Laminate Tablecloth–Boring but PRETTY!

This is nothing exciting about the sewing aspect of these, but I love the fabric. We have a casual dining table in the kitchen for our normal dinners and a more “formal” dining room. This is what I call the Kid Table. There is always food being dropped on it, water being spilled on it, etc. I made a couple of new laminated tablecloths and thought I would show them to you. I’ve never used this type of fabric before but I love it and it’s perfect for this!
 

 

I used some pretty crazy patterns because I kind of like having the bright and colorful table and the more sedate, formal table. Isn’t the pattern fun? This is from Fabric.com. (Remember they are a sponsor! That means if you click the link and buy, I get a cut! FYI!)

 

This is Amy Butler Cameo Laminated Cotton Harriet's Kitchen Sugar. They had this in other colorways too.

 

We also use those heavy duty plastic mats. Kids are damn hard on furniture. This is what every meal in my house starts like. Salad. Luckily, the four kids are good eaters and love them some salad.

 

We also have a giant bulletin board that hangs over the table. This is where we hang all the great kid art. There isn’t really much on it right now because it’s summer. Once school starts, we have oodles of stuff. Last week, this whole board was full of tiger-striped pink balloons because it was our littlest ones birthday. She turned four!!! You can still barely see one of the balloons in the upper right corner. It’s a rotating art piece and I love it. The fabric on the bulletin board is from IKEA and I love that too.

 

Laminate is not bad to sew. All I did here was sew around the four corners. Really, my only advise is to use a leather foot. If you don’t have one of these, you need one. That makes it a breeze to sew. I used a large gauge needle (a 90?) and regular thread.

I also bought Brandon Mably Laminated Cotton Zig Zag Multi. OMG, right??!?!

 

I bought Heirloom Laminated Cotton Opal Blush too.

I also love these but did not buy.

Kaffe Fassett Laminated Cotton Flame Stripe Yellow

 

Logan Laminated Cotton Blossoms Pink

 

Riley Blake Laminate Medium Chevron Red/Black. This is like RAWR!

 

The dreaded SCH___________ starts tomorrow for me so I am turning in early. Uck!

Easiest Sewing Ever

I am doing a little painting today and I was watching paint dry while sitting on the kitchen counter. Like literally, watching it dry. I looked over and decided my old pillows were crap, and that I needed new ones. I think I was partly dying of boredom and partly, I was sick of the old brown ones. They have an embroidered green leaf on them and they are looking shabBY. Part of the embroidery is wrecked, the brown looks old and wrinkled, and I was watching paint dry between coats.  What better to do than sew myself some new ones while the damn paints dries by itself?

I had this fun IKEA fabric and I though it was just the think to brighten up the room. My pillows were 20” square and I cut the fabric into long rectangles of 50” by 21”. I folded over an inch for the seam allowance on the overlaps, sewed the overlap seams, folded it RST (making sure the overlap made the overall width 20”, and then just sewed the top and bottom closed. Voila. New pillows! 

 

Jeez, these pillows look enormous on the loveseat. They fit much better on the big couch.

 

Is this not fun fabric? The dark streak is dark purple, not black.

 

The front and back. I made five total. It took me all of about 40 minutes. After that, I went back to watching paint dry. But soon it will be ready for a second coat. Soon.

Another Burda Gathered Raglan Top

This is a great pattern from Burda. I made this once before with a solid for the body and a stripe for the arms. The original was so nice, I made another one. This one is made from a charcoal gray knit. The length is just a titch long and I may shorten it by an inch or two.

 

Here’s a detail show of the gathers and the neck treatment. I probably could have made the neckband a centimeter or two shorter but it works as is and I think when I wash it, it’ll shrink back up. You can see at CF how the neckline is just a bit loose.

 

Look at the wonders of paint. We used Sherwin-Williams Duration paint. It covers so well we only had to do one coat. Painters are amazing. Like A-MAAAAZE-ING. When I paint, it takes forever and a day to tape, fill holes, sand, etc. This guys paints with no taping off. Let me say that again, he just paints. He doesn’t even tape off. Okay, what the hell. He probably thinks I’m a stalker because I was trying to learn by staring at him. Hard. He would turn around and I would be two feet away from him with a glazed look in my eye. I’m going to learn how to do it. I really am. Fuck taping. That takes longer than painting and it sucks. This is what my house looks like now. And yea, I still need to figure out exactly how to bring the pictures and mirror together a bit more. And yea, I kinda like the big blocky thing at the end. 

 

This is before. You guys saw this picture in this post.

 

Caribbean in six days! Can’t wait!

House Update

This is why you haven’t gotten a sewing post in a few days. We’ve been working our woo-has off on the upstairs of the house. We’ve been painting, trimming, and changing things up. Our walls were all white so we are changing them to a nice beige. I know that gray or greige is the new hot color but I live in Alaska and I can’t do gray. Can’t do it. It’s gray here all the time. I need a little warmth in my paint color. Here you can see the wall from one of my previous posts.

 

We are working on Sheetrocking a really high wall. One of the things I love about this house is the Wall of Windows.

 

Wall O’ Windows

 

Our beautiful brass lights. These will be changed in the next couple of days.

 

 

Here’s a sewing tidbit. I have something fun to show you people. See? Actually sewing! You’ll have to wait to see what it is.

 

 

And because I’m having so much fun with my new Canon, two fun photos.

 

Look at those eyes!

Looky who got a new camera . . .

Someone is a lucky girl with a cute husband who listened to her complaining about the old camera. So, of course I’ve been annoying everyone by taken a ba-jillion pictures with the new camera. Husband and I went to the zoo the other day and walked around. It’s hard to take pictures in the snow without everything turning out blue. This camera does a great job, I think. The following pictures are unaltered except for some cropping.

 

Am I the only one that gets creeped out by goat eyes? It has a 20x optical zoom.

 

My most favorite way to take pictures (with my arm out and big grins).

 

This is inside with the macro. I used a large aperture, slow shutter speed, and no flash.

 

Pretty lights. I would have played around more with these lights but it was about 3 degrees out and Momma’s hands were getting cold! If I had had more time, I would have focused on one bulb and set the aperture very small so the other stuff was out of focus. You sort of get the effect I was going for here. You really should click on the photo and see the larger picture.

 

Here’s my latest project. See the ugly laundry room with crap on floor? The yellow on the wall if from where we removed a cabinet to put in the stacking washer and dryer. It was driving me crazy!

 

See the new pretty laundry room. The cabinet will be installed in that corner and the crap with go in it. I’m tired of stuff on the floor! We’ll cut a hole in the cabinet in the back for the plumbing to fit through. Doesn’t the new camera take nice pictures? This is a hard color to photograph. I tried with the other camera and it was either very dark with no flash or very shadowy and gray with the flash. I opted for no flash, a low ISO, and let the camera pick the shutter speed, and aperture.

 

I wasn’t too excited about the wall color when I was first painting it. It seemed too gray which is not what we need in Alaska (can you say 5hours and 30 minutes of daylight today?) but now it’s a cool green-blue which I really like. I think the laminate looks great with this too. I’ve always been sort of so-so on the flooring in my house but the white trim makes it look fantastic!

 

I painted the ceiling, walls, and trim. Now we just have to put in the cabinet and trim out the window. Oh, and the light, don’t forget the light! We also changed out the hinges on the door because they were awesome brass.

 

I have actually done quite a bit of sewing. I need to hem stuff and then post about it with my new fun toy!

Oh, and for those that are curious, I did not buy a DSLR. I wanted something that was still pocketable but had all manual controls if I wanted them. I bought the Canon Powershot SX260HS and I think it’s love! I will have to see how it does on my posed tripod garment shots though. Those are the ones with which I seem to struggle the most. 

Hope everyone is having a happy holiday season!

Weird Ass Window Part II

You may remember my weird-ass window. For those of you who don’t remember the original post, here is my very badly drawn floor plan of my house. This weird window goes between the kitchen and the living room/entryway. It’s weird.

 

Here’s what it looked like a few days ago.

 

And here is what it looks like today. I took your suggestions and used a large mirror to cover the hole. Many of you suggested using a one-way mirror. I did investigate that idea but the mirrored glass was not mirrored enough. Because there are windows in the kitchen, you’d always be able to see through it from the living room side. I found this large mirror (it’s a big hole, 50” by 40”) at Lowe’s on Black Friday. Score! It was only $40!!!

 

My inspiration was this gallery wall from Martha Stewart.

 

I also tried my hand at a gallery-type wall with photos and knick-knacks. I love these types of walls of photos. First, I mapped out a level horizontal line because I wanted the tops and bottoms of the photos to be even with that line.

 

I used the tape as a guide. You’ll see there are a few photos with the generic photo in them because I don’t have all the photos I want yet.

 

Are you so distracted looking at me in the reflection? Can we see my random x-mas tubs in the living room? And do you see the insulation and Visqueen. Yeaaaaaah, we are still working on that too. Anyway, same photo with less distraction.

 

Do you like how it’s arranged? The three mirrors were purchased at Burlington for cheap and the rest of the stuff I had here and there around the house. I love the big, black chunky display case in the upper left. I’m no good at this type of stuff because I cannot do random. I want everything to be exactly the same distance away from each other. I drive myself crazy! It took me forever to realize that the four kids didn’t need to be in the exact same frames. Now, two of them are in 8” by 10” frames and the other two are in 12” by 14” with mats.

 

Does this drive you crazy or am I just anal like that? I was trying to line the tops and bottoms up with the original blue line but then I was matching the edges to the left-hand wall and the mirror. Maybe I should center the bottom print under the larger print? What do you think?

Wanna know my secret to getting the damn little nail where I wanted it so the frames would match up? It’s this little thing I call a crayon and it’s my best friend! I can write a little tutorial if you guys want one!

A Little Christmas Sewing

I’m busily working on Christmas projects already. I am going to make six stocking for our fireplace. My plan is to use Urban Threads embroidery to decorate the fabric first and then cut them and sew them up. I am using the Yuletide Revelry pattern pack (includes a bunch of embroidery like the one below). I just had to share with you guys. I love, love, love the little details on these embroidery designs. I love most of their stuff over at Urban Threads. I’m using their recommended colors because I’m pretty bad at being creative and knowing what colors go together. This wreath is my favorite one so far. Well, and I love the text too.

 

Close-up so you can see the scribbles and text behind the wreath.

 

Aren’t the snowflakes fun???!

 

Well, that’s my update. This should keep me busy for a while. I might have to make some matching pillows too or something. I really do like them and it’s not too cheese-ball Christmas. You know I’m excited when I put up a whole post about some embroidery patterns!

In Progress - Master Bedroom

I just had to. Really, I did. Are these curtains not THE. BEST. Perhaps a little too garish for some but I like me some RAWR every once in a while. As you can see, the walls are painted now. I am still rearranging furniture but I had to show you the curtains. They aren’t even hemmed yet but I just had to show you. I love them. The rest of the bedroom is pretty low-key; very neutral, very sedate. I wanted to rev it up a little with some pattern. I think it will still look great with the purple duvet I made here.

 

Are the colors not fab? This is a cotton sateen so it’s a bit thicker and is nice for blocking light and sound.

 

The view from our love bed.

 

I’m hoping to sew a little for me this weekend. I want to make that bias-cut dress out of the newest Burda. Love that dress!