A busy week

Some weeks I feel like nothing gets accomplished all week. Other weeks I feel like I've gotten a lot done. This week falls in the latter category and I'm so happy. It's Thursday morning and so far this week I've done all the laundry, made 2 great meals, had 2 playdates for Joseph, reupholstered a chair, blogged, organized and executed an event for Chick-fil-a and managed to keep my kitchen fairly clean. Today is grocery shopping day. I have my list and coupons ready.

The 2 great meals this week:

Boursin Chicken with apple butter sauce, saffron rice with craisins and asparagus

Beef & Vegetable soup with homemade rustic Italian bread

so yummy!

selfish projects

Sometimes I need to take a little break from creating for others and make a little creative something for us. Here are a couple of blankets I've made in recent months.
This one is made from all of my Nashville t-shirts. If you look closely you'll see Jacks BBQ, Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, Tin Pan South, Fan Fair and the Marathon among others. The pieces between are made out of old blue jeans and Titans fabric.The blanket below is one I made for Joseph (although I really love how soft it is and find myself snuggling with it in the evenings). The fabrics were all remnants I had at the house already. Muslin, blue jeans, seersucker, t-shirts, Titans fabric and flannel. I did have to buy the batting and the flannel for the backing. I also did a little monogramming on a couple of the pieces. And instead of quilting, I knotted blue yarn through all the layers to make it a little more whimsical.

more chairs

The previous project was a joint effort with my upstairs neighbor Matt. He is an extremely gifted wood-worker and restorer. He beautifully restored the antique table and chairs that I recovered.

Here is another project that we are working on together. We were given 3 more antique chairs from the same owners of the previous project. Matt tore them apart and refinished the wood. I am reupholstering.the bare chair. . . . the fabric that will go on the back, seat and arms. . . I rewebbed the back, stuffed the back and seat and covered with muslin.next - covering the arms in the same way and then adding the chosen fabric and finishing touches. Stay tuned . . . . 2 more to go. . . .

dining room chairs

This project involved recovering the seats of some antique dining room chairs. I thought it was going to be pretty simple but ended up being quite involved. The hardest part was tearing them apart since the owners wanted to use the original fabric. So I removed hundred of antique nails, removed nasty stuffing, re-webbed the chair bottoms, restuffed and recovered the chairs. original chair - you can't tell how horribly it caves in.stripped chair - beginning the re-webbing process.re-webbing almost done. . . some of the hundreds of antique nails removed and reused on these seats. . .after I re-webbed, re-stuffed and re-covered. . . I put on a thin backing.and - the finished product below.

Expanding blog

So I've decided to expand my blog a bit to include more than just the sewing projects I've been working on. Who knows what will be end up as a post . . . . could be anything! :-)

Joseph's Chair

I made this chair for Joseph this week. It was a bit of an experiment. Originally I was just going to make a cover for his little booster seat to convert it into a chair. But, then it turned into a full-fledged chair of it's own. I would have probably started out differently had I known the outcome. . . . but it works!

Guitars for baby!

The Rayners Guitar Nursery

Check out this link to see pictures of nursery bedding I recently completed.