When Old Is Made New Again

Those who have been reading this blog know I love vintage. My friends know I love vintage so they sometimes pass along items they think I might be interested in. A big thanks goes to Natalie who gave me over a dozen of her husbands silk neckties. Having retired and no longer in need to so many ties, he went through them and according to Natalie "When he's willing to let go of anything I just go with it." The ties sat around for many months until the craft fairs were over and then I got going on making those ties into two items for my Etsy shop, a foot stool and a pillow. I didn't dream these up myself but found them on Pinterest. With only photos I did need to figure out how to make it happen.

Much of it depended on finding a footstool so it was my lucky day when I spied one at Goodwill for $5, plus it was seniors day and I got a further discount. Yes, I nearly ran out of the store! Once I had the base, I could measure out the circumference and decide how many ties it would take, then make a template for each wedge. I got the idea to take the wide pointed end of the tie and have it hang over the edge and that turned out to be a good decision when it came time to actually fasten this to the footstool:

I left the footstool intact and just covered over it, tacking the intersections with decorative nails. What about the center? It needed to be pulled down so it got a button and the cord through the shank was pulled through to a hole on the bottom. I had to put a small piece of metal to tie it off so it wouldn't pull back up but it seems to be very sturdy:

Now that I have cut off the larger end of the 14 silk ties, I still had a sizable length of tie left over. In comes the idea of making a pillow by weaving the short ends like a lattice pie crust:

I really had a difficult time making it square but in the end it did measure out to a nearly perfect 16" square. I mounted it onto a section of new coat lining, added upholstery fabric from the compact cabinet project, installed a zipper and it was nearly done. Although I wanted to serge the edges the ties interfacing was too thick and kept jamming the two sergers I tried. I ended up trimming first and then using the serger to provide the stitches on the edge, no cutting. I like the pointed end of the ties hanging over the edge, too, deciding that's where the zipper needed to go.

With a custom made pillow form, it's complete and in my Etsy shop. I even had to made a new category: Home Decor. Not exactly easy to do because I had to figure it out on my own, yet it was very satisfying to have them done.

A fitting post for the first day of 2016 where I used something from the past that will decorate someones home in 2016 and years to come. Welcome the New Year!