Ottoman Slipcover Project

We brought up this ottoman from a chair in our basement to use in the living room. I really enjoy having a place to put my feet up, but, boy, the color combination just makes me cringe. Since it is already slipcovered, I figured it would be easy to make one with a fabric that coordinates, since nothing really actually "matches" in our house ;)

So I made a long-overdue trip to Joanne's to find fabric and also some other things on my growing sewing list. I found a nice print on sale, and spent the afternoon yesterday putting together the slipcover. What a huge difference I think! And it was actually one of the easier projects I've done. Just a bunch of rectangles, some piping, fitting, pinning and done.

Of course, my sewing room has been neglected for a while now, but after Dennis and I spent a day a couple of weeks ago cleaning out the clutter and reorganizing, putting up shelves, hanging pictures, I felt compelled to use my nice space again! I'll give a little tour of my sewing space.

I love this wardrobe we kept from Dennis' mom's bedroom set. We sold everything else, but I held onto this. Dennis put some shelves in and it is the perfect place for my fabric! I've never had my fabric so organized in my life!

I keep my larger pieces in here, and in the drawers my notions. You can see in the above picture (of the sewing desk) to the left a white plastic storage thing...that holds my smaller pieces of fabric, loosely organized by color family. What I am now looking for is something to hold my many scraps...something I can dig around in easily, but also is easy to access. Right now, they are all in that plastic bag to the right of my sewing desk.

Here is a picture of the front of that wardrobe and also my little sitting corner. This is the chair that matches the ottoman, but the ottoman was always sticking out too far into the room, hence its move upstairs. It's such a nice, sunny little space...now if I can just keep it tidy I can get to that pile of mending I have stacking up!

Newest Member of the family, and other things...

Meet Fireball...Bay's pet Betta fish. Actually it's his 3rd fish, 2 others already died, but so far, so good with this one. It's now been over a week and he's still breathing! He loves his pineapple house, and when you come into the room, he swims out of his house and up to the edge of the tank as if to see what's going on! This was Bay's Christmas present...he has been asking for a fish for a long time. He's very happy with his new companion.

One of my favorite Christmas presents this year was this book...and when we got home from our trip, both Bay and Leah already had projects picked out for me to get started on. I was happy to oblige them!
This is Piggy Pie

And here is Bay's Space Man..not sure if that's an actual name or just a description, but either way it fits him well!

What a Steal!

I like to visit our local thrift store on occasion. Normally I might find something small that is a good deal, but I have never really ever found anything I would consider a steal...until now. Tucked up with a bunch of fishing rods and cheap curtain hardware was this bolt of fabric. There was no price, which is usually a good sign. I asked one of the ladies in the back about the price, and she said it has been sitting there for a long time and she'd give it to me for $5.

FIVE DOLLARS!!!!

I did not know exactly how much fabric was on this bolt, but even if there were 2 yards it would have been a good deal (though I could tell there was much more). This kind of fabric goes for anywhere between $10 and $20 a yard at the fabric store. So I took it home and unrolled the whole thing....19 yards later I can totally say that this was a STEAL. I am so excited because now I have something that I can use to make some type of curtain for the sunroom/dining room. We love the windows and view in that room, but in the summer, those windows let in sooo much heat that there has to be some way to cover them when I want to. Now I just need to figure out what I want to do with it! I am so super excited!

I also found this oak chair that just needs a new cover on the seat and it will be beautiful. It wasn't such the steal, $10, but still a great deal for a nice chair.

Shades of Blue

These are the fabrics I am using in Leah's room. The walls are the light blue on the paint chip. The bottom fabric will be the cushion cover for her vanity seat. The next up is the Roman Shade fabric (they are almost all done!), next up is the cushion cover for her window seat (which Dennis has made, but I am still painting), and isn't the top fabric adorable? It is the illustrations from some of those old Golden Books with the little girl and boy! Leah loves those books...Fix it Please is one of her favorites. Anyways, i will make some throw pillows proably for her window seat. And the window seat, it will be painted the middle shade of blue on the paint chip.

Lots of sewing to do.

More painting still....thanks to my wonderfully talented husband, the window seat is beautiful and I just can't image the space without it after seeing it there now.

I am so enjoying blessing our children by creating fun and exciting spaces for them in our house.

Beautiful Winter

Well, our family missed the big snow here in December because we had already headed down to Florida, but we are fortunate enough that it snowed big again. I think we got about 12-14" here at our house. It snowed all day yesterday and into the night. The kids had a blast of course...and I took some shots this morning when taking Elsa out for her morning walk.

You can hardly see their faces on account of how cold it was and with the snow in front of the camera. In between Eric and Bay is their friend, Carson.Leah, trudging her sled back up the hill.

And on another note, I got to finish the cushion cover for Eric's chair. He loves it now, and will love it even more when he gets it into his new room!

Christmas Surprise for Leah & a dissappointment
"Kit"

I am so excited about my handmade Christmas present for Leah. One of the things that is so surprising to me about her is her lack of interest in baby dolls; but on the flip side, her extreme interest in animal dolls and how she treats them as if they are baby dolls. She dresses them up, feeds them bottles, and all of the things that little girls do with baby dolls, except she wants nothing to do with human babies! Anyways, in this interest, I found a cute pattern for a handmade baby doll here and the alterations to make it into a kitty (she loves kitty cats), plus outfits to go with it.

I've never sewn anything like this before, and was wondering how it would be to work with tiny garments and such. The whole thing took me just one afternoon, kitty and 2 outfits. It was very fun to do, and I sure hope she likes it!

"Kit" in her little pink dots pintucked dress


"Kit" in her birthday suit
Reversible jumper and shirt

the other side of reversible jumper

On another note, I also got a new foam cushion for Elsa's bed and sewed a nice fleece cover for it with a zipper so it could be removed and washed. The one she had previously was super thin, falling apart, and smelled horrible as well. I got her a nice 3" cushion for her to cuddle up on. I thought it turned out very nicely.

However she was very wary of it from the start, and wouldn't even get in her bed unless I physically put her in. So I thought it just smelled funny to her since it was new, and it would take her a little while to get used to it. Well, she had other plans. yesterday when we got home from church, she had ripped the fabric apart at the seams and chewed up the foam! I guess she was telling me that she really didn't like it after all! We got a good laugh out of it, and now she's sleeping on the floor of her crate with no cushion for the time being. She seems to like that just fine! So much for appreciation from the dog!!!

Bay's Space Room

We are in the process of doing a bedroom swap with the kids. Bay's is the first to be done. This used to be Leah's pink room. Big change! Anyways, he wanted a space theme. I found a really cute quilt at Land of Nod, but they wanted almost $200 just for the quilt, and that did not include me getting window treatments to match, etc...So I looked up space fabric online and found a really cute series to use for his room. He has black fabric with stars and constellations on the windows. My mom volunteered to make him a quilt, so he will have a cool quilt...blue fabric (like the walls) with planets and accented with blue stars and orange pops of color throughout. He has orange sheets and I'll make him a couple of throw pillows to coordinate as well. Needless to say, the whole getup...fabric for quilt, windows, etc. is costing just a little over $200, so that makes me very happy. It is always rewarding when sewing it yourself is much cheaper than buying. It doesn't always turn out that way, but sometimes it really does!

Roman shades over the bed

Here are the shades let down. This room gets the most sun, and the sun is so bright in the morning as it is facing east, so I went ahead and lined everything to ease the damage to the fabric and hopefully make them last a little longer.

Close-up of the roman shade fabric.



The sliding door drapes. These are also fully lined, and is actually the first time I correctly lined drapes, and they turned out so nicely. They hang so well and have a great "drape" to them. Close-up of the fabric. It is black background, clusters of tiny blue stars, and then also gold stars with actual constellations marked on them. Pretty neat!

Once the quilt is done and all of the decorating and organizing is done, I'll take more pictures. I just wanted to show it coming along.

Fall Jackets

I have embarked on a fall project to make each of the kids a play jacket. I wanted to see if I could actually save money doing this, and I think I actually have. I spent about $50 for the fabric/notions for all 3 jackets and they are turning out nicely so far. Leah will actually get two, the first one is from a Butterick Fast & Easy Pattern #B4908 and the other will be from the same pattern as the boys' jackets. What is great about this pattern is that all 3 of their sizes are on one pattern! That does not happen very often. So one of Leah's is done and Eric's is done. Bay's is next.

Don't know if you can see it in the picture but I did blanket stitching around the bottom, the sleeves and the pockets. This jacket has 2 snaps hidden inside. This was my first time putting in snaps and it was very easy!
Eric's jacket has a hood an fleece lining. The only thing I would have done differently is put in some pockets in the sides! I can't believe the pattern didn't have pockets, and I wonder if I can put them in after the fact? Any experience with this?

Everyone picked out their own fabric for their jackets. Eric picked out the camo shell with leaves on the inside. Bay picked out a blue camo pattern.

Sewing Binge

I've been making up for lost time I think. I had two dresses cut out for Leah at the beginning of the summer and that is as far as they made it for several months. So I put them together the past couple of days and dress #1 is finished. Dress #2 is very similar and is just waiting for buttonholes tonight and it will be done. They turned out pretty good. So far no major mistakes which is monumental for me :) And of course, Leah loves her new dress.

Pajama Party!!!

Due to the outrageous prices of childrens' pajamas these days, I opted to get the kids some cool bargain fabric, copy their current pajama pants that fit into a pattern, and make the family some new duds. The boys are so psyched about their flame, skull, and tractor pj's. (Eric's are shorts, Bay's are pants) They each have another pair on the way. Leah and I got a pair as well. Dennis' will come eventually.
Apologies for the wrinkled clothes in the pictures. We already wore our pj's before I got pics of them, so they are wrinkled from being worn!

Twirling Skirt

I made this super simple super easy twirling skirt for Leah last night in about an hour. I got the idea from this really cool etsy store. I have just recently found etsy. It's kind of like an online place to buy or sell homemade items. Lots of really cute patterns and clothing ideas. Anyways, the skirt is simply a complete circle cut out of a 36" square piece of fabric. I cut out a 10" diameter hole in the middle for the waistband. For this one, I made it reversible with some contrasting fabric I had sitting around waiting for the perfect project. I added some green rick-rack to the yellow gingham side for interest. I really liked the bows that she adds in her purple skirt, but I didn't feel like doing all that last night. I added in a rather large 2" waistband piece of elastic, and then to keep it in place streteched it all the way out and put in a couple of rows of stitching all the way around. Leah loved her surprise new outfit this morning! I have the fabric cut out to make a matching tie to go around it, but haven't had the time yet to do that.

Leah's Birthday Dress

Leah's birthday is coming up at the end of this month. I thought I would make her a new dress for one of her presents. I recently saw a dress in a catalog that had a horse screen printed on it. Since Leah loves horses, I thought it would be something she would love, but at $35 for a dress, I couldn't bring myself to it. So I stole the idea and made my own :) I already had patterns and fabric, so I drew the picture of the horse, scanned it and printed it on iron-on-transfer paper. I transfered it onto the skirt material of the dress, and !oila! her new pony dress. The only thing I would have done differently in retrospect is to make the horse a lighter color since it showed up so dark on the blue fabric. Otherwise, I am so excited to give it to her.