Any ideas to unlock?

[lalamaus.livejournal.com]

Two years ago, when my grandfather passed, I was given the opportunity to voice what I would like to "inherit" from my grandparents' home. I chose my grandmother's key collection. The keys were collected over the years of their marriage and one in particular holds sentimental value to me. It is the key from the hotel in which they stayed in Munich, Germany when they went overseas to attend my parents' wedding. It is an amazing key, too. (Before the days of key cards ruined it all). I have kept all of these keys of various sizes simply arranged on my mantle, for lack of anything better to do with them. I would rather not use them individually, but find a way to display them together, and preferably, creatively. Any ideas?

here are some (rather poor) pictures of them:



Also, any advice on how to care for them? I can already tell that some of the keys have suffered a bit of discoloration due to exposure to elements.

Btw, my grandmother displayed these keys on a piece of furniture in their foyer by simply arranging them randomly, so I can't really steal her idea bc it's kinda lame.

(no subject)

[saisha.livejournal.com]

Hey girls. Here's a pic of a table my friend and I painted last weekend. What do you think?

( warning: this pic is large )

(no subject)

[raspberrypie.livejournal.com]

what is a good, inexpensive sewing machine that i could use for basic things, like making purses and clothing? and i would like a variety of stitches, and durability. would anyone know what some good places are to find them?

thank you!

(no subject)

[moonsocket.livejournal.com]

I really want to make a belly dancer (or maybe gypsy) costume for my 8 year old daughter to wear this Halloween.

But I'm not having any luck finding a pattern, so I was hoping someone might know of one, or have a suggestion about where I might find one.
Any help is much appreciated!

freeform wire bracelet how-to?

[zonal.livejournal.com]

I admired a freeform flat cuff-style wire bracelet over the weekend at a craft fair, and would like to make a thinner version, approx. 1" wide. It had a consistent width, and was made only with silver beading wire (26 gauge or so) in a haphazard flat netting pattern (similar to a dreamcatcher's netting or a cobweb, but not as neat), with a few small colored glass beads throughout it.

Last night I tried to recreate the bracelet, but couldn't keep a consistent width with all the wrapping. I tried to find a picture of one online to include with this to no avail, so I hope my explanation is clear. Is this something that requires a wire jig, or has anyone done something similar to this without one? Any specific links / tips?

Thanks in advance.

Quilting & Fabrics

[discord37.livejournal.com]

Saturday evening I got this nifty idea to scan in all my fabric, I have a huge bin of it. I had wanted to for a while, either get a dig photo or scan. It's the only way I'll use it. I need to have a snapshot of it forever or I'll never let it go. Today after work I am also going to snip a small scrap off each piece, that will be useful not only to keep a bit of each, but if I need to get more fabric to match it I've already got that snip without digging out the fabric, as well as finding ones that go together. For now they are going to just go in a small box, but someday I may put them in a photo album or binder of sorts (that is sooo marthastewartesque). There are also some quilt designing programs that I believe you can plug your own images into as well as use ones that come with it, they'd be really good for that if I ever wanted to use it.

Here is my fabric collection, the names are
descriptive. I just don't have the time to make pretty pages for everything on my site anymore so I'm dumping lots of images in folders these days.

I know it's an odd thing to collect but at least I have now met others online who love fabric prints the way I do. Not just any prints, my prints. I bought most of them off ebay a few years ago, some in fabric stores. None of it was expensive, I think the most I ever paid was $14 for a yard of Flower Fairies (Cicely Mary Barker's art), one of the harder to find prints, now those are all out of print, were for a few years, but recently a new company started printing new ones. Most of my fabrics were $3-$7 for a yard, I bought several fat quarter (FQ - to any non sewers, this is a quarter of a yard that is cut a certain way so it's closer to square) sets. You can just go look at the link but my collection includes fairies, spiderwebs, king arthur, alice in wonderland and whatever was pretty to my eye or came in a big lot of scraps cheap on ebay. I got 2 different big scrap lots, I'm talking 9 lbs of fabric, containing everything from 4" pre cut squares to a few fqs. (terms to search on ebay for these: scrap scraps lot fabric fq fqs)

Oh how I would love to have an every other week, give or take, northeast NJ gothic quilting bee... expect some barbie sized quilts from me soon for the practice, made out of my precious flower fairie fabrics. They will be gifts or for sale on ebay. Once I can do them really well I may just push harder on the northeast NJ gothy quilting bee. I think if I'm the one organizing it I should at least have the basics down, I would expect at least some will come wanting to learn how and I need to be sure someone is present who can teach a basic quilt technique. Wouldn't it kick ass if I actually started making these barbie quilts with matching pillows and they started selling a lot and I could quit my job and just make them and homemade soaps? It would.

I love these too: Serendipity Fabrics - has a gallery of a lot of the flower fairies
fabrics, king arthur, fairy tale, nursery rhyme fantasy related fabrics that are unique & collectible. They sell some and there is a really nice gallery of quilts people have made with these fabrics. (the gallery seems to be empty today but I think they recently re did the site, I have an entire version of it downloaded from about a year ago)

Wrap them in Love - I think this is mostly run by a lone woman. I'm on the Yahoo e-list and sometimes they get a little too into saying prayers for each other's problems, but sweet gals & guys nonetheless. Don't know what to do with those bits leftover from quilts you made? In the mood to make more for the fun of it? You can send them whole quilts, blocks, materials, or cash of course and it all goes to children who need love. This is a non profit organization. They have a gallery of some of the donated quilts on the site, and you can buy their recipe book "Cook it yourself, I'm quilting!" They also run ebay auctions.

Project Linus - A very similar non profit organization as Wrap them in love, they also take whole and partial quilts. They have some free pattern links for inspiration if you need it. They have chapters all over the US, so you can drop off or mail things, maybe even have quilting bees.

There is a yearly Quilt competition & display at Peddlers Village, it would be cool to do some off beat wicca & fairy tale ones, sometimes you just can't push things too far :-).

Poke around my gothcraft section of my site if you're bored or need ideas or places to get free patterns, ideas, & inspiration.