Bernard, my new friend (and some wedding stuff, too)

I love that the man I am going to marry is creative.  Look what he made for me:

He was watching me work on my jacket muslin, and decided to start a project on his own.  He took a piece of scrap fabric, drew a face, ears, and paws on it, and then cut them out.  Next, he found some contrasting fabric, pinned it behind, and hand-stitched around each shape.  Once he had finished that, he sewed a back on, stuffed it, and voila!  We have Bernard the Bear.  I was impressed.

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So, on to wedding stuff!  Table decorations, to be exact.

I love old glass jars, and have GOBS of antique white buttons (like jars full), so I decided to combine the two--with votive candles--to make decorations for the tables at the reception.  

There is an old man named Clyde who has an old barn full of cool old stuff near where I live.  You can go to his barn and buy stuff for really cheap.  Example: my friends bought a solid pine round table for their kitchen for $40 last year.  Yeah.  

Clyde has a butt-load of old glass jars (most of them full of old tools, screws, light bulbs, etc. from his workshop), and sells them for 25 cents a piece.  Perfect place to get my glass jars!  My fiancée had never been to the barn before, so we went together to pick out he jars and look around.  I had a feeling he would like it--he loves thrift stores and such.  We ended up purchasing 16 glass jars, all sorts of cool shapes.  We also purchased a kitchen table and four chairs from the 30's or 40's, a cool yellow upholstered chair, two twin solid wood sleigh bed frames, and two pretty side tables from the 50's for $200.  Oh, plus Clyde threw in a really awesome phonograph/radio cabinet from the 60's for free.  Whoop!  I love the barn sale.

Here are some before/after pictures of the glasses I purchased, plus some up-close pics of my favorites.  We are going to fill each one part-way with the old white buttons, place a votive inside, and set them up on the reception table amongst other decorations.  

 Before...

And after!

Some of my favorites:

This one is really old.  It didn't come all the way clean, but I'm going to keep working on it.

 I love this old Skippy jar.  It has measurements on the side!  How cool is that?

The buttons are so beautiful.  All different shades of white and off-white, and a mixture of plastic, bakelite, shell, glass, and mother-of-pearl.  They look especially pretty with a candle set on top.

Alright, that's all for today!  I'm going to go work on bound buttonholes for my jacket...

~Bessie

Poor neglected blog!

Hello!  It's been so long since I last posted, that I hope I still have a few readers out there.

Why have I neglected my blog so as of late?  Because I am getting married.  Whoop!  That's a good reason, right?  We are planning the wedding ourselves, and only have about five more weeks until the big day, so needless to say we have been very busy.  I am going to be doing a lot of the wedding prep by hand, and I thought it might be a good idea to share our progress on various projects with you here on the blog.

There are a lot of projects I could post today, but I will start off with the main project (and the one I think you will all be most interested in):  The Dress.  Now my fiancee will not let me post any pictures of my dress, because he likes to read my blog and doesn't want to see it until the wedding day.  ;)  That's fine, because I don't really need to do anything with it.  It is a vintage dress from the 70's that I purchased last year from an antique store for $40.  Now you might be thinking tacky polyester 70's--that is not the case with this dress.  It is absolutely gorgeous, with lots of delicate lace, chiffon butterfly sleeves (ok, that's definitely 70's), and buttons all up the back.  I love it.  What I will be posting about is the jacket I am making to wear over my dress at the wedding.

The Jacket.  Oh yeah.

We are doing an outside ceremony at the end of February, up in the mountains, so we are planning on it being a little chilly.  Thus I pulled out a pattern I have been wanting to use for a long time and started sketching out some ideas.  I decided to sew it up in a rust velveteen, to go with our wedding colors.  It's going to be really pretty. :)  My fiancee helped me make a muslin for it, and got to experience the fitting process.  I'm pretty sure he enjoyed himself!

He sewed together one of the sleeves, and did a fantastic job.

Me trying on the muslin.  I think I had just gotten it to fit perfectly.

The Muslin (minus one sleeve)

The new front and back pieces.

I got the fabric in early this week and cut it out yesterday.  I also began the building process (interfacing, grosgrain ribbon, etc.) and sewed together the shoulder and side seams.  It is coming along nicely, and I really love how the fabric looks.

I'll try to post more pics as I have them.  I'll also be doing some posts on wedding favors and centerpieces soon.

Have a fantastic day!

~Bessie