Pre Holiday Mishmash

Hello! I'm running a little busy with the holidays coming up but I have been working on some embroidery during my breaks at work and I should be working on my pollyanna gift (I better get cracking at that before I leave it till the last minute!)

Here's a preview of The Table from the last post - I'm not officially done yet, the drawers still need some love'n and I bought some great knobs from work to finish it all off!
(Also you get to see how messy my table is at the moment and this is in medium messiness mode!)

For my embroidery I really wanted to try out some high textured embroidery - I fell in love with it when I saw AverageJaneCrafter's entry for the NASA craft contest which you can see here .  I actually have tried it out before but it was during school for a project and....let's just say it got a little out of hand and is still unfinished (It was for a painting class so only god knows why I decided to try my hand at some extreme embroidery to be mixed into my piece) 

The plan is to try out a simple piece that I can frame and hang in my room.  Here's the beginning of the project. I usually use simple white chalk for my embroidery projects if the fabric is too dark for my fabric marker.  I started using it when I was panicking on a school project and swiped a piece from a classroom in hopes that it would help and it does! (Just as long as you make sure it doesn't smear too much but I usually just go over the lines again before I start working again)

Also I'm almost ashamed I'm calling this a part sketch blog and haven't posted anything drawn yet!

I've been feeling iffy about my drawing skills which kind of explains that I guess! 

 I just haven't had much time to actually sit down and do something I'm proud of so I've become rusty since the summer. I had time last night and decided to brush off that rust and mess around with some inks and watercolor.  This is the only thing of note from the night but that's because it took me most of the night when I decided to crosshatch the background...

The Table part 1

This may or may not be sacrilegious to some artists but...I got rid of my old drafting table.  It was all for a good cause though! Because I really needed room for my newest find - This lovely old girl!

(Okay well trust me, the charm is under the grime...)

So here's the story... My grandmother is moving out of her house and its a pretty big place (I think 7 out of 9 of my aunts/uncles lived there at one point of time) It also doesn't help that I think I got my touch of pack rat tendencies from that side of the family, so the house was still pretty well furnished with odds and ends.

The Table was actually found in a shed hidden in the backyard and the strangest thing is that my grandma doesn't even recognize it.  My guess is that my grandfather might have found it in the trash at some point in time (another trait I picked up) and stuck it in the shed and forgot about it.  We think it may be from the 1950s (this is going on my mom's Antique Roadshow knowledge which I have to say is pretty legit)  

After a rocky move, which involved an open car trunk and me holding on to The Table while my mom drove, washing off and scrubbing down the table was one of the most satisfying things I've done in a long time.

I wasn't there for the unearthing of it but apparently some mice made a home out of the drawers and it looked like some hungry termites might have gotten to the legs so I took it upon myself to give the whole thing another good scrub but this time with a bleach solution.

The thing that really drew me to The Table had to be the table top - I think it's made of porcelain but it's got this strange silhouette scene inlaid into it that's just so bizarre that I can't help but think of a story every time I look at it.

Day two was sanding day - Which as it turns out, is a pretty darn good upper arm workout! I was throughly surprised to find a white coat underneath the green paint and even more surprised that even with me putting some elbow grease into my sanding - it was a real pain to get down to the wood so I decided to cut my chances and just take off the top coat. To finish out the day I used some wood filler to fix up the legs where the termites had nibbled on, let it dry and then sanded again to fix up the wood filler. 

To be continued in The Table... part 2! (dun dun DUN!)

And here's another bit of embroidery to round out the first day of posting!

I actually did this last semester for my textiles studies class as a side project where I tried my hand with Sashiko, a type of japanese embroidery.

The kit I used is from a lovely etsy shop called Tadaa Studios

Jumping right into it now! As a heads up you guys are going to see a lot of projects that are combinations of grays, yellows, white and black because that's the color pallet of my room.

I bought a couple of tureens and candle votives for an art project that didn't make it all the way to the finish line so they've been laying around gathering dust in my room.  

I finally settled on making a pincushion with the largest tureen since I didn't have any nice ones for my workspace.

I'll admit, I didn't measure out any of the fabric (I'm terrible with measuring, it's one of my downfalls) so that's why it's a little puffier than the glass.  I used felt cloth all around and for the inside I was worried if I just used plain pillow fill the smaller sewing needles would slip through and be lost in the cushion so I filled over half of it with cotton balls which would be just as soft but add some stability to it.

For the flower on the top I tried out a new stitch, the long and short stitch, and now I'm in love with!

I'm going to have to use it in another project soon

Hey! Look! It's an Introduction Post!

Hi there!  I'm going to make this short and sweet because I'm terrible at starting things up and I really want to get this blog going so this is the first big hurtle!

My name is Win, I just graduated with a B.A in Studio Art and I also love discovering new crafts and trying them out.  Hems and Haws is my way of combining my two favorite things and being able to share it with others. 

(Also I'm hoping that it'll help me finish projects completely by using this site to keep me on task, 

it's called Hems and Haws for a couple of reasons!)

Well anywho!

Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you'll stick around!