Projects projects everywhere....

We have a "Sewing Hour" after lunch where the girls and I work on our projects. Today I was working on the baby's wool winter bonnet, Tabitha was stitching on her tea towels, and Rebekah was practicing her techniques on some designs that I drew (the little girls went to town with Dad). Katie whipped up this adorable little cap for her project. It is a double layered flannel newborn cap, isn't it too cute for words? It has a 3 piece body like some from the Wisconsin Historical Society collection. She finished it with twill tape ties, I can't wait to see how it looks on the baby!

In our family the girls are required to be competent with hand sewing before they are allowed to use the machine, I'm a big fan of samplers! I like the quiet time spent with just the girls and I while they work on such important skills. The boys work on some project with Dad or Aleks while we sew, today it was building movable turkey roosts.

We picked this bed up about 8 years ago from somebodies garbage, Aleks has been using it but because it's a 3/4 bed no standard mattress fits it. I needed to get Abby out of our bed and used to sleeping with Elisabethe so we decided to make a straw tick to fit the frame. The bed is square nailed and dates from the 1860-1880 range, I think. It was originally red, then black, then yellow and most recently green. ;-) Anyhow, Katie sewed most of the tick together and then we filled it and made it up so you could see it (yes, it's outside in the picture but it's too dim in the bedroom to see). I thought it would be a hard adjustment for Abby but she loves it! Elisabethe took it much harder, she is used to sleeping with Katie and she was a little tearful about leaving Katie to sleep alone. Isn't that sweet? ;-)

This white gown is the latest completed baby article. I'm sorry that it's so hard to see details but white on white is tricky. There are 4 vertical rows of 100% cotton lace on the bodice as well as some lace on the sleeves.

I received my milk paint order yesterday but before tackling the cradle we decided to paint this shelf first. It wasn't a priceless antique so if we really messed it up it wouldn't matter. We painted it 2 coats of Federal Blue and I really like how it turned out. Milk paint is supposed to look faintly streaky, that's the nature of it and it feels very chalky to the touch. There were zero fumes and I helped to paint it even. I love milk paint!