Scherenschnitte - Virginia Wildflowers

 A friend asked me to design a paper cutting for a give away with her Master Gardeners convention. Virginia wildflowers seemed like the perfect theme.

Making a Roll Top Stove Compartment for My Camper

I get asked all the time about my TUNE camper. The other day I showed a nice man the interior. (This behavior freaks Mark out, as he is sure I am going to get snatched away doing this.) 

The back was full of boards and tools, as I am working on lots of little projects out there. One thing I hated was how out in the open all my stuff is. Wanting a cozy cabin vibe, I envision the look, uncluttered. The compartment for my stove is under the bench I built. Held in by a bungee cord, it looked janky. 

An upgrade that popped in my head was to cover for spot with a roll top cover. (The fancy name, I have learned, is a “tambour” top.)

I play with ideas in my head a lot and figured out a design, then looked at YouTube for how to actually build it. You’re supposed to use a router. Since I don’t have one, I concocted a work around. 

Here are the steps of what I have done so far.

I bought a long strip of wood around 12’ long. No clue what its intended purpose is, but it seemed like a good idea for this. Pieces about 14” long were cut and then glued onto a black canvas. The big board at the end was glued on to give it a little weight.

After the glue dried, I cut the “tambour” off the canvas. 

Since I don’t have a router to cut a wood track, I cut the curve out of plywood. The tambour will slide on top of it. 

That’s as far as I got yesterday. Hopefully, I will finish the rest of it today.

Spoon Carving with Chip Carved and Painted Elements

 I haven't had any green wood to carve in a while, so I'm decorating old spoons that are hanging around my studio.

I chip carved the design and then painted it in with metallic acrylic paint.

I Hate Snow

 

Love Spoon for a Couple Who Loves Cats, Music, and Writing

 In the realm of creative things I did in 2025 but never posted about was wood carving. 

I spent over a month carving this love spoon. A gift for my niece as a wedding gift, I used images of things that are relative to her and her fiancé's life. 

Both of them love cats, so that was a major theme of the carving. One of them is a musician so I included the image of a treble clef. The other is a hobbyist writer, hence the quill pen and ink bottle.

It was carved from basswood. 

Revolutionary War Christmas - Scherenschnitte Card 2025

Looks like another year of forgetting to post on my blog! But here was my paper cutting Christmas card for last year.

I have been obsessed with the Revolutionary War the last year, so my card reflected that.

“George, Martha, Jacky, and Patsy” was the topic for this cut. I designed it on the iPad and then cut it out on the Cricut. Using the machine to cut it out let me be able to cut out around 40 this year, but I still spent an inordinate amount of time doing all the other parts. 

Scherenschnitte of Me Knitting

 Looking for an empty sketchbook yesterday, I found this loose snip floating. I must have cut it during my knitting phase. (Knitting turned out to not be in my skill set and this is probably my only reminder of it.)

I am anxious to do some papercutting, but there are so many other projects on my “to do” list.

Spoon Carving Season

Summer is normally the time of year that I carve wooden spoons. I sit on the screened in side porch for hours, whittling away.  That is, if the temperature is not unbearable AND I have fresh, “green” wood to carve.

This year the woods have not yielded many fallen, living trees or limbs, so I haven’t had much to work with. Months ago a friend gave me some cherry wood which is my favorite. By now, much of it dried out and now it is too hard to carve. Luckily though, I stuck a couple of pieces in the fridge. (That keeps it moist enough for me to cut.)

I pulled out one piece today and carved a small spoon for myself. The limb had lots of knots in it; too many to work around. Since carvable wood has been hard to come by, I use whatever I can. It’s an imperfect spoon but since it’s going to be mine, it is just fine.

Appliquéd Embroidery on the Quilt

 After doing a little vintage style embroidery on the quilt, it occurred to me to look for some actual vintage embroidery to use.  My thought was to look for some vintage linens at the antique store that were cheap and I would not feel guilty cutting up. Well, I couldn't find anything that was cheap. (They used to  go for absurdly low prices.)

I couldn't find what I had in mind at the thrift store either, but I did find this sweet little pinafore with some machine embroidery. It was stuck in the wrong spot in the store, like it was just waiting there for me.

The machine embroidered pieces had little windmills and a dancing Dutch couple.  Since some of my heritage is Dutch, that seemed perfect.

Here is the before and after of where I placed one of the pieces.

 

That light blue gingham was dingy and stained. Since the insert had blue gingham, I thought this was an appropriate replacement.

Quilt Embroidery Inspired by 1940’s and 50’s

The design in this little block of the crazy quilt was inspired by stitching I found on an old pillowcase. I believe that Grandma’s quilt was done in the 1940’s or maybe the 50’s, so I thought I’d give homage to craft stitching from that same time period. 

Here’s where this block started.

That original fabric was just too thin and dry rotten to stitch on top, so I replaced it with something a little heavier than muslin.