Stash Busting Placemats with Tim Holtz Fabrics

I have had the same set of placemats on our table, since my husband and I got married 10 years ago.  They were a gift from my mom, whom I later found out, had stolen them from my brother.  Sort of.  Turns out he left some stuff at her house when he moved, and she decided he wouldn't want them anymore, and gave them to me.  I moved halfway across the country with them, only to get an angry call from my brother later.  Admittedly, I never bothered to mail them back.   Mostly because they were beaded, and unable to be folded up to go in a box.  But 10 years later, and the wooden beads they are composed of, are starting to fall off, and it's getting annoying.

In thinking about it, I realized how ridiculous it is that I've never bothered to MAKE myself a set, and it was time to rectify that.  I was inspired by TheMistressT's Humongous Stash-busting, Scrappy, Place Mat Project posted on Craftster,  so I dug through my stash, and came up with a layer cake of 12" squares of Tim Holtz fabrics that I found on clearance for about $6 at Joann's last year.  I sliced and diced them to various widths, mixed up the strips, and sewed them all back together.  Then I cross cut the large panels, laying in perpendicular stripes of black, before backing and quilting them.  The backing was cut 1" larger all the way around, and folded over to become a self binding. 

The backing and batting both came out of stash as well, so it was a good project for using up extra fabric, as well as those narrow bits of batting I always have left over from making quilts.  I'm pretty pleased with how they came out, and kinda can't wait to have friends over for dinner now.  I have some chunks of the strip panels left over, and I think I might make some mug rugs and coasters to match, since the dining area and living room are one big open room.

Trio of Inexpensive Vintage Halloween Crafts

I recently participated in the Vintage Halloween Swap on Craftster, and had the fabulous good fortune to be partnered up with my friend FiberAlchemist.  The first thing I decided on making was  a Spider Web Table Topper, that I saw the pattern for on Red Heart's website.  It calls for 1 skein of their Super Saver, but since I hate how scratchy that stuff feels, I made mine with most of a skein of Premier Yarns Everyday Soft Worsted Heather in charcoal for the web, and half a skein of Lion Brand Heartland in Yosemite for the lacy edging, both dug out of my stash. 

While I was making it, I discovered a flaw in the pattern.  Sadly I was on the last row of webbing at the time!  I went back and rewrote the pattern, made myself a crazy color coded chart, and even a matching set of rainbow stitch markers to match the chart, and re-crocheted the whole thing.  Glad I did though, since it came out so much nicer after I fixed the pattern.  Since the yarn came from stash, the only cost was my time in frogging and rewriting the pattern. 

Since I was trying to craft from stash as much as possible, I decided to look around and see what I could make with my Silhouette.  I found some black and orange card stock, and some silver ribbon with black edging that I knew FiberA would like.  I bought the cameo cut files from the Silhouette store, which was the only cost. 

After cutting all the bits and pieces, I distressed everything with some Tim Holtz distress ink pads, distress paint pads, and markers, before putting it all together with glue dots.  Not bad for a $4 project!

My final project for FiberA was a sign I saw a tutorial for on the Silhouette blog, which called for cutting the words out and using the 'dead space' as a stencil instead of using the words themselves.  Then using a paint pen to 'scribble' in the letters, and removing the vinyl to leave the scribbles behind.  I started off by following the tutorial, but sadly, that just did NOT work.  The paint pen bled under the vinyl stencil so much that the words were completely illegible!  So I sanded the paint off, and started over.  I used the Silhouette for what it was intended, by cutting the words out of silver vinyl, and applying them like normal.  But there was a bit of dead space at the top, so I added a scrolly skull to fill it in.  I like how it kinda feels like a tombstone with the curved top.  The wooden sign came from Michael's, and was priced as $10.99, but I had a 50% off coupon, so it was $5.49, plus $2 for the cut files from Silhouette.  That made a grand total of $11.49 for 3 awesome projects.