Working my way through my Grandmother's Stash

 

Around the time my grandmother turned 95 or so, she was no longer able to remain in her home full time.  She was able to keep her home, and go spend a day or so there at a time, but for the most part she was in a nursing home.  During one of her visits to her home, she packed up a rather large fabric stash for me and sent it my way via my parents.  She has since passed a way, and for a while, I couldn't bring myself to cut into most of the pieces.  Since then, though, I have been working my way through the stash bit by bit - because that is, after all, the reason she sent it to me in the first place.  Enter:  the picnic bowl cover I saw on Meadow Magic.  I thought the fabric pictured above would make a lovely set of picnic bowl covers...

  ...and also in the stash was this piece of quilted material that I used as the inner layer.  Exactly enough to make two covers.  I simply cut my two kinds of fabric to the same size as the quilted material, serged 3 edges, and flipped it inside out.  I then folded under the last edge and sewed it shut, continuing all the way around the rest of the square to make it neat and tidy.

 The picnic bowl cover at Meadow Magic used fabric loops at the corners with caribeener style clips to hold down the corners, but I wanted a quick project.  She also referred to one that uses grommets in the corners, but I didn't have any on hand.  What I did have on hand was a handful of alligator clips and a variety of red beads from my sister.

I put a bit of beading wire through the alligator clip, strung on a couple of beads, and viola!

I made two covers and then sewed the rest into a rather long tea towel.  I will need to make some smaller ones I think, since this one is on the largest bowl I own...I guess I wasn't thinking.

 Here's a shout out to Kathryn at Kathryn's Brain.  On her "things that work" post last week, she said that if you bite a match while cutting onions, your eyes won't water.  It reminded me that I had heard if you light a candle, your eyes won't water - a huge problem for me.  I cut all the onions on the board without my eyes watering, and N was mesmerized by how much the flame was crackling, snapping, and fizzing during the process.  And since he was in the kitchen...

 ...I put him to work...(he's on a stool there...he's growing, but he's not quite that tall yet!)

...so we could have two pots of soup instead of one.  Ta-la!

Linking up with: Stash Bash with Crunchy Catholic Momma
                         The HomeAcre Hop #7 at the self sufficient homeacre
                         Fiber Arts Friday at Wisdom Begins in Wonder
                         Creative Friday at Natural Suburbia