Tapestry and Tablecloth

A new Pineapple Tapestry wallhanging.

Remember all that Thrift Store Fabric - 'everything for $10'? This is the photo below from that post, and see that gorgeous Pineapple Tapestry panel right there on top?...

...I love it! The pineapple has long been known as the symbol of hospitality.

To complete this wallhanging, I put the 'creative' restriction on myself that everything had to come from the Thrift Store Fabric. Methinks I should start calling it the 'Treasure Box'. :)

For some reason, I really scratched my head over this one. I did a lot of searching online in hopes of finding this pineapple tapestry panel, or one similar, finished off. The pineapple already had a 'frame of the ivy wrapped around the bamboo and I wasn't sure if adding another border would look strange. Not finding another panel online of a border-within-a-border, I went into my photo editing software, cropped the photo I'd taken of the panel and digitally added a brown border, photo below, to get an idea of what it might look like. At this point, I also tried out other colors for the border, but the chocolate brown made the tapestry complete.

Thought it'd be fun to compare the digital 'idea' on the left, below, with the completed panel on the right.

There was a remnant of a gorgeous chocolate brown velvet in my Treasure Box. :)

And a half hour was pleasantly spent 'playing' with my machine's decorative stitches until this particular stitch was chosen because not only was it such a pretty stitch complementing the panel's vines and bamboo, but it 'caught' the raw edges of the brown velvet just right. This took care of any 'bulk seam' problem if I attached the velvet any other way. The 2" brown velvet strips were stitched directly to the tapestry panel with a gold rayon thread that had a little 'sheen'. Kept it simple with just inner and outer stitches on the velvet border.

The hanging sleeve I made came from the Treasure Box too, so I kept true to my self-imposed 'creative' restriction. The hanging hardware came from Wal-Mart for $2.97. One more look. You can see our light-filled entryway to the left, in the photo below and get sort of an idea of our soaring 30' ceilings, which by-pass our palladian entry window by far. This pretty tapestry fills in this space nicely.

Since we're on the subject of my 'Treasure Box', thought I'd share another completed project. This green tablecloth was a tablecloth 'panel' that only needed to be cut to size and hemmed.....

.....and looks so pretty topped with a linen from my Alabama great-grandmother's collection, which is now my collection. I've had her things stored away for years and years now, and I figured it's doing no one any good if it can't be used; so, out her things have come and I simply cannot tell you how happy I am to see such beautiful linens, that may be older than me!, that my great-grandmother loved. By the way, not worried about stains either as I want our home to be 'lived in' and we always try to be careful and treat our home respectfully. Accidents will happen..... and that's okay.

This was finished and (photographed) mid-March in time for St. Patrick's Day but I wasn't sure I wanted to include this photo below today, because as you can see, it was a roaring-fire-in-the-fireplace that day..... and today is a sweltering 78 degrees F, and somehow it just felt 'wrong' to mislead you in that way! Is that clear as mud?!