Weave Your Home a Little Happy Rug

I love making things to make my home happy and cozy. Sure, you can go out and buy some mass produced item, but when you make a basket, quilt or rag rug for your home, you know what the quality of the item is, you choose the materials and you can change up the colors, textures, etc.




My weaving partner, Mr. Mittens at work!

 

I started this blog featuring one of these rugs. They are the perfect use up for selvages, old  flannel blankets that have torn or even to reduce that fabric stash we all have. These make wonderful gifts and they may last long enough to even be passed down. I made my first rag rug over a year ago and I'm happy to say, it's one of my favorite things I've ever made. Cushy and wonderful, it's the perfect partner to have under your feet when you are doing the dishes. Because I've packed a lot of material in there, it will last years.

As you can see this would be very simple to build.

The great thing about weaving these rugs is that if you want to create the frame, it really isn't all that difficult. There are a couple of books that you can get online that show you how. A few brads, four pieces of lumber, some hooks and some long stem hooked bars and you are on your way. If you don't want to make your own loom, you probably can find them online or maybe in your local quilt shop, that is where I found mine at
http://countrytreasuresquiltshop.com/ctqs2011/
although the cost will be a lot more than what it'll cost to make it.






Once you have your frame, you start your rag rug by ripping fabric into 1" strips. You want to use a cotton or flannel that has been washed and dried so that the resultant fabric has been shrunk. Ripping the fabric makes sure you straighten out the selvage ends. While not really all that important when weaving a rug, it is when you are cutting out a quilt. You want to make sure that this is the final size of the fabric so that when you wash the rug for the first time, you don't get any unforeseen consequences. I accomplish this typically in two ways. One, if I have any selvages left or strips left after a quilting project, I use those or two, cut little cuts along one edge of the material you are going to use and rip it on down! You want strips at 12" or longer and trust me, it'll take a lot.



The placemat loom showing the warp. Always start with

a longer piece that fold so that one end is longer than the other.



The strips that form the base of your weaving is called the warp. It really doesn't matter what color or pattern you use as this is going to be completely covered. Utilize the ugliest fabric you'll never use here or whatever you have left over from other projects. I use whatever fabrics or strips I got left and just join them together.

Sandwich your strips together and cut a slit. Pull the top
strip through the bottom hole and pull tight.

Joining fabric strips together couldn't be easier! Just cut a vertical strip at the end of the row you are joining to. On your new strip, cut an identical hole. Now, with the new strip on top, layer your strips together. Feed the top strip underneath your layer and feed up through the bottom hole. Pull though and tug so that you have a solid join. Don't worry if you have a few "wings" peaking out. You'll be weaving over them.








To warp your loom, start by making a simple square knot in the upper left hand corner on

the bar. Then start your warp by wrapping the strip up and down to make a grid like this. When you run out of a strip and you will... trust me it takes a lot of fabric to warp and weave... simply tie a simple not around the brad and make sure to keep your tension on the grid even. You want your grid to be tight... not tight enough to bend your brads but tight on them. Finish your warp by tying yet another square knot on the bar at the other end.

 

Now the fun part, actual weaving! Yeah!

 

Unlike a loom or basket, weaving on this loom you are
twining around the warp on either side so the warp is
never seen. Use your fingers to push the fabric up
tightly against your previous row of weaving. Your fingers

become your "beater bar".

With a decently long piece, fold it so one end is longer than the other. Does this sound familiar? If you read through the basket piece it is the same idea. You don't want both pieces to end in the same place so you don't have a "lump" in your finished project. To weave, simply go in and out around your warping strips making sure that you pack the strips as tight as you can towards the top of the brads. There is no sewing on this rug, so when you remove it off the loom, you want to make sure it is packed tight.







Now comes the tricky part, the edges. You need to make them tight. When you get to the edge, on the strip that is ending on the top of the bar, wrap it around the bar. Open up a loop and slide this in the loop and pull it tight. Knowing that a picture is worth a thousand words, here we go.

Bring the strip on top around the bar, open the loop formed

and slide the strip through.

Pull tight. Starting with the strip in the back (in the case the

pink strip, begin your weaving with the second strip in.

 When you get several rows of weaving, turn the piece and begin the process over again and weave the other side. You are going to be weaving this way switching sides each time until your rug is completed. The rug completes in the middle and you simply weave the loose ends back into your weaving cutting off any long ends.

 


To complete your rug, simply remove the two bars on either side that you wove & knotted the weaving around. Then gently lift your rug off the loom.

Weaving your first rug can be as quick or long as you make it. I find the repetitive nature of weaving very relaxing. I can listen to the TV and keep my hands I weaving in and out of piece and it's very gratifying to see how many rows you can weave in a setting and watch the pattern emerge. I don't ever plan my color palette and find that regardless of the color or pattern of the fabric, the end result is very beautiful. Sometimes I make sure that if I have a dominate color on one side, I'll do it on another just to be somewhat symmetrical.

These are wonderful additions to any home. They are perfect and unexpected gifts for the holiday season. Start one today, you may find a new hobby that you'll enjoy for years.



UPDATE: Since I originally posted this, I've made several rugs. Having had to wash them and line dry them this weekend, I decided to take some pictures.

 

I like doing the multi-color because they use up a variety of fabric.

Lately, however, I've been doing more color blocked work. I used old bed sheets I buy at the local Goodwill to get enough fabric for these because they take so much of one color.

Homemade Strawberry Ice Cream!

ICE CREAM! HOMEMADE ICE CREAM!

Yeah I know. Sounds exotic, esoteric.. who makes ice cream at home? That is something you always buy right?







Ice cream takes a while but really is not all that hard. My Aunt Rita used to wax poetic about the homemade ice cream of her youth. "The best ice cream I remember", she used to say, "was made with condensed milk and strawberries".

To this day I wish I had that recipe. Baring that I went to one of my cookbooks, "Simply Strawberries" and tried my hand at their recipe. It wasn't that hard and boy is it delicious!




FRENCH STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM               
2eggs                                                        
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tbsp flour
1/8 tsp salt
4 cups light cream , divided in 2 cup measures
(I used heavy cream, yum!)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups sliced strawberries
1/2 cup sugar


STRAWBERRIES
In a bowl, put in the sliced strawberries with the 1/2 cup sugar and refrigerate for up to 24 hours to produce juice.


CREAM BASE
Beat eggs with your mixer until light and foamy. Set aside.  In a saucepan, combine sugar, flour an salt. Gradually stir in 2 cups of the cream. Cook and stir over low heat taking care not to scald cream. Cook until sugar is dissolved and mixture begins to thicken 10-15 mins.

Temper your eggs by gently putting in a small amount of hot cream into the beaten eggs, stirring as you incorporate it. When the container the eggs come in becomes warm to the touch, add the remaining cream. Put the entire mixture back in the saucepan and cook for one minute more. Remove from heat and chill until completely cool. Add the remainder 2 cups of cream and vanilla.






Drain strawberry "juice" into the cream base and process in your ice cream maker for 20-40 mins or per your ice cream maker's manual.   When the ice cream is finished, it will still be very soft and now mix in the reserved strawberries from your "juice". Put in a freezer safe container and freeze for several hours.

Homemade ice cream is so far better than store bought and it's a great project to do with your children. Make some before this summer is through and you'll be glad you did!

Organizing the Homefront & Odd Chores

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Those days of soda and pretzels and beer
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Dust off the sun and moon and sing a song of cheer
                                               
                                             -Nat King Cole




Lazy days of summer? Are you kidding me? Anyone that has lived on a farm knows that summer is the time you got to "Make Hay While the Sun Shines"! My little oasis is no different.

Living in an old house there are chores that I don't think most people ever have to do. One of these chores is painting the inside of your cabinets. My kitchen was built somewhere around 1867-1930. When we bought the house, we were told that the bathroom and the kitchen were put in in the 1920's, but when we put down hardwood in the kitchen, we found a well underneath my stove that seem to point to an earlier time.

My kitchen cabinets were clearly built into the kitchen when it was being constructed as it follows the roofline of the kitchen. These crazy things are made out of 3/4" plywood? and when we first moved in, were in sorry shape. I don't know why but as some point, it must have been really fashionable to paint all your woodwork flat white and put on the handles with the spade shape that looks like someone had a Euchre fetish because I've seen these handles in so many old houses. Needless to say, we stripped those cabinet doors and I tole painted them with patterns from my favorite painters and we love it. I'll teach you how to tole paint in a future post as I truly believe anyone who can color in a coloring book can tole paint something they can be proud of.

Pattern created by my favorite painter, Catherine Holman. Painted by me!

This is what my cabinets look like now.

But the insides, especially the cabinet that houses my pots and pans are in a word: Sad.
These cabinets are dark, long and there are a lot of wasted space. They are finished only in paint so they get pretty banged up and end up looking like this atrocious mess after a few years:

SAD

So out with whatever paint I may have left over, I begin the project.

If I'm feeling particularly DYI, I'll buy some TSP and wash the inside of the cabinet down. I wasn't in this case so Pine sol worked. After cleaning and letting them dry, I literally have to crawl inside the cabinet to paint it. Clearly the last time I wasn't as ambious, as the original Pepto-Bismol pink was still in the back portion of the cabinet. After painting the entire thing and letting it dry, came the purging.

 

Can anyone explain how we get so many lids for so few pots and pans? And where did some of these pots and pans come from? Maybe that lost space in the back is being use for by those pots and pans for more lascivious actions? Yikes.

So, after a few hours of work, I can now enjoy the next couple of years with a nice, freshly painted cabinet and only the pots and pans I use. And I can now shut the door to this cabinet! Bonus!

Sweet & Sassy Little Strawberry Basket

The strawberries are forming on my plants and soon it'll be time to go out and pick...I can hardly wait! My parent's garden produces so many that by the end of the season, they get really tired of picking them, but my garden...well, not so much. Still the plants are large this year and I already see green little berries, so hope rings eternal in the gardener's heart.

If  you are going to pick berries, however, you really need to know how many quarts you picked, if for nothing else, bragging rights if you are so inclined (and what gardener isn't?). For years, I have wanted to weave some cute little strawberry baskets. I've never seen a pattern for any, although I'm sure they exist, so I made my own. Sure,  you can use the cheap little pressed cardboard ones that you get at the farm market, but once you get water on them you're done and besides, where is the style in that? These little baskets are durable and  if wet, will dry out and be reusable. You can make them as utilitarian as you want or as decorative as you want. This basket would be really adorable sitting on your bathroom counter with maybe some potpourri stuffed strawberries.

Sweet & Sassy Little Strawberry Basket*

10 pieces: 1/2 inch Flat reed cut 24" and center marked at 12"
#2 oval reed
1/4" flat oval reed

Optional: Dyed 1/4 flat oval
                Strip of ash, tulip or oak for
                 decorative painting
               

I'm keeping the supply list to very basic sized reed so that if  you enjoy this project, you'll have enough reed to make more or the basic sizes to make other baskets. If you decide you don't like weaving, you should have no issue getting rid of these sizes of reed.

If this is your first weaving project, here are some basics you'll want to know.

First, reed is typically sold two ways, in hanks or pound coil.
A hank is basically a long bunch of reeds folded in half in a loop and secured. They are good for hanging but other than that, a bit of pain to work with. The benefit of the hank is that the reed doesn't become intangled like it can with a pound coil. The pound is typically easier to store  until you open it. Then typically you either make smaller bunches of the coil or try to reroll the coil as best as you can.



Wrong side.


Second, reed has a right side and a wrong side.
Some reed is so nice that it is really hard to tell but typically if you lightly bend the reed, one side will be "hairy" and this is the wrong side of the reed. this will be the side facing inside the basket and the one in which you will make your marks.








Third, reed needs to be soaked to be pliable and not break.
The thicker the reed, the more soaking time. Reed is sold by size, the higher the number, the bigger the reed. Soaking in warm or hot water will make the reed more pliable faster. You can also put in a used softener sheet to assist in this.


Finally, reed is always sold in three different forms:

 

 

Here are some of the basic tools you'll need.

You probably have all the items (other than the reed)
you need for basketweaving already in your home!

Water bucket w/ water
Pencil
Scissors
YardstickFlat head screwdriver or packing tools
Hinged Clothes pins (not pictured)










To begin, remove some of the reed from your coil or hank. Measuring on your yardstick, mark off each 24" section. Cut these out and on the wrong side of each piece mark a small tick mark at the 12" point. Put in bucket to soak.

Mark your centers on the wrong side in pencil.

After reed is pliable, remove five of your 24" pieces of reed and lay them one next to the other vertically, matching up the 12" tick marks. Remove the next five and weave your first piece under then over right across the 12" mark sections. Weave the remaining four pieces, two above this 1st piece and 2 below the 1st piece alternating first over then under then to top and bottom piece under then over. Using a scrap piece of 1/2" reed, space the base out so that it is even and the base measures slightly smaller than 4 1/4". Clip each corner point with a clothes pin.




Take care to have your round reed (rr) lay NEXT to
itself and not on top of each other.

Now we are going to twine. Soak your #2 round reed. Take a long piece and bend it over gently offsetting the center of the bend so one reed is at least 2" or more longer than the other end. We offset it so that we don't find ourselves ending on the same spoke (spoke being the reed we are weaving around). After you have a suitable bend, slide that bend over a inside spoke and start weaving by bringing one side of the #2 in front of the spoke and the other





side behind. Weave three rows around the outside of the basket this way keeping the weaving tight. Take care around the corners that you don't bunch up the reed. The trick to doing that is to bend one reed
back while bringing the other reed around as shown to the right.







Adding twining piece at base.

If you run out of reed along the base, simply bend a curve in the reed and slide it into your weaving. Bend a curve in a new piece of soaked #2 and place it right next to the old piece and begin where you left off.









Now we upset the basket. No, you aren't yelling at it (basket humor, I know, bad)..
Soaking the basket thoroughly, remove it from the water and make any adjustments that may be needed. The basket base should now measure approx. 4 1/2". Gently begin pushing the spoke pieces up using a "bouncing" type of motion. If you hear a "crack" at any point, put the basket base back in the water to soak a little more. Do this all the way around. If desired, clothes pin each corner of the basket in the upright stance. Soak a few pieces of your 1/2".

Gently bend the spokes upright. If you hear a crack noise,
soak basket immediately, your reed isn't soaked enough.
 

Plaiting is the act of weaving in an in and out pattern. Beginning on the second spoke from a corner, on the now outside part of the basket, clothes pin one end of 1/2 inch with the good side facing you. In and in/out pattern, weave around each spoke clothes pinning every other one or what feels comfortable. Take care to pin the corners as these are what typically can make or break your basket. It takes practice and if this is your first basket, you'll do fine, it may take a couple of times to get the feel of what it is suppose to look like.

Use lots of clothes pins for your first couple rows.



Overlap by four tucking the end in front of your beginning piece
but behind the spoke.

Once you've made a full circle around, overlap your starting point by four, cutting and tucking the piece behind a reed but in front of the first woven piece. Take another piece (or this one if it's long enough) and starting on the exact opposite side of the basket, start the platting again ending just like the first.

You can continue this  pattern until you reach about 3 1/4" or add in decorative elements like I have here again just platting different sizes of reed (or sea grass, or whatever).

Once you have reached the side of the basket being 3 1/4", we are going to twine again but this time we select two different pieces of #2 reed and placing the cut ends behind two adjacent reeds being twining over and under each reed for four turns. Once we reach the beginning two reeds we simply cut the twine to the inside of the basket letting it lay behind our starting reeds.






Packing: Packing is important. A poorly made basket typically looks that way because it's maker didn't pack it. Packing is the process of pushing down your reed with either a screwdriver or a packing tool to make sure the reed sits firmly against each other. My basket weaving teachers used to explain it like this: "You want the basket to look like it could hold water if it was possible", that is how well you want to pack it.



You can pack at the end and throughout the weaving process.


 

Once we finish packing, we have to finish the basket weaving portion of the basket. Making sure your basket is soaked well, begin bending over the top portion of the reed to measure where you can hide it behind your weaving. Mark with a pencil where this line is and cutting on an angle (to make it easier to side through your weaving) cut the reed and gently bend it and slide it through the layers of weaving ending on the inside of a piece. You will more than likely use your screwdriver tool to open a path to slide this weaving through.



Cutting and tucking.

Now there are two schools of thought on whether  you need to do this to each reed. I was trained to pack each reed as it prevents it from coming undone at the point where your reed was cut if you choose the cut method, so that is what I'm presenting here. The other school of thought is that you only need to pack every other reed and cut off the reeds flush with the basket. This wasn't the method I was taught but hey, it's your basket and I'm not going to know one way or the other so choose which method  you want.

Finish tucking in your ends.

Finally we have to burn the basket.

"Say what? I just made this basket and now you want me to burn it?"



Well, yes and no. Burning is what we do to remove all the nasty little "hairs" that show up in the reed. Making sure your basket is thoroughly wet, take a lighter, candle, what-have-you and slowly burn off any little hairs you see on your basket. Don't worry, if you've soaked your basket it won't catch on fire. If it darkens with soot, simply wash it off in your soaking water or under a tap.

Finish your basket with wood stain (never polyurethane which will make it brittle) or leave it natural. Once a year soak your baskets to add moisture to them and extend their life. Be proud of your cute little strawberry basket and display it with pride.


*Copyright Stacey K 2014, all rights reserved. Author gives full right to make basket for personal use or for resale but basket pattern may not be sold or resold under this or any other name.

 

Family Pictures...

 

The Family You Know and The Family You Don't

 

I can see why my grandmother fell for
my grandfather. What a dashing guy.
The mustashe is very Errol Flynn

I found myself sobbing uncontrollably a bit today. You see, I had asked my mother for pictures of my paternal grandfather as the books I had inherited from my grandmother was strangely devoid of his picture anywhere. Mom had sent them and I opened them up. There was a man that was in one way familiar and yet in another someone totally foreign to me.

 



How very young he looks.
Familiar but a stranger to me.



I had asked my mother for these pictures for my Hallmark family tree that I have in my dining room. Family is very important to me and I wanted to put this together not just for myself, but so my son had a visible history of where he came from. At first he wasn’t interested at all, assuming it was just another decoration, but every now and then he’ll ask who someone is on the tree. The left side is my husband’s family and the right is mine.

 

Sweethearts

Looking at my grandfather’s pictures, I was touched at how young and full of hope he was. How he held my grandmother, the pictures of them on bikes with their baby (my father) in the bike’s basket, their wedding pictures and their family pictures. By the time I came around, while still married, they seemed to live very independent lives.  My grandmother was the one who would take us up north to the cabin, many times without my grandfather. My grandmother would do things with her sister, come out to see us at our house and baby sit my brother and myself all devoid of my grandfather. He had his charity work, working with a local radio station, driving the float in the local parades or working at Crossroads Village in Geneseeville (http://www.geneseecountyparks.org/pages/crossroads). We did do things together and they did too, but they certainly had very independent lives as well.

 

Grandma had ripped all these pictures up in the album I received. Twenty years after his death, she had found out some upsetting news that drove her to do this. I understand. I’m not that unsure I wouldn’t have done the same. Still, it left a void to page through all these pictures only to have none of the man who was still so much a part of my childhood.

 

 

 

Biking with baby.

 

 

When a family member seems to just disappear from the scene, it leaves a hole. The actions of one generation leave a scar on the next. People don’t talk about situations. Certain topics aren’t brought up or certain people. Life goes on but for future generations there is a big question mark. People have a right to know where they came from good or bad. They have a need to know why things were the way they were, why people behaved the way they did. As children, we may simply accept the way things were, but as wiser adults we wonder what made people behave the way they did.

 

Great Grandma S with one of my aunts.

I recently joined Ancestry.com for that very reason. I’m not looking for some long lost royal ancestor or some famous person in history I’m related to. Rather, I’m searching for my material great grandfather. He married my great grandmother and left her before their child was born. She raised my grandfather as a single mother in the 1920’s. I’m sure she probably never thought of herself as a strong woman but I certainly do. It couldn’t have been easy, especially in an environment that insisted everyone be married and the woman was supposed to be at home raising the children while her husband worked. She raised him on her clerk’s salary.

 

Grandpa S, their son.
He never met his son the soldier.

Great grandma S always struck me as a kind woman. She clearly loved her grandchildren but things were always very secretive when it came to her husband. Everyone has one part of the puzzle but no one has it all. My aunt said that grandma S once told her that her husband’s name was John. Research shows it was Frederick John S. Great Grandma S also told my aunt that he moved down to Ohio and raised a second family. I’ve found no divorce records. Even when great grandma S was dying, my mother said, “I love you grandma” and great grandma S said, “I know”. Why couldn’t she say, “I love you, too?” Was it the way she was raised? Was it because of the way her husband had treated her? These are the unanswered questions. They trickle down to future generations who wonder the great questions as “Why?”

 

 

Ultimately, I think I found myself sobbing over my grandfather’s pictures because I realized that no matter what family drama had gone on in the past, I truly missed him. I missed his laugh and I missed his presence. And I will find out about great grandpa S, his story and his lack of presence. Why did he leave? What kind of person was he? Was my great grandmother better for not having him in her life or did she miss him? Did he ever wonder about his child or was my grandfather simply and inconvenience? Some of these questions will never be known but as a descendant, I carry this blood in my veins and have a right to know. Holes are horrible things.

Did You Grow Up in a Barn or Something?

Did You Grow Up in a Barn or Something?

Well, as a matter of fact I did...several barns actually.

Great cathedrals of our rural heritage.

When you grow up as a farm kid, life is a series of barns, granaries, large equipment yards, fields and animals. You learn to drive a tractor at about eight while helping your family bale hay. You help to get the cows into the truck to go up to the market. You get to wake up and chase the cows that broke down the fence in your nightgown with the neighbors.







There isn't a lot of modesty in the country. No one has time for it.


The barns of my childhood were magical places. They were places of weird equipment, animals and haylofts just perfect for climbing. Although hot, once you made your way up to the very top of the barn, you knew you were in a place where only a select few had been before. You got to look out that window in the top of the barn that everyone looks at when they glance at the structure but few ever get to look out of. There were houses to be made with bale furniture, games of hid and seek and all sorts of adventures to be had.




All shapes and sizes. Magical places.

When I was growing up, there were several relatives that farmed, some that to this day I don't know how they were related to me, and tons of neighbors with barns. We even had some names for the barns. One barn that I remember fondly, we called the "Thirsty Barn". I believe my father dubbed it that due to the fact that he stored some of his hay in this barn after haying.






Our barn had no such name, nor was it very picturesque. A corrugated small steel building with two green corrugated plastic panels for lights, it was simply a working barn. That barn held lots of great memories. Running down to the barn in bare feet, dogs and cats in tow. Climbing the fence and giving the horses a treat of sugar or treat out of the box of horse treats.  It housed several generations of cows and my mother's horses which varied in number between one and five throughout the years. There were lots of kittens born on the farm and the crazy chickens. There was a donkey named Tequila and a pony named Coco-who incidently just walked into our yard one day. That's how I got my pony.

Barns hold great memories for so many of us that grew up working and playing in them. But with fewer and fewer people actually farming for a living, because it's so hard making a living at farming nowadays, so many of these great structures are falling to the ground. The families that own these barns can't afford to keep them up nor can they afford to demolish them. So, they die a long slow death. It's so incredibly sad because not only are we loosing these great structures, but the barns represent a way of life that is also going away as well as a collective history that is so quickly being lost. Our founding farmers were farmers. Many of the indigenous people were farmers. If you look back in your family history, more than likely only a few generations back, you'll discover someone listed in the census as "farmer". Farming, while tough, also made families self-sufficient and brought them together in the common goal of keeping the family alive. It brought children up with a moral background, a strong work ethic and a well developed love of the land. With each barn that  drops, we loose so much. Just a quick drive or walk around the block of my home there exists four barns, one in which the entire barn as fallen to the ground, two in which the roof's have caved in and only one really still standing. It's sad. How many generations worked in those barns? How many kids climbed in those lofts? How many families were fed due to the hard work of those farmers?

And who will remember them? Or nowadays... care?

There is a bumper sticker I've seen several times in our rural community... one that bears remembering....

Support your local farmer.

 

 

No Farmers. No Food.

America, the land of plenty.
Support local agriculture to keep it that way.

Keep that in mind when your buying your grapes from Chile and your meat from God knows where. We have to support our local agriculture. This is the background and the foundation of our country.

 Not to become preachy but...

If you aren't supporting your local farmers, who are you supporting?