttons

Buttons. I like old buttons. I don’t collect them. I collect stories. The buttons find me.It doesn’t matter their value--artsy and interesting. This jar of buttons, my grandmother gave me. One of her many jars of buttons. I’m under sixty, she’s over ninety. In the summer, she works the soil and grows flowers in abundance. In the winter, she rips up old clothes into strips, and rolls the strips into balls to make rag rugs.(Quilt squares too.) Only, she’s never had a loom, and the rags have piled up. And so have the buttons.

New But Old Underthings

At the new Ben Franklin, I overheard Anna, an elderly lady I know, ask if this new store sold the old garders. The answer was a polite no.
In the first grade, I wore long white cotton stockings on cold winter days, held up by garders and a garder belt--uncomfortable elastic at my waist and stretchy-down things, but it was a freezing mile long walk to the bus and I wore dresses in those days, so I didn't complain.

When I ran across a package of garders at a local thrift shop, I made sure Anna got them! She seemed a bit embarrassed because in her day, underthings weren't talked about!

Hollyhock Junction

Thank you for visiting HollyhockJunctionblogspot.com  Everyday story in progress.