Revamp your old stuff! Take a break from your kids! More tassel bracelets!

Don't throw away, revamp

I am a hoarder, I can't throw away, I keep almost everything, one day you'll use it. I may have an item for several years and when I  throw it away, I assure you, within a week I am in a situation that I could have used the thrown away item.

I saved a  cotton blanket that my mother in law was discarding because it had holes in it. It was of  good quality with a nice pattern and a couple of wholes doesn't frighten me. I have had this piece for years and a month ago I had use for it. It was my daughters birthday and I invited her for the weekend because of the rock festival. I needed 4 blankets because of the hot weather, but had only 3. This is the moment  my old blanket comes into the picture.

One of the holes in my cotton blanket

The picture above gives you an idea what the blanket looked like with an odd 8 more holes; the pattern and quality are visible.

 How to easily cover the holes.

With my erasable pen, I traced a shape around the whole, mostly squares, a couple triangles. I measured the tracing, cut a patch of the same size and shape out of a nice contrasting cloth  and sewed it on with a fairly tight zigzag.

The hole covered with a patch, wrong side

I messed this one up a little bit but this doesn't matter. Anyway  I want a reversible blanket so I will cover this patch with another patch on the reversed side. I choose 2 fabrics with red in it and used red thread to sew them on, this way the stitches will be less obvious on both sides.

Blanket with patches on 1 side

One side is finished, all the wholes are covered. Remains the other side. This was a lot easier and  quicker done: no deciding how big the patch should be, triangle or square. The only thing to do was to measure and cut out the new patch, pin it to the exact place and sew the patch on.

Taking pictures

There is a lot of wind lately and it was impossible to take pictures outside. I tried inside, laying the blanket flat on a bed, but I didn't like the result. I was trying to figure out how to get good pictures of the finished product as the grand children were staying with us for a couple of days. I asked them to sit for me with the finished blanked; they agreed but didn't want to show their faces. Both of them just grabbed a stuffed animal and held it before their face. Isn't that cute how they solved the problem! no how are we doing to do this..

Grandchildren showing off my finished blanket.

You need a break from your kids

as much as you love your children, you still need a break from your kids sometimes. You need to spent time with your spouse, just the 2 of you. My daughter needed such a break and that's why she left their 2 kids with us. With this arrangement they are happy and we, the grand parents are happy. The grand children mentioned a couple of times they missed their parents or the dog or their favorite games but we compensated this with riding their scooter in the neighborhoods  skateboard playground, baking cookies, decorating their own pizza (with chocolate!), playing mikado, uno and master mind.

Cookies made with grandma

Making (chocolate!)pizza with grandpa

New type of bracelet

Again, rummaging through my things, I found a set of components for jewelry making like chains, brooch settings, metal parts. Decades ago, my husband made jewelry for a while. A couple of metal lace looking medallions took my attention. I put them aside and as I did for my vintage buttons bracelet, applied  my proven working method. The dark green leather looked striking contrasted to the almost white metal of the medallions.

LoveLea's green leather bracelet
 with metal medallions&tassels.

LoveLea's green leather
 bracelet close up.

And I continue creating bracelets with vintage buttons; I had put aside a big button but with an odd reddish color and didn't quite know what to do with it. I came up using the vintage button, not as an embellishment but as an essential  part of the bracelet: I used the button as a button and created a leather loop, made a bit frivolous with wooden beads, vintage mother of pearl buttons and other vintage material.

LoveLea's dark green leather bracelet
with red vintage button.

LoveLea's dark green leather bracelet
 with red vintage button.

Slowly but steadily my vintage button bracelets collection is growing.

If you want more explanation about my revamp project, email me.

That's it for this week! Hope to see you next week, dear reader.