Beauty is in the eye of the... well, you know

Please take a moment to carefully study the photo below. Be sure you take enough time to fully appreciate the goofy goodness. Go ahead, I'll wait.



Okay. Now your first reaction might well have been: "Wow, that is UGLY!" And I would agree with you, except that it PERFECTLY captures my personal sense of humor and the degree of "quirk" I like to have in my life. Here's how this item came to be:

When I was a bride-to-be in 1991 (hey that's 20 years ago - vintage, right?) my groom-to-be and I were preparing to purchase and move into his childhood home. His parents were preparing to move out, having lived there for about 45 years. Ultimately, there were two areas of the house from which they never moved a single item, leaving it all for us: the basement workshop, and the laundry/sewing room.

Around this same time, my mother-in-law-to-be took some time to show me how to make wall-hangings similar to this one out of fabric, an embroidery hoop, and eyelet or lace trim. Simple enough, and I made a bunch of them using various fabrics to give as gifts to the women in my family. But I didn't find suitable fabric to make one for myself until I took time to go through the stash in the old sewing room.

After wading through the piles of 1970's double-knits, I was delighted to find a cotton craft scrap that included one perfect imprint of this flower-bedecked girl who reminds me so much of "Elsie," the friendly representative of Borden's Dairy. I immediately capitalized on my new-found thingie-making skills and whipped this up. I still get a smile, every time I see it.

More soon!