August 20th, 2009 -- Posted in domestic engineering, house to home, pics |
So my learning-to-sew adventures continue and it’s going pretty well. I made only 1 trip to a fabric store and got 2 different fabrics on sale. For those few metres and 4 buttons, it was less than $20. And out of it, I’ll be able to make 3 valances, give a piece to Paul to construct some nifty Roman blinds for our bathroom AND have enough left over for a pillow or 2.
The fabric I chose for the kitchen valance is just amazing, I love it. Cream with streaks of metallic gold!
I kept the valance pretty simple – just a rod pocket about 2 inches down. After the pocket, there was about 15″ of fabric to make up the valance. The kitchen window was 51″ wide, and the width of the valance was more than that to give it some volume.
We’d been very lucky to find custom wood blinds in our local Home Depot that were almost exactly the size of our window! It’s possible someone in the area also had a Minto home that was the same model or a different model that had a similar window. So we were able to get the blinds (a dark brown with 2″ slats) for a third of the price!
All in all, the look came together really nicely…
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August 16th, 2009 -- Posted in house to home, pics, scrappy / stampy |
… and I’m not talking about the forum type of message board (for once)! 
I made a little note board for our kitchen:
This crafty project started waaaay back and has taken many months to become an assembled piece of home décor. I saw the “how to” on a design show, but had to modify the instructions as I couldn’t find an affordable chunk of cork material that wasn’t already a cork board itself. So my board became a message board only and won’t be used with push pins.
Here are the details of how this message board was put together:
* Find an open frame (without glass – great if you have accidentally smashed a frame! 
)
* Choose a strong base material – if you can’t find thick cork, you can try polystyrene. Cut it slightly smaller than the size of your frame. Be sure to leave enough room so that the base and the top layers will be able to be pushed through the frame from the back.
* Cut a piece of material to the size of your frame.
* Cut a piece of batting to the size of your frame. I used 2 layers.
* If you’d like to use ribbon, create a criss-cross pattern on the top of the fabric. I used scrapbooking brads to hold the ribbon where it met but you could try buttons or any other small embellishment.
* Assemble the “soft” layers and stretch them over the hard base (but NOT your frame back!). Staple-gun the fabric+batting first, leaving the ribbon loose for now.
* Then staple the ribbon. I messed up a lot on the first go-round (click here for my crooked first try). So I took it apart and did it properly – checking the front and pulling the ribbons at the angles you want so they go straight.
* Gently push your covered base into the frame.
* Add the cardboard back onto the frame and close up whatever mechanisms your frame has at the back. Your base+fabric will stick out of the front of the frame and that’s ok.
And that’s all there is to it! 
The best part of this project was coming across a swatch of material that coordinated super well with allll the colours we’d chosen for the back rooms of the house. The worst part was all the fussing around.
Oh, and seeing a message board for sale at Walmart for $12. But mine is *way* prettier and just as cheap. So hopefully it’ll stand up to many future occasions of having coupons and other little notes tucked in behind the ribbons over the years.
August 5th, 2009 -- Posted in domestic engineering, family, house to home, pics |
I swear. I’m learning to sew for practical purposes only.
And my very first sewing project was to complete the fabric covers for the kids’ toy shelves. I found the material years and years ago and had someone sew one panel for me. And the rest of the fabric got set aside until “later”.
It’s finally “later”.
So looking at the existing panel had me thinking it couldn’t be that difficult. I’ve used the sewing machine before to sew a few scrapbook pages together, so I thought I would try my hand at using it for its’ intended purpose. And I actually sat down and read the manual cover to cover… I still messed things up at first (a lot), but I eventually got the hang of it.
And the final product turned out pretty cute. Not only did I sew the other panel, I used the leftover fabric to make a bunch of ties to hold the curtain out of the way when we didn’t want it hanging over the toy shelves.
Pics:
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