how cute is this?

just popping in to share with you this ultra cute button pillow, the tutorial for which I spied over at curbly.com (via oneprettything):

I think I can see a future for two or three of these on my new lounges in the near future. Look out husband, no room for boring or bland interiors on my watch!

upholstery 101

First up I'll admit I'm no expert at upholstery, having only recovered a few chair cushions and having one success really! But since a few questions were asked in the comments to the last post I thought I'd answer them - a bit of the blind leading the blind, but take from it what you will. Of course there are plenty of upholstery books out there which will probably be a better resource than little ol' me.

The wadding I used was just a package of two pre-cut polyester wadding pieces bought from Spotlight for the bargain basement price of $7.99. I don't think it is specific upholstery wadding, but it was nice and fluffy and was the right dimensions for what I needed so that's why I picked it.

I didn't glue the wadding to the foam purely for the reason I didn't have any suitable glue (a spray adhesive maybe?) to hand, I just roughly hand stitched the wadding down along the back edges and where it was folded over at the corner. The wadding seemed to stick pretty well and the cushion cover holds it all in anyway.

I did put zips in the cushion covers so I could wash them if necessary, and with a baby, a crazy dog and a sometimes clumsy husband I'm sure there is more than a reasonable chance of needing to! I just used the longest dress zip I could find because I couldn't any special upholstery zips and anyway the dress zips I used on the green covers that were on the chairs previously held up well. I put the zip in a centred application - basted the seam shut, sewed around the zip in a rectangle and opened up the seam. The colour of the zipper doesn't match exactly, and when someone is sitting on the cushion the zipper is visible, but that's only because it's an open backed chair and I'm not too worried about that anyway.

Finally I think the fabric makes a world of difference. The chenille type fabric I used is nice and thick so the stitches sink in and any crooked or dodgy sewing is hard to see! It's also fluffy so less susceptible to wrinkles, and it's nice and warm to sit on.

Anyway I hope some of you are inspired to go and give recovering a chair a go, it's pretty boring sewing but an easy way to update your furniture.

oooh gotta go, the Bold and the Beautiful is on - my guilty addiction since becoming a stay at home mum LOL!

uncrossing my eyes

Well the great unpicking adventure is finally done, I think I have further ruined my already poor eyesight by unpicking those little white zig zag stitches and the house is full of little white threads blowing around like tumbleweeds but it is done. Yay for me losing hours of time I'll never regain....

But it hasn't all been mind numbing un-sewing around here, we have been out stimulating the economy and buying new things to decorate the house despite not getting the government stimulus handouts or the baby bonus for that matter since Anna decided to come after 1 January when it became means tested. If she had of come on time we would be $5000 richer, so I've already told my husband we'll garnish the wages of her first job until she's paid it off LOL. Anyway I hope all of you Aussies getting those payments are enjoying my tax paying dollars to their fullest and are out buying things/services that make you happy (*rant rant rant rant*).

Two new lounges are being delivered tomorrow, and we bought a new floor rug so I thought I had better get on with making a new cover for an armchair with the fabric I bought that broke my fabric diet a little while ago. Surprisingly it only took two evenings after Anna went to bed, probably because I didn't make any mistakes that needed unpicking (phew!).

So the before and afters. I bought these two timber chairs years ago when I was a poverty stricken uni student from an op shop, and last year replaced the manky cushions with new foam and made covers from a thick cotton. It was a pretty rushed and shoddy job though, and the cotton stretched out and became all wrinkly:

The after is much better, if I do say so myself! I used a thick upholstery weight chenille in a bright fuschia bought from Spotlight, and I did the covering properly this time by wrapping the foam seats in wadding which pads it out a little and softens the edges of the foam and looks far more professional. I also put the piping around the narrow sides of the cushion rather than around the seat of the cushion. Plus I think the chenille is a more suitable fabric for this style of chair (1950s?60?):

Now I've just got to give the chair a light sand and restain with a dark teak oil, and recover a matching foot stool as well. I also have some buttons to cover with matching fabric and I'm tossing up whether to sew them onto the chair cushions in a tufted style. There is never a shortage of things to do around here that's for sure!

I've also been taking armloads of fabric up to my new sewing studio and despite making many trips I've still not finished gathering all of my fabric stash from various spots around my house and my parents house into the one place yet! The highlight of this week will be folding, folding and more folding but since I'm the type that likes things neat and orderly I will find perverse pleasure in having my fabric all folded neatly and exactly.....

And in Anna news she is 4 months old and off for her second round of immunisations this week. She also rolled over for the first time the other day - which is the reason we had to buy a floor rug because she rolled off her little playmat onto the floorboards which I think surprised her and she let out a ginormous wail! I would too if I was getting up close and personal with a hard floor. Now we really have to keep an eye on her since she's worked out that she can move around. Here she is testing out the new chair cover (I think it gets her approval since this photo was taken mid flailing of arms and legs and her dolphin sounding laugh):

sewing in rewind

Is there anything more disheartening and energy zapping than unpicking your sewing mistakes? Tracing off a BWOF pattern comes a close second, but for me spending quality time with my seam ripper is almost tantrum inducing..... I had made 14 of these:


for this little munchkin:

and since I now have a laundry and clothesline again I was ready to start using cloth nappies full time. However instead of a 'ta-da' moment, I had a major d'oh moment when I realised I had completely stuffed them up. The logic behind modern cloth nappies is that the outer layer is waterproof, the inner layer is moisture wicking and the insert is absorbent. Well this doesn't work so well if you accidentally switch the fabrics around, in fact it doesn't work at all! So I guess I'll be spending the next little while unpicking, recutting and resewing, which is even more annoying because I got the new BWOF mag (well the 2/09 issue) in the mail and would rather be sewing from that instead.

Oh well, on to more exciting things. Our backyard presently looks like this:

My husband (and his spotty four legged supervisor) was busy the last two weekends building a retaining wall. All it needs is some turf and landscaping and it will be done for now - next summer we'll get busy painting, building a deck and putting up a shade sail, but not right now because I don't want my handyman to get burnt out LOL! Oh and moo-i-made-it, if you're reading, our flowering gum tree there in background has finally flowered. After several years in the ground being well looked after it gave us nothin', and then six months of neglect and abuse by the builders it not only survived but came out with some beautiful orange flowers! So to reward it we built the retaining wall around it's root ball to let it keep growing and hopefully flower again soon.

And when it rained on the weekend my husband also finished putting the flooring down in my sewing studio - here's a sneak peek of it:

On to the comments to the last post - Mary Nanna I'm still cracking up at your puppies in a sack comment, I think we could all do with someone that honest in our lives. Vicki stop telling me the harsh truth, I wanna live in blissful denial! Jean, Kath and Kim the Australian version is a funny tv show about an aspirational Aussie family (thankfully it's all tongue and cheek and we Australians are not like that, well not all of us anyway). And I've been well and truly put back into my box regarding using pattern tissues for anything other than cutting out the patterns, I so didn't think of those patterns with pieces missing or ones that are falling apart and unable to be used. If I did have some of those, then I definately would use them for decorative pieces.

Excitingly Anna slept through the night last night - she went down at 8pm and woke up at 6am which is just brilliant! She is actually a good sleeper at night, she usually only wakes up at 3am for a feed and then goes back to sleep really quickly, with her next feed at 6am and then we both sleep in until 9am (how luxurious!). However, she is a terrible day time sleeper, only napping twice a day for about 45mins at a time which doesn't leave me much time to get things done - this is when I spend all my time walking her around trying to get her to sleep so she doesn't get overtired and ratty by the evening. But I shouldn't complain because at least I'm not tired and worn out like some new mums whose babies still wake multiple times a night.

Happy sewing all, may your seam rippers be resting in peace rather than working overtime like mine will be....

this is blasphemy

As well as the millions of sewing blogs I love to read, I often stalk craft blogs, and Craftzine is a favourite. Then I see today that they link to a post with "projects you can make with the tissue paper of old sewing patterns". Whaddya mean, 'old' sewing patterns as if they have no value and need repurposing? Unless they are super fugly 1980s style patterns (which I strongly suspect may one day come back into fashion just like the previously daggy 60s and 70s patterns are), I think making the dress is much better than making paper flowers or reusing them for wrapping paper.

Although, these decoupaged boxes by the etsy seller sewinggeek are pretty special and I could see a few of these in my sewing room in future made from prints scanned from my patterns and not the actual pattern of course!:

But I forgive this little transgression because they also provided a link to this gorgeous vintage button tag PDF download from the delightfully generous doe-c-doe:

Too cute! If I still had time for mindless procrastination I could just see myself sewing my favourite buttons onto these for display in my sewing space......

Thanks for all your feedback on the BWOF pants from the last post. Mary Nanna you are so right about not adding extra volume at your widest part - I knew this, and have known this for a long time so why I thought now would be a good time to try something different is beyond me, especially since I'm still carrying about 7kg of excess post baby weight! So for now on, no more pleats for this little black duck.

But as per all your wise suggestions, I did sew the pleats further down the leg and let the hem down a little so that it touches the floor when wearing heels, so they do look better and I will wear them regardless. Speaking of heels, it's been so long since I've worn them they had dust on them! But thankfully they still fit me, I did hear horror stories that some women's feet never return to pre pregnancy size....

Oh and happy happy days, I can finally squeeze back into my pre-preggo jeans! They give me a massively unflattering muffin top a la Kim Craig (from the Aussie version of Kath and Kim not the poor US remake - no offence!) but I can do them up and a few more weeks of schlepping the little one around trying to get her to sleep may see that fixed too.

just getting on with things.....

I've decided I've done enough whinging about not doing any sewing for myself, and thought it was about time I did something about it. I like to have a whinge as much as the next person, but eventually you've gotta either do something about it or just shut up and accept it. So for the last three nights instead of laying on the lounge dangling my feet in husband's face in a not so subtle hint to get him to rub my feet (doesn't always work sadly!) I traced off a BWOF pattern and made me some new pants.

Now I know a few posts ago I said I was crap at making pants that fit, but since the last pair turned out alright I'd thought I would make another since we are coming into the cooler months now. I used BWOF 11/08 pattern 121, which Burda describes as a "high waistband, low-set waist pleats and wide legs provide these trousers/pants with a slimming effect".

Hmmm I think that slimming effect works best if you are already tall and slim like the BWOF model, because these aren't slimming on me at all. They are completely different to the style of pants I normally wear which are low waisted, flat front bootleg style, but I had nothing to lose except some fabric from the stash.

I made these from a grey wool crepe like fabric (it's been in the stash too long for me to remember exactly what it is or where it's from....) which I thought would help those pleats drape fluidly. It's just that I think I'm too short and bottom heavy to wear light grey wide leg pants with pleats. Which is a pity because they fit really really well, the only change I made to the pattern was to include two small darts at the back to make the waistband fit more snugly otherwise the pattern is just perfect and was very easy to make. Althouh I did ignore the BWOF instructions completely because they usually make me too despondent and just made them in the usual order of pants making, and again I used the Sandra Betzina method for the fly zipper because it's practically fail proof.

I might try these pants with different tops and shoes to see if I can find a better combo, or make these in a darker colour before I give up on this pattern completely.

Another thing I really liked about this pattern is that it has one of those nifty side hip piece that extends past the pocket to join with the fly extension - this gives a much smoother line to the front of the pants and stops the pocket scrunching up every time you take your hand out:

And the other good thing is that I've justified the purchase of the November 2008 BWOF, now onto all the rest I've bought but not used.....

Beating the baby at her own game....

Hands up everyone who is bored of baby related sewing on this blog - my hand is half raised here! I am dying to get into the last three BWOF issues and have even traced some off but keep getting side tracked with 'necessary' sewing such as nappies and curtains, and this sleeping sack I made for Anna to sleep in. Anonymous was right when she posted a comment on my last post that sewing for yourself becomes a real delight...

All the baby books I have read recommend wrapping babies snugly to help them settle and get a good sleep which is fine if your baby is not a kung fu master in training like Anna is!

Seriously, she is like one of those magicians wiggling out of a straight jacket whenever I wrapped her, so I've given up. Instead I cut up one of the receiving blankets I bought from an op shop to make into a sleep sack because it was too small to be used for anything else.

This was such an easy project too, all I did was fold it in half widthways, cut out arm and neck holes, sewed up the shoulder seam and added a zip down the front. I also reused the pink bias binding for decoration and then just sewed the bottom shut. It's probably a little too long judging by the photo below, but it will do the job and it allowed me to have a gloat to my husband when we were in a baby shop the other day and saw these for sale for $80!!!

The other thing I made recently was my very first softie (ie soft toy) for my friend's little boy who has been sick lately and got quite scared in hospital. Borrowing inpsiration heavily from others I have seen on the internet, I made this little monster:

I made it from a cardigan I bought on impulse last year when I was heavily pregnant and it doesn't fit and nor do I like the colour and as a result never wore it. So now it has a much better life as an ugly looking monster that will hopefully bring a smile to a little boy's face.

A few people have asked in the comments how I have managed to get anything done with a newborn baby. Comparing Anna with the other babies at my mother's group I realise that she is quite well behaved for a little one, and she has the delightful habit of doing this:

She doesn't sleep for long though, 30 -40 minutes at most but it's long enough to get something done and luckily I have my priorities right and put housework last on the to do list ha ha ha.