I deal the 9 of hares

I came across this collection of round playing cards on a blog and ventured over to the British Museum's website to take a look. The set of cards has five different types: parrots, hares, carnations, columbines and roses and there are ten numbers and four people: king, queen, knave and valet. They were made by the mysterious PW, a monogrammist of Cologne in around 1500. The British Museum has 39 cards of the set.

The Nine of Hares (from here)

Is that hare at the bottom about to lick his paw?

The King of Parrots (from here)

Valiant and brave, the king with his faithful parrot at his side!

The Ace of Roses (from here)

The latin inscription reads " PEPVLIT VIRES CASVS AIO Q TULIT EQVO" and says something about defeating or overthrowing your enemies with vigour and receiving a horse! Yes, this is my bad translation from a latin dictionary.

The Ten of Parrots (from here)

I like how the parrots are depicted in realistic poses such as preening their outstretched wings and biting their tail feathers.

Gingham Skirt

The idea for this project started 2-3 years ago with this issue of Cotton Friend magazine:

On the cover was this cute gingham check skirt

But it used a large gingham check instead of the usual smaller one. I thought, at the time that It was nice and I'd like to make one. Then promptly moved on to other projects. Then I was finishing the quilt and decided to back it in gingham, not having enough of the smaller check I brought some more of a larger check. Then when I finished I had about 40cm left of the gingham pieces. I decided to try making a skirt from a gathered rectangle or two inspired by something I saw on Craftster. So I gathered the two rectangles and made a band out of an old tshirt. I was going to put the two checks together, making one stick out below the other, but then I decided I didn't like that idea and backed the skirt in calico instead. The waistband is sewn so the skirt is reversible. Here it is:

The tshirt waistband means I don't have to do an elastic waist. Sweet! (and comfy)

The calico lining looked a bit bare:

Then I was mucking around with some paint, fabric, and a paper doily:

It looked nice so I decided to try the same on the calico:

So I stenciled doily resist patterns around the bottom of the skirt using grey fabric paint and a brush:

And I love it! Two skirts in one! Saves wardrobe space! I'm going to do this again!

I like to draw on t-shirts

Fabric markers are so fun & so easy to use! Who knew?! I took a grey marker and drew circles on a t-shirt for the Mr. and drew spots on a tank top for me. Both turned out great and the hand-drawn nature of the lines is evident and I think, quite charming as you can see. My tank top is cut down from a cheap t-shirt and the shoulder ties are the former sleeve hems (so I didn't have to sew anything!). Love it.

Happy circles

The Mr's Circled T

Spots!

The shoulder ties

Waves of dots