Quilting with wood

One of my all time passions from my "past" life has been quilting. There was no Ten Step withdrawal program for it, but I was definitely a "fabri-holic". I could not pass a fabric store without stopping in. My van made frequent trips out of my way to go to JoAnn and Minnesota Fabrics. I made pilgrimages to Amish country and only left the dry goods stores when darkness fell and I could no longer see in the light-less buildings. But as fingers and knees fail, and I can no longer get on the floor to baste the top to the batting, and other interests take over. I feel the loss.

Enter woodworking. For the past year, I have been "doing over" furniture. Mostly repairing and painting. Some stripping and refinishing, but that is less in vogue. My friend, Ken, gave me a small bedside table a few months ago. It had a cracked top that I thought I could mend, but it had other plans and when I glued and clamped it, warped badly. Scrap the plans I originally had for it (saving for a future project), but the old passion stirred and I decided to quilt with wood.

I had painted and cut up a lot of my plaster lath boards for a beach look on a piece I was working on for one of my daughter's friends; but the idea was nixed, and I was left with what a jeweler might consider junk, if they had smashed a large diamond to smithereens. [Picture teary eye'd me] I do like lemonade, so I resurrected those pieces and started to fit them into a puzzle the size of the table top. [Helpful hint: Don't ever fit the pieces to the actual 'under-board' you will use, because no matter how many pictures are taken, something is lost in the transfer.] As I wood glued the bottom board, I always wait for it to get a bit 'tacky' before placing the wood pieces, so they don't shift. This leaves little actual working time. Field conditions prevailed and I quickly cut and pieced so that I would not have to re-do the entire top. I'm pretty happy with the results.

I decided that my usual posting place of my brick wall was much too busy for this piece.

Lath board has such character

The night stand itself turned out pretty nice. I just used an OOP's paint I had and lightly distressed. All the materials I used in this project were on hand. The table was gifted to me, the lath boards Bethany and I gathered in the rain from a house in Cleveland, even the Minwax Poly Acrylic was sent as a replacement for product failure. Oh, I paid .50 for the OOP's paint.

I am seriously loving this piece, and there are no little threads that get stuck in the vacuum cleaner.

It will find a home at my sister's house at the end of May.

~.~.~.~.~

I am linking up with Miss Mustard Seed's Furniture Friday, Stephanie Lynn's Under the Table and Dreaming, and Beyond the Picket Fence, in which Becky featured in the March 27, 2014 post.   

As ever,

same quilter La Verne (just different medium)

hope&salvage