For instance, small antique quilts make beautiful wall hangings in a country kitchen. The down side is that they can also be quite expensive these days. With the patterns shown in this book, you can put your old fabric scraps to good use fashioning tablecloths, valances, chair pads and other useful decorative items in addition to lovely quilted wall hangings.
If you want to incorporate a new quilt or wall hanging with some older linens, vintage dishtowels and potholders aren't quite as expensive as some larger textiles. In fact, you can pick up these items fairly reasonably in most antique malls and flea markets.
If you're like me though, using older kitchen towels for messy spills just doesn't seem thrifty. I'd rather have some newer kitchen towels on hand for every day use and save the older ones to keep bread warm on the table or to display draped over an authentic depression glass towel rod.
Beck covers this base as well with instructions on how to make those functional dishtowels and hot pads, but in styles reflecting yesteryear so they blend together well with your true vintage finds. Some of these employ the art of embroidery, while others use rickrack and other old-fashioned embellishments.
This author also covers some popular decorating themes in this book. She offers suggestions for pillows, curtains and painted accessories such as a coffee pot and a watering can lamp with a folksy rooster theme. In case you haven't been out and about lately, hens and roosters are still big in the decorative outlets these days.
For those who think life's just a bowl of cherries, the book offers several designs in a more sophisticated antique fruit motif as well. This includes placemats and napkins along with some painted furniture most anyone would admire, and those beautiful fruits just seem to stay fresh year after year.
The best part about these crafty projects is that they allow you to use some of the crafty objects, scraps and decorative bits and pieces you might have collected over the years.
Whether it's a pile of vintage fabric that would make a cute curtains to hang above the kitchen sink or a beat up teakettle needing a face-lift, you'll find fun ideas to aid you in sprucing up items you've got sitting around the house. Beck even teaches you how to turn an old mason jar into a clever lamp and paint lidded glass jars to make a colorful canister set.
Even if your kitchen's just the way you want it, these projects would make wonderful, and appreciated, gift giving ideas for sisters, best friends and brides-to-be. Handcrafts gifts often make the most treasured heirlooms, after all. I bet your mom would be really impressed with your handiwork, too.
Be prepared for all those upcoming special occasions by looking up The Decorated Kitchen now. Most major bookstores will have it available in their inventories. Even if they have to order it for you, consider it well worth the effort.
Scan by Pamela Wiggins
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