The T-Cozy

Nasturtium Notes

I know summer is really here when the Nasturtiums start to bloom. My favorite of all annuals, Nasturtiums are carefree and colorful. If you have a young gardener in your family, they are a breeze to grow and the large seeds are easy for children to handle. Plus the plants require very little care---just my kind of plant! Nasturtiums spill beautifully over walls, window boxes or planters. I love their large, umbrella-like leaves that resemble water lily pads.

Both Nasturtium's leaves and flowers are edible with a sweet, peppery taste; great in salads and even tea sandwiches. The happy, bright flowers make a beautiful garnish and their leaves have 10 times the vitamin C of lettuce.

But not only will you find Nasturtiums in my summer garden; they also reside in a cabinet in my kitchen year-round.

I have a collection of vintage Nasturtium-themed kitchenware consisting of canisters, napkins, glassware, a sifter and a cake carrier. And I'm always on the look-out for more. Aren't they fun?

 

Here's an interesting Nasturtium Pesto recipe I came across while surfing the Web. I'm going to give it a try this summer, once my plants get large enough.

Nasturtium Pesto
by French chef Joel Chenet
Put the following ingredients into a food processor or blender:
• 4 cups packed nasturtium leaves
• 3 to 5 cloves of garlic
• 1-1/2 cups olive oil
• 2 drops Tabasco sauce
• 1 cup walnuts
Process the mixture until smooth. The pesto can be frozen and stored in ice cube trays so it's ready whenever needed. Excellent on top of grilled salmon, halibut, chicken or steak.

Susan

Setting the Table for Summer

To me, nothing says summer like a fabulous vintage tablecloth. These textiles, from the 1930s and 40s, are perfect to use for a picnic at the park, on a cottage breakfast table or for a backyard tea party.

 

Aren't they lovely? Surprise! These four beautiful tablecloths are offered for sale this week on my sister blog, Kitsch Encounter.

Along with these pretty vintage linens, I continue to offer some of T-Party's tea room treasures for purchase along with a few Dutch motif collectibles at a reduced price. Click here for more photos, detailed descriptions and prices.

Susan

Bark Cloth Bonanza

I recently acquired a small collection of vintage bark cloth. This heavyweight weave fabric is from the 1930s and 40s and was used primarily in home furnishings like upholstery, bedcoverings and drapery panels. With a texture similar to but much less pronounced than the bark of a tree, these textiles were often produced in rich tropical prints with big flowers or Asian inspired motifs. In the 1950s, bark cloth had atomic patterns and boomerang designs. I prefer the floral ones.

 

This fabric is thick and sturdy and I hope to create some fun items with these bark cloth scraps. Smaller pieces are perfect for eyeglass cases, make-up bags or tea cozies. Larger lengths can be used to line an old tray with a piece of glass cut to fit on top. Another cool project is to glue this fabric onto the sides of a vintage suitcase or boxy handbag with trim added to the raw edges.

Because of its durability, bark cloth is often used for tote bags. Here's mine that was a Mother's Day gift from my family this past May. Isn't it pretty? Patterns with a black background like this one are very dramatic but can be harder to find. My tote was made by Sylvie Farrington, a textile artist who lives and works on Martha's Vineyard. Trimmed with hand-beaded velvet piping, Sylvie’s bags are exquisitely made with perfect attention to detail. Though she is taking a break from bag making this year, you can visit her SylvieBags web site to view more of her inspiring creations.

And now that I have some time and a comfortable sewing corner in my studio, I'm looking forward to doing a little bark cloth sewing myself.

Susan

Garden Glances

The kids and I really enjoyed spending the day with John yesterday. I hope you all had a lovely Father's Day, too.

Being home this past Saturday gave me a chance to finally get out and do some gardening. I've been too busy lately to do much in my yard, but once I walked around and surveyed the beds, I realized that my garden has been doing just fine without me. That's what's so nice about planting perennials. They go about their business growing beautifully whether you give them the time of day or not.

Here are some garden glances . . .

Shown above, top to bottom: A birdbath surrounded by Ajuga, European Ginger, and Sweet Woodruff. Allium. Foxglove. Cranesbill Geranium. Climbing Honeysuckle. (Click on any photo for an enlarged view.)

How wonderful to spend an afternoon digging in the dirt. I've really missed gardening. And now that I'll have more free time, I look forward to doing a little more cavorting with nature.

Susan

The Merry Month of May

Ahhh May. . . my favorite month. Not only do we celebrate our anniversary, my birthday and Mother's Day; this month is the time of year we set up our screened porch. In the winter, this room is used for storing our teak deck furniture and outdoor ping pong table. But come May, it gets transformed into our favorite warm weather spot.

It's a simple room with very few furnishings. So once I washed the wainscoting and floor this week, it took me about an hour to get the porch in order. All that's left to do is to take the glass windows out and pop in the screens. But first I'm waiting for the oak trees in our backyard to finish dropping their oak dust. Last year, I put the screens in too early and then there was a fine layer of dust all over everything. And I am really allergic to oak dust! So we'll be enjoying those warm spring breezes in our back porch soon.

Isn't this a lovely time of year?

Susan

Parting Gifts

This week, Cynthia and I gave our valued patrons the sad news; T-Party will be closing at the end of June. The 1890 farmhouse we rent is being torn down as part of a downtown revitalization in Darien. Although we've had five successful years here, we have been unable to find an affordable new location. All of the properties we've seen have rents that are triple what we currently pay! That just won't do, so we have no choice but to close our doors.

We'll miss so many of our wonderful customers. And as I've said so many times in the past; we really do have the BEST customers. Linda Rose and Mary, a couple of our favorite patrons, brought us gifts this week after they heard the news of our closing.

Linda Rose is a devoted T-Party patron who is so nice. She comes in for tea often and stops by for our freshly baked scones almost every Saturday. Her gifts to us were charming tea cup note cards.

Linda Rose also sent us a heartfelt email that stated, "You and Cynthia have given so many wonderful memories to so many people that have passed through your doors. This alone is an accomplishment that not many could take away with them. As I said before, you have your hearts in the right place."

Mary has been coming to T-Party for several years. A great fan of tea rooms, she seeks them out wherever she finds herself. When Mary came for tea yesterday with her daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, she brought Cynthia and I the loveliest gifts; cute cloth butterfly napkins and a pretty tray for Cynthia and a beautiful floral teapot with a butterfly on its lid for me.

The kindness of our customers never ceases to amaze me. Thank you Linda Rose and Mary!

At least we still have a couple of months left in which to enjoy the company of our wonderful patrons. I plan to cherish these remaining moments.

Susan

A Chair of Flowers Revisited

Welcome to our home!

As you approach our front door, you are greeted by a beautiful chair planter made by my talented friend Nancy who is one of the dealers at T-Party. It has graced my front stoop for several years now and I just love it.

Now that spring has sprung, I wanted to share this little tutorial with you once again. Here's how you can make a chair planter of your own . . .

1. First you'll need an old dining chair with a cane seat. You may come across one with damaged cane for free discarded at the curb or for very little money at a thrift store.
2. Remove the damaged caning and attach a bowl-shaped double layer of chicken wire where the seat used to be using a heavy-duty staple gun.
3. Next, line the chicken wire with a good layer of pre-soaked sphagnum moss as this will help stop the soil from falling through the wire. With your moss in place, put a flower pot saucer or shallow dish on top of it to retain water and prevent excessive dripping.

4. Then fill your moss lined chicken wire with soil or compost and add your plants. I usually start our with pansies and then move on to impatiens later in the spring. Climbing plants, such as sweet peas, will wrap their tendrils around the chair back. Ivies or other trailing plants work well, too.

I hope you come across an old chair and give this project a try. Even if you don't have a front porch, a chair of flowers is charming on a back deck or terrace. Or you can place it right in the middle of your flower bed for a touch of whimsy.

Susan

Powder Room Before & After

Last month, I blogged on about how we spruced up our living room, dining room and powder room with some fresh paint. So now that I've finally figured out how to use my daughter's camera (mine is out being repaired), I'd like to take you on a powder room tour.

The "before" photo, left, shows the powder room's former paint. In a way, this is also an "after" shot because back about ten years ago, we did a minor renovation of this bathroom. Though we were able to keep the tub and toilet, the room's garish pink wallpaper, plywood vanity, yellowed vinyl floor and plastic fake marble around the bathtub had to go. I wish I had photos of the old "before" bathroom. It was horrid.

Here's our "after" color scheme, above, which is more in keeping with the new wall colors in our family room and kitchen. I used the same neutral on the walls as the adjoining kitchen. And the wainscoting is a bit less green; now it's a soothing aqua blue, similar to the walls of the family room.

When I began to plan our powder room redo a decade ago, I went straight to my Inspiration Book. I had several tear sheets of bathrooms I loved (below) and they all had wainscoting in common. So I decided it was time for wainscoting in our bath, too.

Above is the original quick sketch I drew for my carpenter. I was trying to show him how I wanted the beadboard to wrap around the mirror above a tall vanity. He used my drawing as a guide and even took a look at my Inspiration Book. The end result was perfect . . . just what I wanted!

Here are more views of our powder room proudly wearing its fresh new paint.

An antique oak medicine cabinet fits nicely above the sink and my collection of little tole trays looks right at home resting on the molding above the wainscoting. Plus, I love the small hooked area rug I found for the floor. With its black background and flowers, it looks just like a tole tray.

I hope you've enjoyed this little tour of our powder room. And if you haven't put together your Inspiration Book yet, I highly recommend starting one. Because you never know when it will come in handy!

Susan

Home Sweet Home Embroidery Pattern

It doesn't get any sweeter than this Home Sweet Home embroidered picture! And for those of you who have some embroidery experience and want to try your hand at this charming sampler, I am now offering a pattern of this design for purchase.

A digitally-traced embroidery pattern was expertly produced for me by the talented Janet McCaffrey of Primrose Design. (Thank you Janet!) The black and white pattern is 8.5" x 11" and comes with a color reproduction of the original to use as a color and stitch guide. Both come packaged in a plastic sleeve.

Please note that the pattern is not iron-on, so you'll need to trace it yourself. Janet suggests using an air-soluble marker and a light box for tracing patterns onto fabric, but you can also use transfer paper. Another method is to use iron-on transfer paper for your ink jet printer. Simply scan the pattern and print it onto the transfer paper.

To purchase this embroidery pattern, please leave a comment at the bottom of this post and I will email you an invoice. You can use your credit card, e-check or cash funds, via PayPal only. The cost is $4.00 which includes shipping and handling to anywhere in the U.S. For overseas shipping, please leave a comment with your location and I'll get back to you with your total.

Happy stitching!

Susan

Tablecloth Transformations: Part 2

Like the tea towels in my last post, I made these four tea cozies out of vintage cutter tablecloths.

Small enough to fit T-Party's personal size Bee House teapots, these cozies sport floral and fruit patterns.

Aren't they pretty? Let's have tea!

Susan