Bee, Myself & I in February - Sort Of

 Bee, Myself & I is meant to be a bit of handicraft (sewing, knitting, whatever) one does for one's own pleasure and not to fulfill anyone else's needs or goals. It was instituted by Carla over at Granny Maud's Girl.

Last month I did some bead embroidery. I did not pick up any beads this month. Instead I embroidered the first block in Joy's block of the month program.

I stitched this on the same pale mottled yellow I used for the piece I showed in the previous post, using Nancy's hand dyed flosses again. I altered the pattern just a bit. There were little squiggles of new growth coming off the vine. I chose to embroider tiny leaves instead. The pattern may have printed off a bit smaller than the original; it didn't seem possible to stitch those squiggles in a recognizable way. If I stay on track this will be the first of a set of nine blocks. The eventual quilt will not be for me in all likelihood so technically this wouldn't qualify for a Bee, Myself and I project. The embroidery was just what I needed a the time though.

I have another project that also partially qualifies. I bought this chair several years ago, basically off the side of the road. Back then it looked much better than it does in this recent picture.

The back shows you better what it looked like back in the day.

The appeal of this chair was it's more delicate scale. It's not a man-sized wing back, it was built for a lady. To begin with I had this chair in my bedroom. More recently James has been using it at his desk in his workroom. (We are a family of small-scale people. 😉) I don't want you to think he was the one that destroyed the upholstery however! It needed to be reupholstered when I first purchased it and of course has only deteriorated in the intervening years. I've had it a long time. The day has come to bite the bullet and either get rid of the chair or recover it.

None of us have the skills to reupholster a chair such as this. I found a local gal who recovers furniture in her garage for what I consider a reasonable price. Since then I have been looking for the right fabric. The easy, obvious choice was a traditional, conservative, small-scale print. The fabrics I found at comfortable prices didn't thrill me. The ones I liked the best were the most expensive - naturally.

I cannot shop safely at our Jo-Ann Fabrics and Crafts so their upholstery fabrics were pretty much out of consideration in spite of regular sales on home dec fabrics. Our Hobby Lobby, on the other hand, is generally safer for me. I took my health in my hands and ventured in to have a look at what they might have on offer. I didn't see anything that thrilled me on the first visit. The next time I took James in with me. Together we were able to uncover some prints that had been put on clearance. Guess what I found? Yup, a print I absolutely loved. 😁

Not traditional, not conservative, not small scale. I'm really not sure how well this is going to work on that smaller chair but since I spent all of $20.00 (total!) for the five yards I was told to get I'm willing to take a chance. This chair will Bee for Myself & I afterall!