A Knock Off

As most of you may know by now, I was featured on Knock Off Decor. If you didn't then by all means have a look.
This site is dedicated to the knock off's that we want but sometimes can't afford or we want to try and make our own version. It's a great place to see what others are doing and I like the fact that they've already tried it  and you can see that it does work.
A big thank you to the people at Knock Off for featuring my stocking. :)

Miss Sweet Pea's Stocking

This is Little Miss Sweet Pea's First Christmas and she needs a stocking.

I began to peruse the web for ideas and decided to check Pottery Barn Kids. I came across this cute little snowman stocking and thought I'd try and make my own.

I began by making up a pattern from another stocking for a size and then from the picture cut from          various scraps of fabric to duplicate the same snowman design.

From here I warmed up my 22 year old sewing machine and began machine quilting my fabric to the quilt batting. You can buy pre-quilted but I already had everything at home to do this method. I eyeballed my quilting, but it would be very easy to mark and then sew your 90 degree angles.

Then I zig-zag my pieces onto one of my quilted sides.

I blanket stitched the lights on. I wanted more of a homemade feel to the stocking then just zig-zagging the whole thing.

With all the eyes and buttons sewed on, ear muffs and scarf in place, I sewed the back on.

This is the inside of the stocking. I had to make sure that my trees on my fabric when folded over would face the right way. Knowing this I still sewed one wrong. grr.

I sewed both the insides and the outsides together, leaving a hole in the stitching to turn things right side out. I also trimmed away along seams, anything that may make things too bulky looking when turned the right way.  Turned it and slipped stitched it shut, and gave it a quick iron.

Finished, and I like it!

She is now ready for Santa to come. :)

For 2012 stocking check here

2013 check here

The Traditional Way

My Family Room is my traditional cutesy Christmas room. My mom used to decorate our house with all the traditional colours of Christmas, so for me I've got to have a space that reflects that. When I walk into this room it gives me the feeling I had when I was a kid growing up on our farm, and who doesn't want to feel like a kid again at Christmas.

That's my little snowball tree that sits in the corner.

I collect these ceramic trees. I've got about 14 of them, I think. The first one I bought was when my kids were wee little. I think I paid $30. Later on they started popping up at yard sales for a couple of dollars. I'd buy one and then another one. Now I get them as gifts, which is wonderful. No two trees are the same either. One's ok but when you put them all together and light them up at night, it's kind of pretty.

The space above my fireplace has been bare since we moved in. I've been looking for just the right thing. It wasn't antlers.

But then something came over me one day and I mentioned to my husband that maybe some antlers wouldn't be bad. He jumped on that band wagon real fast and started asking around. It just so happened that my lovely brother-in-law had his moose antlers in storage and we could borrow them.

Before I could change my mind they were up on the fireplace.  Now, I like them there.

And my newly required cool piece is my little Russian nesting Doll my mom picked up on her trip in the spring to Russia. Super cute and adds a touch of my heritage to the room.

Now I can cosy up in my room and wait for Santa to come.:)

The Green Room.

With the year coming to a close my mind begins to wander down memory lane a bit. We moved here                almost five years ago and that got me thinking about this room and how it once looked.

This is what this room looked like when we moved in. Everything was put in this room because we knew we weren't going to use it anytime soon. This way I was able to go in, grab a couple of things, put it away and not feel so overwhelmed.

When it was empty it looked like this.

Minus my then geeky teenage niece. 

 I called that carpet my casino carpet. I'm pretty sure that it was as old as the house (which is 130 years old) because it was so thin you could look through it when you picked it up.

Then after about 2 years of living here and dreaming what this room could look like, we began. We added the panelling to the plaster walls to add a bit of detail. Once upon a time it was two rooms. If you look real close you can see that the two front windows and the trim around the one window don't match. We didn't notice this until we lifted the carpet and you could see where the wall was. It's a mystery to me what this extra room was, but I'm glad it's all one room now. I always felt this room needed a fireplace..... Ok I wanted one. So we built this.

We don't use this room all the time, so we don't heat it all the time. It's kind of my Sunday Parlor, people come to visit room. It has two registers from the furnace that I'll open up and then turn on the fireplace. Its actually an electric one, but with the cast iron front, it has tricked a couple of people thinking its gas. We paid a little more then your standard electric fireplace but I think it was worth it, and I think it makes the room cozy.

Now for Christmas I throughly enjoy decorating this room.

Hanging out in the Village.

And I get to have a real tree in this room! My Darling Husband is allergic to them. Stuffs him up and he sneezes and sneezes. After about 7 dreaded trees, he was talking to his brother one day who told him that he has a reaction to real trees, and that his family couldn't have one. It was then we realized it wasn't a cold every year. Because he spends short spurts in this room it ok. 

After 3 years, this room is still a work in progress. I haven't found all the accessories for this room and it still may be a couple of years before I do. That green sofa was bought for $30 and is need of being reupholstered, but hey it will all come slowly, but surely. If it was all done the way I wanted it to be at once, where would the fun be in the hunt to find just the right thing. For this I have patience. Go figure. :)

Christmas time is here!

I've been walking around the house singing that Charlie Brown Christmas song for days. I don't know why, I haven't even watched the cartoon yet, so I'll have to chalk it up to one of those weird things I do. But I digress.
Every year I like to add something new to my Christmas mix because after all "Christmas time is Here"!
This year its been pillow covers. I've been wanting to make these and I finally had a chance to sit at my sewing machine to make a few.
I started by checking out "The Graphics Fairy" to see what interesting things she had. I did find a few to use. So using an iron on transfer I printed off my finds. (Make sure when you do this, you print it off in a mirror image. Even knowing this I printed off one the wrong way. ugh)

Now the cool thing is that I can turn this pillow over  and leave it for the winter because....

I used a wintery fabric!! and because its a cover I can change it with the seasons!!!!

These are a few other pillows I covered.

Happy Sewing :)

Wanna Be.

I'm an upholster wanna be. I am by no means good at it, but I still attempt to do it. As I write, right now I have a chair sitting at the upholster, that I can hardly wait to see. When I brought my chair to her I told her how my inner "want to do over" sometimes takes me over and then I flounder get frustrated and  want to throw the furniture out the window. Thus it was with this chair. She suggested to me to start small (which I thought I was) and work my way up.

                                                                    I picked this.

                                                 I had this footstool that I bought for $10.

It wasn't in bad shape but I knew something was amiss when you sat on it. I know its for feet but sometimes I sit on these things.

Upon tearing it apart I noticed that the cushioning was beginning to fall through, and because it had a dust cover on the bottom I wasn't able to see that when I bought it. But that was pretty minor anyway.

The thing I like most about upholstery is that you save anything thats good on a piece. So in the end, only a small amount actually goes into the garbage. 

 All of the little things like nails, that gray cardboard rounded stuff you see and the padding was saved.

Next I checked and tightened the springs and added a new piece of burlap.

 I put the padding back on, put my new fabric upside down and measured corners for sewing. I pinned the corners into place using safety pins because I was too lazy to run all the way upstairs to get my pins. You do this in order to get your corners tight and fit properly over the edge.

I also made new piping.

 Using my hand stapler, I stapled the top first, then the piping.

Now being out in the boonies sometimes represents a problem. You don't have access to what you need. So I improvised and anyone who actually knows how to upholster may insert laughter here.

In order to have a crisp line a real upholsterer will use cardboard strips.

This is what I used.

 

I think I've mention my "lack of patience" problem before and since I decided that, that day was the day to do this project...yes I used a cereal box as my strips.

I also added some extra va-va -voom  in the form of quilt batting. I don't think that this is the proper stuff either, but that's what I had. The strips are under the padding. 

Next my corners. Each corner was measured then sewed so that all the corners would line up.

Now referring back to this picture the bottom piece was stapled along this edge and then flipped, wrapped around. (This is when those cardboard pieces come into play). I then stapled the fabric to the bottom.

 Added a dust cover, and put the legs back on.

It's not perfect but I like it, and it was a learning project, and I learned a lot. I hope you get the gist of what I was trying to do. In my mind, what I wrote looks right but sometimes what happens in my mind doesn't always get written down.

And so few of you have mentioned not being able to make comments on here. You can find me on Facebook as well if you choose to make a comment or ask a question, and I'll see about fixing this problem. :)

The Story of the Blue Carpet

When we first moved into our home our family room looked like this. This was 5 years ago. This was before girls got married and a baby was born. This was when my son was shorter then me. sigh...

This is my picture taking daughter before she took pictures and thought maybe she would take up dance. My other daughter in blue agreeing and my other daughter sitting in the window and my sister thinking that maybe it's not such a good idea.

My nieces joining in the fun.

Then we did this to the family room. Red!!! Now the plan was that we were going to rip out the blue carpet and put in something more neutral soon after we painted and because the blue was not my favourite. Not that I don't like blue, it just wasn't what I wanted.

(This picture the walls look orange)

But as the years went by the blue carpet stayed and stayed and stayed. This past summer I asked my husband (who in a former life laid carpet for a living) what was the condition of this blue carpet. His reply was it was in really good shape. Not what I wanted to hear. So I hung my head and in defeat I knew the blue carpet would stay. I couldn't justify a perfectly good, not to mention large piece of carpet going to the landfill. I would have to work around the blue.

So now it looks like this

Ok. I'm pretty proud of this box cushion I made, complete with piping. Its much nicer then sitting on the cold cement.

Well I generally like my room altogether and I don't even notice the blue carpet anymore. Yippee!!

Now I can bring on the Christmas decorations!!

And five years later this is what we've added on. Two new boys and one sweet little girl! How time flies.

Oh and by the way my picture taking daughter is away for a few days so once again you had to suffer through my lack of picture taking knowledge, but I promise I will learn.