New Header!

And I made it myself!

I used Storybook Creator Plus from Creative Memories to design it, and I inserted an OLD picture of our house from right after it was built, sometime around 1908.  I love it!  And now that I know how easy it was, I may be making more!

Tapestry Pillow Tutorial

 

Sewing machines and I don’t get along.  It’s not that I’m holding a grudge, because, you see, there’s not just ONE thing that makes me dislike them.  We have a long history of conflict.  And so, I’ve been putting off this pillow project.

But I finally got it done tonight.  It was another project for What Woudl You do with It Wednesday at The Country Chic Cottage.  Angie’s been waiting patiently for my pictures and text. :)

But there were patches and snags all over it, and there wasn’t enough to make one big pillow.  Enter the stripes.

 

 

 

I love stripes.  Like totally, LOVE them.  My best friend has to keep encouraging me to look at other fabrics.  LOVE STRIPES.

And I love this fabric.  So I finally bought some at Hobby Lobby last weekend.  The colors were good with the tapestry, but the white was just TOO bright.  So decided to do an experiment (that smelled really good, by the way.)

It was hard for me to capture the difference in the camera, but the coffee took out the harshness of the white for me.  How do you dry coffee soaked fabric quickly so that you can sew it?  I had wet clothes in the dryer, so I tried my hair dryer without luck.  Then, I hung them outside on the porch in the gale force winds we have in Iowa today.  Took a break to put my son to bed, and voila!  They were dry!

 

I drew out this fancy pattern.  The left picture is the front of the pillow.  The 10 inch piece in the middle is the tapestry.  The right is the size I needed to cut the striped fabric.

I cut out my tapestry, taking care to make sure that the pattern was centered. (It’s not…oops!)

Wait a minute – doesn’t my pattern say 24 inches?  How did I end up with 22?   Hmmm…things like this always happen when I sew. 

Then it was time to get my old friend out of the china cabinet.  Yeah, that’s where she lives.  Under the wine glasses.

Then I sewed.  I hate sewing.  Started off, and it came unthreaded immediately.  Not my friend.

Got it rethreaded and then it wouldn’t go.  Just wouldn’t go.  Made noise, but no sewing.  Took me a few minutes and some swearing to realize that I had the little bobbin thingy pushed over.  If you sew, you know what I’m talking about, right?

 

I guess I forgot to take pictures of this part, but here’s what I did.

1. Side of tapestry to stripes, right sides together. 

2. Other side of tapestry to stripes, right sides together.

3. Tops, right sides together.

4.  Bottom?  I’d love to tell you how I finished it up, but I didn’t finish it.  Shhh, don’t tell….I send all my pillows “out” (to Grandma) to get finished.

  

 

Oh yeah, I also made this dorky tassel.  :)

Burlap Wreath with Fabric Flowers Tutorial

This was my first project for What Would You do with it Wednesday over at The Country Chic Cottage.

I knew I had seen a burlap wreath project somewhere, but I couldn’t remember where.  A little google image search helped me find a tutorial at Where the Heart Is.

Step 1: Find a wire hangar.  Thank goodness my inlaws didn’t completely clean out the basement when they moved.  This is probably the first time I’ve been happy about that.
Step 2: Shape it into a circle.  I managed to break off the hook on accident.  That shows you how hard the metal was to bend.
Step 3: Cut burlap into strips.  I used 11 or 12 strips, I think.  I think I figured out that it was over a yard of burlap.
Step whatever number I’m on now:  Poke the hangar through the burlap, folding as you go.  I did this forever, until it was really full.
Flowers:  I planned to use parts of this tapestry to make the flowers and add some color.  The tapestry is old, had been cut in half, and had been patched in places.  I wasn’t digging the “palace” so I used that part on my flowers.
I also cut out some pieces from this matelasse bedspread.  I got it on clearance at Walmart a couple years ago for $25.  I covered two chairs with it, and my dining room chairs, and I had a yard or two left, so I cut off some of the awkward pieces to use for this project.
I used my glue gun to hold them together.  There must be a better way, but I don’t know what it is! I shaped them by folding the circles in half, and then folding them into triangles, kind of.  It’s hard to explain.  I just folded and glued until it looked good!
I’m going to make more of these to put throughout the living room and dining room.

Ta-Da!!!!

I need a good idea…

…but let’s start on a positive note, shall we?  Here’s a glimpse of a project I did today.  I’ll be showing it off later this week.

 

 

Now, I want to finish this project, but I’m just stuck.

I bought this scrapbook paper that I love to put in the doors of my china hutch.  But…I can’t get the pattern to match up where the papers meet, and that drives me nuts.  NUTS I tell you!

So, I thought I’d glaze some cardstock with the same glaze I used on the cabinet, but it came out WAY dark.

So then I tried some burlap (bottom).  No good – the burlap is wrinkly. (iron it?)

I need another idea!  I so want to finish this to show to you!!!  Do you ever have projects like this?  When they just don’t work out how you hoped?  If so….PLEASE tell me about them so I feel a little better…and give me a suggestion for finishing this one!  

Wistfully remembering…

For a long time, I hated our first house.  It was so small and hard to decorate, we had noisy neighbors, and the yard was a complete mess.

But, absence makes the heart grow fonder. I have been organizing photos in Memory Manager, and I keep coming across pictures of our first place.  Here was one of my favorite parts:

 

 

The yard was very shady.  We lived in an old neighborhood with a lot of full grown trees.  Our house had previously been an ill-kept rental, and trees that had never been trimmed lined our lot.

But there was enough morning sun in this corner to grow a few things.  Those hostas were in their first year.  I transplanted them from a friend’s house.  I wonder what they will look like this summer, three years later?

The potty chair was a $1 garage sale find.  If only I had known that my mom would want an antique potty chair for her first grandbaby, I wouldn’t have let it sit outside getting ruined.  It was cute, though, right?

The tall, pink plants are “surprise lilies.”  They come up big and bushy in the spring, the foliage dies back, and then these babies bloom later in the summer.  Surprise!  I dug up a few of these and brought them with me – transplanted them in the rain two springs ago.  They are coming up green now!

I wanted to bring a little country to town.  This washtub was my husband’s grandma’s, and the hydrant was from his grandparents’ farm. 

 

Apparently, it was manufactured near us – it says, “Des Moines, Iowa” on it.

 

I’m hoping to do some more fun outdoor projects around here next summer.  But in the meantime, I’ll enjoy all of the GREEN in these photos and reminisce about our first place.

Harlequin Table

My goal is to start out our week on Monday with a clean house, which means I’m not doing too many projects this weekend.

 

So I thought I’d show an old one. This was “pre-blogging” so I don’t have a great before picture.  The table in question is the one used as a bedside table in this picture.  This was my guest room in our first house.

It was just a little table with chippy white paint (but not in a good way) that I got for $6 at the Goodwill.  It is very lightweight (in a good way.)

 

So I slapped a new coat of paint on it and drew out the harlequins.  I measured where my lines would intersect (I think my harlequins are 2 inches across and 4 inches tall, if I remember right) and then connected the dots!

 

I did NOT tape off the lines and I probably should have.  Some of the harlequins are not great. :(  I used regular old black craft paint, and sealed it by brushing on some polycrylic (which made the the black bleed a bit.  Most of my projects turn out like this!)

 

Here it is in its new home.  The was the kitchen in my first house.  It was insanely small. I’ll show you some more pictures some other day.

 

 

We used it as a coffee/dogfood station.  It worked great.

However, at one point there was a minor disaster with a scented oil plug in (I unplugged it because it was too strong, laid it on the table, it leaked all over and ate my pretty harlequins.)  So for now it’s out in the shed, waiting for a new life again. :)

I’m linking to the blog parties on my sidebar!

What Would YOU do with It? Wednesday

I am so excited to be the FIRST guest blogger on What Would You Do With It Wednesday!

I saw Angie’s announcement last week, and the perfect, inaugural WWYDWIW item fell into my lap that very afternoon.

 

So head on over to The Country Chic Cottage and give me some advice!

A Little Scrappin’

Yesterday, we had nowhere to go, and nothing to do.  Adam was super crabby, but ended up taking 2 naps!  While he slept, I had a little “mommy time.”

It really HAS been a long time since I scrapbooked a page of Adam pictures.  I’ve been working on a wedding album for some dear friends, and some projects around the house, instead.  But I took a break from those things to get these done:

Click on the pages to make them bigger. 

I used the Simple Start Click and Fill pages, filled with papers from the Primary Power Palette to do the Turkey layout.  These pictures are from the last time we had baby turkeys.  Adam had so much fun with them!

I designed these pages using the Discover Construction Zone Digital Additions that goes with the Discover Power Palette.  Check out that spot color on the vacuum pic – SO EASY in Memory Manager.

These two pages were made using the Simply Beautiful Power Palette and embellishments from Digital Embellishments – Elements.

These two pages were also made using the Digital Embellishments – Elements.  The notebook paper is from the Freebies on the Project Center.  The little notebook and Date stamp are from the Digital Embellishments Office Supplies II.

These last two are from the Simply Stylish Predesigned pages.  I just changed some of the colors and I love them!

I also organized and edited Feb. and March’s pictures in Memory Manager.  Such a productive afternoon!