Family history in a collage

I am all fired up and inspired by Leah Piken Kolidas' challenge for September.  Creating with history as the theme.  So, I have already posted a tutorial on how to make a depression/war-era trivet.  I have also created a collage using photos of my grandmother as a young woman in the 20's.  Here is the result with details.  Enjoy!

I call it Lemon Pie. My Nana made the best lemon meringue pie.

Detail

Detail

Detail

 

I am trying to build my art around the three things I like:  Drawing and painting, sewing and all thing vintage.  Mainly this is a paper collage with photo transfers on to cloth as well as the addition of vintage laces.  The ground is thick hand made paper with a deckle edge.  I really enjoyed putting this together.  It started as one thing some sort of grid collage and it evolved into this.   Enjoy!

A vintage craft

Hello!  Yes, it has been a while since my last post but dare I say the cliche?  "Life happened!"  Anyway, it did but I am back and making the effort to share.  As the title of this post states, I am going to share a vintage craft.  Yes, a tutorial. The inspiration came when I walked into a store that carries vintage items for the home as well as one-offs from our crafty and arty community.  I found a vintage trivet made from cotton fabrics of about the late 30's to 40's and bottle caps!  It was adorable and showed signs of being loved and well used.  Well, as we are all being 'green minded' and try to recycle, reuse and reduce our carbon footprint, I thought this would be a great little craft to figure out and use to make gifts for my friends. Here is the result of my trial and error of replicating what I saw:

Finished product.

Supplies:
Bottle caps - Wash, rinse and dry if you don't want a 'yeasty' odor to linger.  Note:  Because I used caps from non-twist bottles I had to pick and chose the ones that were the least dented.
Fat quarters of your favorite stash fabric.
Needle, thread (I used quilting thread), scissors, paper for a template (I use freezer paper).

Tutorial:
Create a template.  A circle that is larger than the bottle cap.

I layered all the fabrics and pinned template with one pin.

Showing the 4 layers

Cut out your circles.

Turn and use a running stitch around the folded edge.  Yes!  It's making a yo-yo.

Gather the thread slightly to get it started.

Place the cap top side down into the yo-yo.

Finish gathering over the cap and tighten.  Lock the stitching.

A completed cap.

Arrange your caps how you want.

Run threaded needle under the open edge to outer edge where you want to attach to the next cap.

Insert needle into the edge of the next cap and begin buttonhole stitch to secure the caps together.

Buttonhole stitch in progress.

Close-up of the attachment.  Finish off stitching then run needle through towards one of the cap openings and snip.

Once all the caps are attached in the pattern of your choice (diamond like mine, hexagon or other shape), your trivet is ready to use.  You could cut a felt shape and glue to the bottom of the trivet to protect the stitching and soften the contact between table and trivet.  Your choice.  I left mine as it is.  It became a gift for a girl friend who likes vintage and loves to cook.

I hope you can use this tutorial to your advantage.  Please let me know how yours came out and if you have any comments or suggestions on how to do this craft in a better way, please share with us all.  Cheers.