Autumn at "The Olive Kat"

We have new fall arrivals at "The Olive Kat". Veronica and Matt created some beautiful new displays. Come by and see them!

It is a little bit difficult to see the Halloween goodies, but we have some fun ones.

As always, we have a variety of Home Decor items at extremely reasonable prices.

We always have lots of vintage mid-century kitchen ware including lots of Pyrex.

There's a little bit of everything! We are located on the grounds of the "Northwest Nursery Outlet", on 72nd just north of 119th St in Vancouver, WA.

Hope's Oreo Cookie Apron

The 13 year old daughter of one of my friends asked if I would help her sew an apron. She picked out this darling collection of fabrics herself.

As you can see, it's Oreo Cookies. I loved the brown and white circle fabric and the cute red accent fabric as well.

Here is the new seamstress herself, Hope Westin. Hope is like me in that she likes to do things fast and easy. Unfortunately, one's first sewing project usually doesn't go quite that way.  She had to learn the painful necessity of a seam ripper, but it the end, it was all worth it. She was a sweetheart to work with, smiling through the mistakes I made right along with her!

My "Confection Collection"

I just finished this group of appliqued dishtowels. I am calling them "My Confection Collection". The towels above were inspired by the fantastic and unbelievably cute paper pieced designs found at Pink Penguin. (See my favorite blog list at left for a link)

I got some of this great cream colored muslin and decided to do dish towels with it.  It's my first time to do anything other than white.

I am loving the pleated ruffle thing. I got the idea from some dish towels I picked up at a flea market. I thought I would do a little tutorial on how I make these towels.

Obviously, I started by cutting the muslin to size and hemming the edges.

Next, I chose my design, cut it out and fused it where I wanted it.

Then I appliqued them on by using a blanket stitch and a stem stitch with embroidery floss.

After hemming my strip of fabric that was twice as long as the edge of my towel, I began pleating. I made a little card board guide so that my pleats would be even.

Next, I pinned them to the right side of the towel and stitched. Then I flipped them down and found a stitch on my machine that would finish off and enclose the raw edge that would be on the wrong side.

I then pressed the edge and then top stitched a row just the width of my pressure foot to finish off the dishtowel. The results are above.  Thank you so much for visiting me and happy sewing!

My Fairie Book Arrived!

My Fairie Book from Karla's Cottage Fairie Book Swap has arrived. This was such a fun swap. Im sharing the pages with you below. I love seeing other people's creative approaches to the same theme.  Enjoy!

Beautiful Victoria B.C.

We had a wonderful 4 day trip to Victoria with Heidi and Bruno. We were driving along a scenic drive looking at amazing homes and came across this one. Heidi and I gasped and jumped out of the car to take pictures.  I don't think the pictures do it justice. Of course the architecture was charming, but the flowers just took our breath away.

At the bottom of this pic, you can see the flower border, and notice it is repeated around the tree and in the flower boxes. Add to that the hanging baskets-It was just fabulous!  I loved the glassed in sun porch in the front too.

Of course we went to Buchart Gardens and it was spectacular. I took enough pictures for pages and pages of photos, but I am restraining myself to just a couple today.

I loved this shot - looking through the garden gate.

We always stay at the Worldmark, looking over Victoria harbor. This sunset was beautiful. The weather was picture perfect all weekend. As an added bonus, there was a pod of Orcas right alongside our ferry when we were crossing from Port Angeles to Victoria. That is the closest I've ever been to a whale. Really cool!

Fairie Pages for Fairie Book Swap

I joined the Fairie Book Swap hosted by Karla at Karla's Cottage (see link in my list of favorite blogs). The assignment was to create 8 Fairie pages (5 1/2 X 8 1/2) decorated on both sides. We send these pages to Karla and she takes all these pages and creates a book to send back to us with pages from 8 other people. Karla provides the front and back using her  own wonderful artwork.  This was such a fun creative challenge. Here are my entries. When I receive my book back, I will show you what pages I received. I can't wait!

More Meanderings Through Maine

My sister and I made a recent trip to Maine for a family reunion for our Mother's side of the family. This was territory neither of us had seen and it was so fun to see this part of the Eastern Seaboard. We arrived in Rockland, were the reunion would take place and stayed with a first cousin that I hadn't seen in 50 years.

I have a fascination with homes, especially colonial with historic details. This stone house caught my eye.

So Cheryll (my sister) and I did a little exploring up the coast from Rockland. We first came to Rockport, where I snapped this pic of a street near the Rockport harbor.

This looked like a poster one might buy or a picture to paint. Don't you love it?

This monument of a seal is famous in these parts. I know I risked unpleasant comparisons by posing next to it, but it was a reckless moment.

Next we went to Camden-By-the-Sea which was a charming town and again we found ourselves down by the waterfront. At this restaurant, the colorful picnic tables with the shadow play begged a picture.

Here we are - The intrepid travelers.  Till next time....