Hello! Summer reading is a thing, I think. Some folks sign themselves and their families up for summer reading programs sponsored by their local libraries. Others may look forward to "beach reads" or stock books at the cottage in case of rain.
As for me, I found some summer reading at an estate sale earlier today:
A grouping of vintage magazines. Most are Christmas-related (crafts, decor, recipes), but there's also a couple of home interior issues as well. The oldest magazines came out in 1960, while the newest of the bunch dates from 1967.
I loved the Santa on the cover, visible at the bottom left row. Here's a close-up:
This Family Circle magazine is from December 1962.
Another Family Circle, this time from December 1965:
These two covers are from the same artist, Gyo Fujikawa, which explains the Santas' vague similarity. The 1962 issue mentions that the same artist had also illustrated the past three years' December covers.
And also from 1965:
Woman's Day Best Ideas for Christmas. Rather than being an illustration, this Santa is a Christmas card holder designed by Hallmark. "...available in major stores everywhere..." the magazine informs. It was made from printed cardboard pieces that were punched out and assembled. Then, the card holder cost $1.25. Now, according to the US Inflation Calculator, it would cost $9.94.
All the magazines I bought were in good condition, priced reasonably, and what's more, the estate sale wasn't very far away either. What more could you ask for?
The only reading I've done thus far was looking at the table of contents page of the two Family Circle magazines, because I'd noticed the covers had similar artwork and wanted to see if I could learn why. But I certainly look forward to reading all these issues from cover to cover. Between the ads, weird or wonderful (sometimes both) craft and home decor projects, recipes and even some sappy holiday fiction, I know I'll enjoy this estate sale haul.
Yep, it looks like I have some great summer reading lined up!
Hello! The local tulip festival has just ended, so now it's time to show off some scenes from this big annual event. Although a myriad of activities take place during the festival, all my photos are from the three parades: Volksparade (open to anyone in Dutch costume), Kinderparade (local schoolchildren march in Dutch costume while using props with Dutch themes) and Muziekparade (emphasis on marching bands; the biggest parade of the three).
So here goes!
Street scrubbers in action.
Yes, there's even Dutch costumes for dogs!
The Holland High School marching band struts down the street in wooden shoes.
From the Kinderparade:
A "Dutch Art" theme: the sunflowers represent Van Gogh's famous painting.
This class is carrying banners from two of the 11 towns on the 11 Town ice skating race.
And lastly, from the Muziekparade:
Our vantage point for watching the Muziekparade is along one of the city's "Tulip Lanes" (miles of tulips planted along select streets), so these beauties were right in front of my curbside seat. Nice!
A magnificent set of Clydesdales from the folks at Employment Express.
Always a crowd-pleaser: the Petoskey Steel Drum Band!
Another crowd-pleaser: one of several old cars that appeared in this parade.
And speaking of older vehicles, this cart-like wagon was recently restored in time to be pulled in the parade. The Holland Furnace Company was an early sponsor of the Tulip Festival.
I believe this was a new entry in the parade: Sam the Wheeler. Somehow, this guy flipped up and down on this contraption as it moved down the streets of the parade route. Don't know how he managed to avoid falling off! This was pretty cool to see.
More views of the local high school marching band:
The color guard, in Dutch costumes - and wooden shoes, of course!
Another view of the marching band. By now (they're in all three parades), I imagine they're a little tired of marching in wooden shoes.
Well, like I said, now the Tulip Festival is all over, so they can put away their wooden shoes - until next year!
Hello! The local tulip festival begins at the end of this week, so I wanted to create a garment honoring that flower by using this thrifted pattern:
A trio of floral designs for sweatshirt applique. The tulip pattern is on the right. This "It's Bloomin'" pattern (#133) is from the Bloomin' Minds company out of Iowa. Would have cost me $7.50 from their website, but I paid a quarter for it. The original purchaser had selected this pattern from The Pattern Hutch in Pigeon Forge, TN.
This time of year, it took some doing to find a plain sweatshirt at the thrift stores - the few I came across were either zip-up or had designs on the front. But finally I found what I wanted, in a pretty sky-blue color to boot. I thought that would look especially nice for springtime.
The applique is worked by cutting the pattern pieces from fabrics, then affixing the fabric pieces to each other with fusible interfacing. The five panels that result are fused onto the sweatshirt, and lastly, the edges of all fabric pieces are finished off with blanket stitching.
It took a little time to pick out the fabrics I wanted to use for the petals, leaves and background, but finally I was pleased with my choices. So I grabbed my fusible interfacing and ironed away.
And that's where my crafting failure was! Not thinking, I grabbed a type of fusible interfacing that was too heavy for this project once all the layers of fabrics were fused together. When it came time for blanket stitching, I could only get my needle in the outer edges of the whole design. And as far as putting the sweatshirt on my body - well, I tried that to see how it would hang. Of course, the stiffness of the appliqued panel resulted in that part of the sweatshirt not draping well at all. Definitely not the look I wanted!
So, a waste of nice color-coordinating fabrics, a pretty sweatshirt color and my time? It would appear so, but then it hit me: I could use the stiffness of that appliqued panel to my advantage and turn it into a Tulip Festival wall hanging! All I had to do was cut out the panel and sew a backing onto it.
Decided to make things easy by using the sweatshirt for the backing. I just cut off the panel and the back of the sweatshirt together, then blanket-stitched the edges closed. I left a small part near the top of the short sides unstitched. I slit those parts open, slid a dowel through, adding a matching cord, and voila: my wall hanging was done.
Here's out it turned out:
And a close-up:
Like I'd said, I thought I'd done a nice job in selecting the fabric colors for this project, so I'm glad I was able to turn my crafting failure into a save!
