Doing What I Want to Do

I have taken a vacation from my obligations.  Sort of.  Still have a couple of meetings I have to attend, but other than that, I'm doing what I want to do for the next two weeks.  Not going anywhere, just staying home and doing stuff that I've been putting off.

Like this project:

I was watching an episode of Blue Bloods on CBS last year.  Nate Berkus had said once that when he watches T.V. shows, he's always looking at the set design.  Honestly, I think that's way too confusing, especially when you can look at Tom Selleck instead.  But, this particular scene didn't have Selleck in it, so I felt obligated to follow Nate's advice and check out the set design.  And I saw a framed piece hanging on the wall of this victim's apartment and went "Oh, Wow!  That's cool!"  Ever since, I've been gathering up all the old keys I can find around the house (my husband had quite a few) and picked up some at tag sales.  Then I had to look and look for the shadow box I wanted (a long narrow one).  I finally found this one at Joanne's this past weekend.  Regular price was $35 (which I thought was unreasonable), but it happened to be on sale and I had a coupon for an extra 10% off regular and sale price items.  So, I got it for under $20.  Which I thought was very reasonable.
 

To put it all together, I used my drill, with a fine bit.  I put the keys on the display board until I had a layout that I liked.  Then I transferred all the keys off to my work table.  Put a couple of keys back on the display board and drilled holes just above them.  Then I took some fine, vinyl coated wire (in black) that I'd had for a l-o-n-g time; a manageable size, like a foot in length.  I am pretty sure it is some sort of scrapbooking wire.  Keeping a tail of the wire in the back, I poked the wire through a drilled hole and pulled it all the way to the front (except the tail in back) then slid on a key and put the wire back in the same hole to the back.  Then moved on to the next hole.  I repeated with all the drilling and the keys until I had them all attached to the display board.  Used several lengths of wire in this process. The nice thing about the wire is that it doesn't have much of a profile on the back and when you put the display board back in the shadow box frame, and then put the backing on it, there's no difficulty getting it all closed back up.  One thing I made sure to do was if the keys had some cool writing or design on them, that went to the front side.  And I still have plenty of room to add more keys as we find them.

I also have a collection of Patriotic American jewelry due to my DAR membership.  I just love big sparkly flags and red-white-and-blue beads!  I had put it all into a shadow box because it's so pretty it needed to be treated better than just hanging out in a jewelry box.  The only problem with that was the shadow box I used was too small to leave room for expansion and the jewelry had to be put in more permanently so that it would stay in place.  The problem with that is that I wear my jewelry.  I think that I figured out a new way to do it so they can be on display and wearable; I'm going to work on that here during my stay-ca.

Second Thing I did (well, actually I did this before I did the keys, but . . . ) was to finish the blocks for my Julia's Ribbons quilt.  Remember, I began working on this last winter.  I'd really like to finish it before this coming winter ('cause I have other cool stuff that I want to get to!)  So, here are the blocks -

The block here on the left is my favorite one.  I just love the background fabric that is on this one.  Wanted to have more of it!  I went back to the store, but they didn't have anymore left in stock - and you know what that means . . . so, no, I decided I didn't want to spend all that time just to add to my already too-large stash.

Lastly, I've been stitching in the evening on Opus Magnusson.  I now have a complete width of the whole.  Two more rows to go!  That means nine more months of stitching on it!  Yippie!  It will remind me of maternity!

This one has quickly lost it's charm for me.  That tiger should be orange and it really bothers me.  Not enough to unstitch it and restitch it, but it really bothers me.  I'm sure I'll just love it when I'm done - right now I'm just boo-hooing.  Maybe I'll have a better outlook at the end of my vacation. Hope you enjoyed!