Crafts and DIY: Frame It!

When my husband and I moved in with my father-in-law several years ago it was apparent that he was, or had been, a big fan of the velvet dog paintings of the 1970's. He had several of these old things laying around. He did not want to list them on Ebay and I did not want to hang them on the walls, so, I came up with something else. I took the largest dog painting, and wrapped it with an old quilt top I had. My great-grandmother had been working on this very quilt top when she died, so it was special to me. I had been carrying it around for years. Sometimes it was tucked away in a drawer, sometimes in a box, once it was actually tacked up on the wall over the bed. I had always thought that I would pay someone to finish it one day but never got around to it. So, as I stood there looking at this velvet catastrophe, sorry, but I am not a velvet painting sort of girl, I thought, "hey, I could wrap my quilt top around this thing and then hang it on the wall!"

And that is what I did. I simply spread the quilt top out on the bed, laid the painting, face down, on top of it and proceeded to bring the edges of the quilt up around the back where I secured them with safety pins. The painting had a twisted wire attached for hanging so I placed the edges of the quilt around it so I could use it to hang it. Of course, it was only a quilt top, in the shape, more or less, of a star so it was fairly easy to wrap and secure it, but it turned out great and looks really nice hanging on the wall over the bed.

My quilt top

Having had success with the quilt top idea I went looking for other things to frame and hang. I had an old satin pillow case that was falling apart but it was still very pretty. So, I did something similar with it, I cut the design out and wrapped it around the cardboard insert of a rectangular frame and then snapped it into place behind the glass.

Viola! Another pretty wall hanging.

Just because they are called "picture frames" doesn't mean you have to use them only for pictures. And here it is, the promised Crafts and DIY posting. Nothing fancy, nothing difficult, but something you may not have thought of before.