- Thar she blows! The newest folk art whale

The great white whale has taken its place on the breezeway wall, along with the fish detailed in a previous post.

As with the other folk art pieces Don has made, the whale has imaginative details:

Detail: Metal washers for the eye,
driftwood glazed with milk paint for the pectoral fin

Detail: Fluke cut from a rusted
pressed metal sheet found at By the Bridge Antiques, Wimberley

But what I like best about this latest addition to the breezeway is the way he "saw" the whale in the peeling white paint and the shape of the board.

Ahab would be impressed.

- Repurposed placemats

Originally posted 6/9/2013 in On The Trail

Problem: our 1990s placemats were a little too big for the table, and the scalloped edges really dated them style-wise. But they always washed up well and they were a gift from my Mom. What to do?

I poked around in my closet until I found a light weight skirt that I never wore since it didn't really fit right. After trimming the scalloped edges off of the placemats, I proceeded to cut the skirt fabric into strips ...

... then machine sewed the strips onto the placemats and "quilted" them down with wavy lines.

Problem solved!