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.

Beast to Beauty

I have a collection of windows. They range in size and shape and they are stacked in the garage and my husband is thrilled when I go to the pile and pick one, to do something with. But there is one window that he has been wanting me to pick for awhile and I finally grabbed it the other day. It was found in a barn on a trip we took for our anniversary back in September. It was covered in straw and the person who owned it didn't really want to part with it. But after some humming and hawing, he reluctantly sold it to me.

Since repainting the family room, I've been adding in new colours to accessorize with. So I grabbed my  Annie Sloan "Louis Blue" and dry brushed the window, but not before I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned the window. A couple of years living in a barn kinda makes you dirty.

Then I headed over to The Graphics Fairy and looked through a bunch of amazing things she has for free!!!  and chose an easy French sign.

Then I printed it off in reverse and taped it to the right side of the window.

Then flipped it over and began painting.

I could have done it on the right side, but this way the lettering is protected by the glass, just as a picture would be.

Once I was finished I took an exacto knife and cleaned up the lines. My hand was a little shaky on the M but the knife cleaned all that up. And I'm pleased with the final result. It's a keeper.

                                               

A Plethora of Pillows

I've been painting. (when am I not painting hehe)

This time I've painted my walls, but before I show you my "befores and afters" of my family room, I've been busy making some new accessories.

I started with some pillows because they are simple, fast and easy to make. If you can sew a straight seam, you can sew a pillow. If you can't sew, you probably can and just don't know it. Unless of coarse you reeaalllyy don't want to sew, and then hopefully you find yourself  reeaallllyy lucky, and someone will sew for you.


                                                                           Taa daaaaaaaa!!!!

The brown ones I already had, so I replaced my other old ones which were..... lets just say past their prime, with the new ones.

The cool thing about making your own pillows is that you can change them up quickly and they will be unique to your home. In a couple of years the owl fabric will probably be a thing of the past and the pillows will be worn and faded, but right now its trendy. So in a couple of years I'll find new fabric, and bam new look!

Same goes with this ever so neat sweater pillow. If you follow pinterest you'll find all kinds of these wonderful cozy looking pillows every where. For this pillow, my daughter went to the local thrift store and found this sweater. She wore it as part of a costume and I knew it would eventually find its way back to the thrift store. But then I thought it would go swimmingly into my new paint scheme for the room, and thus a new pillow was born.

I happen to check on Pottery Barn and they are selling the sweater pillow "covers" for, around $70.00. My complete pillow(pillow form as well) was somewhere in the neighbourhood of $8.00.

For Christmas I'll be making covers for the owl pillows because I realized who wants to store actual Christmas pillows.  They take up to much room, and it only took me 24 years of decorating to grasp this concept. Who knew.:)

Spider Baby Revisited

                                          When last we left our little brute he looked like this

All sad he was.

And then his makeover began. Sanding, staining, painting. He took it all in stride and seemed to enjoy every minute of it.

Today he looks like this

He went home today. I can no longer call him Spider Baby

I do believe he looks happy!!

Spider Baby

A customer brought me this

It reminded me of this

We discussed its weirdness but it has great functionality, so I'm pretty sure I won't offend said customer by comparing the mixed up phonograph shell with the spider baby.

The lid opens and I believe it's going in a family room to hold remotes and other family room stuff.

So let us see what becomes of this fabulous creature.