spectacular and I loved every minute of it. Seeing the last of the fall leaves crumpled on the ground this past week has been, well, kinda sad. So to help make up for the lost fall color, I've been concocting a little project. The key ingredient here is, probably surprisingly, freezer paper.Yes, freezer paper still exists, although why they sell it anywhere other than craft stores is
beyond me. Even as a canner, freezer, dryer of foods I have never found an occasion when freezer paper was necessary. But obviously someone out there still uses it as freezer paper. Maybe somewhere there are whole groups of people who re-wrap their meat in it, and who am I to question that. For crafts, though, it's a handy thing to have around.We used to keep freezer paper around the house for finger painting, back when I was foolish
enough to let my children go to town with paint. Now a days I leave the painting projects to school and art classes and to be honest, I almost forgot the freezer paper even existed. But last week I ran across a stenciling project using freezer paper and had to give it a try.I've been pondering the idea of wide table runners. I know, who ponders table runners? But really, I've been trying to decide on a more or less permanent (at least until I get bored and do something different) table covering. But since I love my table and I don't really want to cover it, just dress it up, I decided on the idea of a wide runner.
During my weekend trek through Jo-Ann's I found two likely candidates. A heavy denim that is
almost exactly the shade of blue of my cabinets and a brownish gray suiting fabric that I just plain loved. The suiting is still sitting in my fabric pile, waiting for inspiration, but the denim seemed like the perfect canvas for a little freezer paper experimentation.At first I thought I'd scan some real leaves to trace onto the paper but didn't find any leaves I was
absolutely in love with in the neighborhood, (and I was too impatient to go hunting for some further afield) so I pulled some images off the Internet to print. Traced, trimmed and ironed on, Evelyn and I spent a fun morning painting the leaves in.
Once the leaves were dry I peeled the paper off (freezer paper leaves no residue so you can iron it onto just about any fabric) and voila, a table runner. Well, almost, I still need to hem the fabric, but even with raw edges it look pretty cool, especially given the three year old contribution.