pillows, pillows, pillows

I don't know about you, but I have a hard time decorating for Valentine's Day. I just don't go in for all the sparkly hearts and pink and fluff. Yes, I'll use red and hearts here and there, but sparingly and in an understated way.

However, in an attempt to make my house somewhat festive for the upcoming holiday (and because I couldn't keep my Christmas pillows around until spring), I decided to sew up some new pillow covers for my couch.

This lumbar pillow cover was made using a red and cream ticking stripe and a piece of drop cloth that I had. I bought the wood buttons on Etsy like 3 years ago or so, but waited to use them for just the right project.

I'm sure you've seen doily pillows popping up everywhere, so how could I resist making my own? I found half a dozen of these nice big doilies at my local thrift store and used dollar store cotton napkins for the cover. These are pretty easy to make. Just dot the back of the doily with some fabric glue to adhere it to the fabric, then once that's dry stitch around the edge and a couple of places in the middle to keep it secure. I think they look kind of romantic in a way.

This afternoon while my littlest one napped I whipped up this last cover from scraps in my stash. Once again the red ticking appears, along with some more taupe napkin fabric.

I really like how this one turned out, and it's definitely got more of a Valentine's Day vibe than the others.

The letters are just appliqued on with a small zig-zag stitch on the top layer and a straight stitch for the bottom layer. That taupe fabric is going to fray some over time, which is what I want.
Although... now that I'm looking at it from a distance, I wish I'd tipped the "o" the other direction. Dangit!

I've got one more chair needing a new pillow cover, which is in the works. But I'm afraid it's going to take a little while to finish. Hopefully before Valentine's Day actually arrives! I'll be sure and share as soon as it's done.

Baby Shower Gifts: Embellished Onesies

I love baby showers. I really do. Especially the kind where you just kind of hang out and chit chat and swap pregnancy/birth/motherhood stories and eat yummy food and ooh and aah over the decorations and cute presents and favors. Those are my favorite. Tonight I got to attend one such shower and had a fabulous time. Two gals were being honored tonight, one who's due with her 3rd boy in about a week and another who's expecting her 3rd girl towards the end of November. Cool, huh?

Of course making baby stuff is a real treat for me, so I thoroughly enjoyed spending this afternoon creating some one-of-a-kind onesies to gift to my fellow expectant mommys. I did something similar a while back for another friend's shower and had such a good time with it then that I thought I'd try it again. ( I have to say, Pinterest came in real handy when I was looking for ideas. Do you Pinterest yet?)

As usual I started with a couple packs of white onesies, but this time I bought those kimono-style tees as well because they're just so stinking cute. Here's the boy batch which includes...

... an appliqued elephant...

... a gray linen whale with tiny button eye...

... a creeping button caterpillar...

... and a dapper polka dotted bow tie.

The girl batch included...

... a strip of lace with some mother-of-pearl buttons down the center...

... a floral birdy...

... white eyelet ruffle trim...

... and a pink knit ruffle.

And just for a little humor, each one got one of these as well. (In case you can't tell, these are appliqued to the backside.)



I wish I'd had time to take a picture of them packaged, but I was in a little bit of a rush. All I did was roll up each onesie and tie it with some twine. I had some little tin buckets and filled them with the onesies, then attached a tag to the handle with a pink or blue ribbon.

I had so much fun making these- hope my friends like them, too!

Before and After: 9-Drawer Dresser and Chair

It's been brought to my attention that I may not have ever mentioned what or where the store actually is where I sell my furniture and decor items (HUGE oversight on my part!), so for any locals who may read my little blog, here ya go:

Unique Boutiques
180 Leveland #1a
Modesto, CA
209-606-3748
Open M-Sa 10-6

This weekend the store put on a sidewalk sale, which I decided to participate in. Once a month we have a store wide 20% off sale. This month we decided to bring even more items and set them up under tents outside. Over the past couple of weeks I've been working like mad to get some items ready to bring, specifically some big things that I really wanted out of my garage!

This first project was one that I picked up a while ago at a local thrift store for a terrific price and miraculously fit it into my little Mazda. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it before I took out the drawers and started to sand the top.

It was in pretty good shape, just kind of dated and blah.

I got some custom paint mixed in my favorite blue/gray, but this time I had them mix it with the paint and primer combo so I could skip the primer step. It costs more, but I thought it might be worth trying. I have to admit that I was skeptical, but after the first coat of paint had dried I scraped my fingernail over it and it didn't budge. A second light coat over that made it even more durable. The whole thing got glazed and then wiped down with polyurethane to finish it off.






Another thrift store find, this chair was just a few bucks and in much need of some work. But I loved the legs and the shape of the back and could see that it would soon be really cute.



That chair pad was just gross.

This chair didn't "speak to me" very quickly, but once it did I got really excited about how to make it pretty. I started with the seat cover, choosing a base fabric of a taupe linen and then I pulled a pile of pink, coral and white floral fabrics from my stash.
I cut small squares from each fabric then ironed some Wonder Under to the back side of each one. Then I free-handed flower and leaf shapes onto the paper side of the Wonder Under and cut them out. After arranging them how I wanted on the background fabric, I peeled off the paper backing and ironed them into place.

Once they were ironed down I stitched around the edges, some with a straight stitch, others a zig-zag, and just had fun sort of drawing on the flowers with my sewing machine.

The chair got painted bright white (with no primer this time) and heavily distressed and wiped down with polyurethane to keep the paint from coming off further. Just a tip- if you know you're going to distress something well, don't bother priming. But if you don't want to distress or want more control of how much paint comes off, be sure you prime first.
I really love how this chair turned out.
The seat looks exactly like I'd hoped it would! It was probably the first thing of mine inside that sold on Saturday.
Here's a little peek at what my tent looked like at the start of the sale. That corner cabinet ended up back inside after it nearly blew over and broke my little blue stool.
I was torn about parting with my antique sofa, but on a yard saleing excursion last weekend I came upon the very Ikea sleeper sofa that I'd been wanting, priced at only $25! I felt like such a thief that I paid an extra $20 and brought it happily home. A few days later I bought a new white slipcover for it, but I couldn't bring it inside until the other one was gone. This sale was the perfect opportunity for me to try and find the antique a new home, and lucky for me, just as she was packing up to leave, one of the other vendors decided to buy it!
I'm at peace with letting go of my pretty couch. My "new" one is way more functional, way more kid friendly, and the money I made on the sale of the other one certainly helped ease the pain of parting. ;)

Girl's Dress Deconstruction and Refashion

Last night I remembered that today is "Hawaiian Shirt Day" at my daughter's school, so at about 10:00 or so I decided that I needed to make her something to wear... which turned into a couple of somethings.

Let me first show you where I got the fabric for these projects.

I found this dress last June at a thrift store. While the style is pretty dated, I just couldn't walk away from that fabric. It's just so pretty and vibrant!

This dress was a little over the top. It had ruffles evvvvrywhere. Two along the neckline, two along the hem and one down the front. And then there were those weird rosettes. Do you see them?
Right smack in the middle of the neckline. Weird.

There was also a row of fabric covered buttons that ran down the front that I used on another project a while ago, but I'll share that later.

The first thing I did to that dress was remove the skirt, take off one of the ruffles and add some elastic to the waist so it became a cute little skirt for my girl. Since then the top has been chopped up into smaller and smaller pieces for various other projects, such as this one.

Now on to the outfit.
(I have to apologize for these photos. They're horrible. They were taken right before my daughter had to run out the door to catch the bus, so the lighting was bad and my camera isn't wonderful. Yeah, I'm blaming the lighting and the camera.)

With a little Wonder Under, some zigzag stitching and a little bead detail, this previously boring (and slightly stained) blue shirt is now jazzy and tropical!

I used 4 of the ruffles from the dress to make a simple fabric lei by just running some string through the center with a needle.
And of course she had to have a "flower" for her hair, so one of the side ties of the dress and some sparkly beads became a rosette that attaches to her hair with an alligator clip.
All of these projects were pretty fast and really easy.

My girl was pretty pleased when she woke up this morning with (practically) a costume to wear!

If only it was warm enough for sandals. *sigh* But that's Idaho! :)

Dressing the bedroom

I have a lot of infatuations. Polka dots, birds, boxes, embroidery, baskets, leather, vintage stuff, furniture... the list could go on and on. But one infatuation that's stayed with me for quite some time is this color. I don't know what to call it. It's blue, but with some gray and green in it, and I've loved it since before it became a fad.

After slip covering my headboard I decided the bed needed some color. The whole room, in fact, was really very plain with lots of brown and cream and white. Some throw pillows were in order.

So I went back to Joann and bought another couple of yards of that nice flax-colored cotton fabric. I'd also scored a brand new 84" embroidered curtain panel at my local Goodwill for $5, which gave me TONS of lovely blue fabric with some cream embroidery down one side. About a year ago I'd found another brand new curtain panel there, made of the same fabric but in a different style, which ended up in our guest room (shown below). Weird, huh?

Anyway, over the past couple of days I've sewn up some pillows.

This one I used a basic applique technique to put our monogram in flax on the blue background, with some crocheted trim from a scarf I'd already started to cut up.

A bird silhouette (of course) using that lovely blue and, again, a basic applique technique.

I had to make a pillow form for this one because I wanted a rectangle shaped pillow. I love that embroidery so, so much!

Not sure what to call this technique- "sloppy applique" maybe? (Click the image for a closer look.) It was pretty simple. I drew the letters onto a rectangle of white linen with a disappearing ink pen, then pinned the whole piece to the flax background. I stitched around each letter with a regular straight machine stitch, then cut a scant 1/4" away from the stitching to remove the excess fabric. That 1/4" frayed nicely in the wash, but I think if I were to do it again I'd make my letters thinner. They seem a little too chunky to me.

But I couldn't just stop with the bed. I had to redo a few other things around the room. I replaced the embroidered cream sheers with my favorite blue, tan and brown striped curtains...

...and removed the big, framed tulip print that had hung above our dresser since we moved in with something smaller.

These lovely tin bird pictures were found at our local Dollar Tree a few months ago. I stained some old wooden drawer pulls, used Liquid Nails to put small penny nails into the screw hole in each one, then used them like giant thumb tacks to hold my twine-strung pictures.

Last night I found two white fabric lamp shades on clearance at Target, so now the only remaining green in the room is on our bedside tables, which doesn't bother me at all.
I'm still planning to use this treatment above our bed and am working on collecting photos and old botanical prints and other images to hang. I bought some vintage clothes pins on Etsy and am sooo excited to get that wall decorated- at last!