sweetest day

whew. I don't know if I'll make and embroider a veil by hand again - certainly not anytime soon. This absolutely absorbed every free minute for the past two weeks; and I didn't finish it until 10pm the night before the wedding - yikes! So things have been quiet around here while I've been hard at work, giving myself carpal tunnel.

Thank goodness it was a short veil! Each of the two layers is only 20" long, but of course the standard width for veils is 108 inches (or nine feet!), so I had a lot to do. The edge was blind-hemmed by hand. The floral motif was taken directly from the embroidery motif on the bride's gown. I embroidered two smaller versions of this central motif on either side, making a total of five embroidered motifs, each separated from the other by a length of palestrina knots (also known as old english knot), which I also used to trim the rest of the veil, embroidering the knots over the edge of my blind hem.

Though I'm glad to be done with it, I think a veil is something every bride could make for herself, especially if she wants a simple one - this would have been super fast if I had just been sewing ribbon or pearl-trim to the edge - and from what I read online, it seems that making your own veil is a good way to trim your wedding budget by as much as a couple hundred dollars (not much in the grand scheme of things, but it all adds up!). Here's the tutorial I used as the basis for making this veil, but there are a lot more out there - just google "diy wedding veil" and see!

I also made seven hairpieces to tuck into the top of the bride's updo (which I was also responsible for creating on the day of the wedding). The tiny white violets are my favorite; I think when my hands recover I might consider making a hairpiece for myself, just using these. To make them, I bought some ribbon that looks like little flowers linked together, like this:

click here to buy your own from things festive

I cut the tiny flowers apart, and stitched a single seed bead into the center of each one (mine were rocailles: clear glass with a silver-painted center), and added a few little stitches to subtly shape the violets into a more natural/organic form. I stitched them together, one by one. It took hours, I'm not going to lie to you. This is definitely not a craft for someone looking to finish quickly, but the final result was exquisite. The silvery leaves are from some expensive french lace that I bought and cut apart, tossing the flowers but keeping the leaves (I sealed cut edges with tacky glue to prevent fraying). The tiny faux pearls on clear plastic line I bought at a party goods store and cut apart, and the larger faux pearls I slipped onto thick headpins, securing with tacky glue. The little rosettes are made from a branch of faux spray roses that I cut apart, stitching about three little blossoms together for each of the rosettes you see above.

All in all, a lot of work for a few little glitzy bits and bobs, but totally worth it to help a beautiful bride on her special day!

did I mention we were headed to Europe?

whoops. Sorry to disappear. I'm back from Stockholm, Vadstena, Sandham, Prague, Paris, and Mont St. Michel. We had our backyard wedding celebration (note: a bit more work than I'd expected, ha!) and the last out-of-towners (my family) just left today. So! I'm off to nurse a cold (I am so incredibly worn out after all that!) and embroider that veil I've been fussing with all summer. I have so much left to knock out on that summer to-do list, so I should be back to regularly posting new projects soon!

party preparation begins

we leave Thursday for Stockholm; last night I made filling for phyllo puffs. Tomorrow I want to assemble, taste-test, and (if successful), freeze them for the party. I am making and freezing lemon-lavender sugar cookie logs today and hopefully also parbaking and freezing a tart shell for a lemon-curd tart.

Our dinner is united by a lemon-and-lavender flavour theme (I was also originally going to decorate the table with potted lavender plants, before my MIL offered her summer dahlia garden for the tables), and so I made some fresh bunting to hang from the trees from vintage sari cloth my aunt Diane gave to me. This is stunningly beautiful cloth worked in lavendar and gold, but I could never decide what to do with it because I knew that once I cut it, it would start to fray. So, in order to reinforce these, I fused the back of three yards of the sari cloth with lightweight fusible interfacing. There are still some threads that are fraying, but most of them have been captured and I think these will hold up considerably better for having a fused backing. I was only able to make three 12' strings of these, but as the colour palette is so similar, I think we will just have to mix these with our Swedish Midsommar buntings (in blue and yellow).

we love you, Seattle!

yep. we're official. The big celebration is in August; Tuesday we said our vows on the roof of the Judicial building and had drinks and small plates on a perfect summer evening with five dear friends. I haven't seen all the pictures our friends snapped yet, but this pretty much says it all, don't you think?

bouquet

for a little bouquet, I tied together yellow-orange ranunculus, deep orange butterfly milkweed (aka butterfly weed, asclepias tuberosa), fluffy clove-scented pink spikes of stock (how did I not know they smelled like cloves? amazing!), some trailing vines of a highly scented jasmine, and dusty miller leaves. I think I might try growing a little garden of these together in the future, for sentiment.

voila!

Behold, the fruits of concerted goodwill- and value-village-combing! A few pieces are not shown, but you get the idea. I think we are wedding-ready, on the plates front.

I think we have all the napkins now, too. We are still working on the silver; and will probably borrow glasses, as we just haven't got room to store 30 wine glasses.

Highlights from some of the recent trips: in the foreground, a curved saucer (Norwegian) sits on a gold-rimmed plate made in Czechoslovakia sometime between 1918 and 1945. Counter-clockwise, the saucer on top of the other stack is a Johnson Bros. piece (England). I don't know how old it is, but the transfers were still applied by hand - there are mistakes! and you can see where the patterns are joined. The inner floral band is in gold, and there is a geometric "key" pattern in black on taupe nearer the rim. The sugar bowl is from my parents, part of the set that inspired our tablescape. The red floral probably won't appear on the table, unless it's serving some small condiment. I just couldn't bear to pass it up, it was so pretty. The last piece is English Crown Ducal Ware, the dark bands on that piece are navy - we have a few bits of "something blue" on the table now, just for fun.

hardware store tablecloths

this wedding table is coming together! We still need a few more big plates (I'd say less than 6 left to buy), and a few more napkins and the silver. And then we're ready! I might start picking up pewter vessels for flowers next.

Some of the recent thrifting finds: china from Goodwill, and napkins from Goodwill and Value Village. The mustard-colour one in front was a real success story: these were bright yellow when we bought them. We tried bleaching them, which only seemed to make them brighter. A day in a tea-dye-bath and they are a pleasantly muted mustard colour now. I love the pickstitch detail. These may be a linen blend. The soft-rose napkin (also went through a tea-dye bath) is linen, edged with hand-tatted lace made by Quakers (I love it when you find new things, tags still on, at Goodwill); the white one on the left is linen with pickstitching, and the top right, which you can barely see, is cotton with some nice fancy open/cutwork edged in beige. We found the blue plate (two of 'em) with the beaded edge a few weeks ago and I liked the idea of including "something blue" on the table.

And for tablecloths? We're using old coffee sacks. Sure, they have a bit of a strong, ripe/green coffee smell to them, but we've decided we're okay with that. And the nicest thing? Not only were they available to us locally (because, let's be honest, if you have to ship recycled materials to reuse, it does kind of defeat the point - a little!), they are basically waste materials from Seattle's thriving coffee industry. Which is to say nothing of the fact that, after we use them, we can lay them down to kill weeds or kill grass if we want to build a raised bed over them. They are biodegradable, recycled landscape fabric - and I hear they work really well, too! If you'd like to pick up some of these sacks, they are an affordable $5.50 for a half dozen (try searching for coffee sacks on ebay - you'll be charged a lot more!). Upcycle Northwest is the company creating gardening materials (including a coffee-bean gravel for your garden paths!) out of Seattle's coffee industry wastes, and these bags are available at Stoneway Hardware just south of Green Lake. The guys laughed at the hardware store laughed when we told them what these were for, but general consensus seemed to be "cool idea!"

And just had to share this. I found this silver-plated tray, badly tarnished, at Goodwill, and paid $3. A few minutes of polishing and wow, what a beauty. Totally worth the risk that it would turn out to be aluminum (I was pretty sure that aluminum wouldn't tarnish as badly as this poor tray). I found the brass candlesticks at a yard sale in high school; I think I may have paid a quarter for each, at most. The sugar bowl is from the set my parents gave me, the table runner (which I love, it makes it feel so Scandinavian in here!) cost me 99 cents at Value Village the other day, and the cut-glass fruit bowl is something I picked up for 50 cents at another yard sale when I was in high school. These beeswax tapers are made by local beeswax candle company Big Dipper Waxworks. I've become quite enamoured with these lately; I get about 15 hours out of each taper and they are completely dripless (which is to say nothing of how wonderful they smell, even when they're not burning!). Looks like they have some great deals on these candles if you buy from their website - worth checking out if you want to add a little romance to your dinner table!

frugal wedding: bargain silver

I do realize that one doesn't have to buy silver for a wedding dinner - you can rent, you can use compostable bamboo utensils, you can ask friends to borrow theirs. For me, however, outfitting this table is the opportunity to amass themed tableware that I can reuse for a long time. So, in that vein, I thought that in addition to using our nice flatware, I'd work to accumulate a set of mixed silverware.



I made a good start today. I almost didn't open the chipped, paper-covered chipboard box, as the lady at the antique store told us, "this set's in bad shape." She wasn't kidding - look:



yeah, those are cobwebs linking those two dinner knives together. The sugar spoon is from another set entirely. There are seven dinner knives, seven little spoons, three salad forks, six dinner forks, and eight large spoons. And of course, it's all tarnished.



But let's do the math here: I figured I can eke six settings out of this box, as we're not going to bother with separate salad and dinner forks (we're dining alfresco by candles in mason jars; I think we can get away with eschewing salad forks!), and for $45, it's a good deal.



As for the tarnish, I had just the thing:


Town Talk Silver Polish Spray is amazing. Spray it on, rub it off with a clean cloth (I use rags I cut from Cass' old flannel pajamas - the cotton nap is perfect for getting into the grooves in the floral pattern). A bit of energetic rubbing up will really bring out the shine. You don't have to buy this stuff from the British homepage, as I think many stores carry it - Restoration Hardware certainly does, Williams Sonoma may, and I think I've even seen it at my local Ace Hardware here in Greenwood, which has really nice cleaners available.

I did about a dozen pieces in less than 10 minutes:

Nice, huh? We looked them up: they're Oneida's "Briar Rose" design (silver plate), from 1948. I love how long the tines on the dinner forks are - they're so elegant.

We've also started picking up the table linens and are wrapping up the china (I have a few more pieces to show you). The linen napkins with the pick-stitching detail are from Goodwill; I only found 4, and whitened them up with bleach. A few threads are missing here and there from the pickstitching, but at 50 cents apiece, I think they'll do. Under them are 8 ivory cotton napkins from Value Village - more basic, but they'll do if I can't find enough linen by August. And the new china pieces? Lenox's Solitaire line. I picked up 4 salad plates and 4 saucers on sale at Goodwill for a total of $12. Considering that saucers were originally $15 apiece (the price tags, yellowing with age, were still stuck to the undersides), they were a nice find!

frugal wedding - thrift store china

The quarter is winding down. I have plenty of things I've been meaning to post here - food, mostly, but a few crafts and a bit of sewing, but I've had so little time. What I have to show today is a little less original, but since we're planning to celebrate our marriage this summer in the form of a backyard dinner that we want to be both stylish AND frugal, I thought I might document the process here. Who knows? Maybe someone will be inspired. So. You've already seen my ring. (Full disclosure: it cost $400.)

Today I want to post a few pieces of the table service we're putting together.

When I first moved to Seattle and started my life with my long-time best friend and new boyfriend, my parents packed the china my maternal grandparents had given them a long time ago along with me. So now, nine years later, when we tie the knot (yep, same guy! I knew he was the one from the start - honestly! I even told him so!), I'm happy that my parents' china is the foundation of our own collection. As we build this collection, we're also donating our old "daily use" plates in order to conserve space in our kitchen.

The plan for this celebration is to have a dinner and salad plate and saucer for everyone, in a mix of styles. We're limiting ourselves to a colour scheme: white/off-white china with gold/silver/platinum details - mostly tipped rims, that sort of thing. However, because I love plant motifs, I'm really happy to have found the Mikasa Salisbury pieces at Value Village today. I didn't take them all, though I felt awful for breaking up the set like that, but I worry that if we are going to "mix it up," as they say, we need to be committed to really mixing it up.

I think they key to making this look "anthro" rather than "thrift store" is attaining a critical mass of coordinating pieces. I think it's already starting to come together quite prettily - and wait until I show you what we want to use as tablecloths! We have months until the dinner and are already about a third of the way there after two weeks of looking, so I think we will be fine. In fact, I think pretty soon I'd like to start scouring antiques stores for one-offs that might bring some more unusual patterning into the mix. Though I'm trying to stick largely to china, I really love 1880s Ironstone, especially brown transferware - so if I can find any good pieces that I can afford between now and the dinner, they will go into the mix!

Now, even at the thrift store, china isn't always the cheapest thing. I spent $30 today on 10 salad plates, 5 saucers, and 4 teacups (now that I write that out, I'm thinking "huh, okay, maybe that's not so bad?"). Last week I spent $26 on 7 dinner plates and maybe 5 or 6 saucers. So I imagine we will be well over $100 just for plates. But as we're not having a wedding and don't plan to rent a hall, are doing our own cooking and hoping to have some of our guests provide some of the music live, I think we can afford a little splurge for a slightly eccentric set of servingware that we'll be able to use (and easily add to/replace broken pieces) for years to come! Plus, c'mon - 3-pc. service for 25 or 26? That's a LOT of dishes for $100.

it'll be nine years in june ...

and in july/august, we're getting married. =) I decided over the holidays that I was finally ready.

No wedding. Don't want one. Instead, we plan to travel in Europe together for 2 1/2 weeks. Our first overseas trip together. We're planning to go to the American Embassy in Stockholm to sign the paperwork. =)

I can't remember now where I first saw the work of the lovely and oh-so-talented jeweler Kate Szabone but I'm so glad I did. This is my ring! It's a grey diamond with gold glints, set in rose gold. Not only do I adore Kate's aesthetic, I like the ethics of her business as well: she only uses natural, conflict-free diamonds - and her stones are so stunning, it's really hard to choose among them! Finally, I think she's quite reasonable for a one-of-a-kind piece: we paid $720, all told, for my ring and his (a flat 3/16" band in white gold), including shipping. They're in transit now - can't wait for them to get here!