Friday, 30 December 2011

Recent Sewing Projects

Illness is still plaguing our house at the moment, but today I wanted to share with you some of my sewing projects of late.
    First up, is another mug rug, I've discovered I love making these, it's a great way to practice making quilt blocks without actually having to make the quilt! (though I would love to eventually make one when I get more accurate with my cutting).

This is the dresden tablecentre that I made for my mum's Chirstmas gift. She has green kitchen countertops so I picked out some coordinating fabrics from my stash that I thought would match well. I sketched out the flower petal shape myself to use as a template and one of my biscuit tins came in handy for the centre peice as well, all I did then was finish it off with some ric-rac trim, and hey-presto! 

Though I think for next time I may just buy one of those plastic dresden shapes as I found it quite difficult to not pucker the edges where each petal joins, a little too much un-picking for my liking...

and lastly, I made a little wall hanging for Robin's nana, though unfortunately I didn't get to snap a pic when it was finished. To finish I handstitched the little hexagons and used linen as the background with a sweet yellow binding. I liked it so much that I might have to make another similar one again for my kitchen.

Tuesday, 20 December 2011

Our First Home: Dining room

Our final room to complete in the house is the 'lean-to', which we are going to use as a dining room; it's flooded with natural light and has fantastic double doors leading on from the front room, making it the perfect choice. 
I'm currently in the middle of painting the table white and the chairs are going to be a range of lovely pastel candy colours, then I'm planning to recover them in some pretty fabrics. Can you believe I picked up these cute chairs from a local charity shop for free!

Hope you're all enjoying the festive season, I'll hopefully be finished painting by 2012 ! 

Tuesday, 13 December 2011

Our First Home: Craft room update

Well here it is, this is my new sewing room / studio for messy jesse. It's the perfect craft space, with lots of shelving and storage for my growing fabric collection. A new addition to this room is a wall-mounted TV over my desk yippee! 
Wowee such a difference hey, It's so amazing what a lick of white paint can do! I haven't got my new scalloped blind or a light fitting in yet so it's not quite there but I couldn't resist giving you an update. I was lucky enough to already have the wall shelves there when we moved in so all they needed was a rough sanding and some fresh paint. The thread rack is handmade by a seller I found on Ebay. I also found a cute little place to hang my bunting :)



Note the victorian fireplace I painstakinly restored for DAYS! I haven't got a proper picture of it before I started on it annoyinly, but it was covered in a ultra thick layer of cream paint which I stripped down using nitro mors solution and a little metal scraper, hopefully won't have to do that again : I My trustee expedit holds my sewing books and my prized collection of Golden Hands encyclopedia's (mentioned in a previous post here). As well as lots of papercrafting bits and bobs. The ladder shelves house an array of sewing notions, threads, trims and paper patterns. I'm still working on this part, I'd quite like to have more of these things on show but I'm not sure how to work this yet.



I've got a new desk by upcycling the old kitchen countertops we ripped out downstairs. It's so sturdy, and a great neutral colour for the room. My old desk from IKEA bowed with the weight of my sewing machine so hoping this won't do the same?



 And the crowning glory... the fabric collection! I've arranged it with vintage sheets, curtains and pillowcases on the bottom four shelves and modern fabric on the two shelves above that, then fat quarters all arranged my colour, topped off with some larger yardage peices including some beautiful linen I brought back from Turkey on a holiday this year (going to be turned into a couple of sofa cushions). Some CK fabric, and a stack of vintage emroidery bits and bobs I've been collecting from charity shops this year. 





Haha my scrap bucket! what a disaster it looks but it actually works quite well for me. I need my scraps relatively easy to get to and not too tidy where it takes me forever to tidy. Do you have any good scrap organising tips? though I'm hoping to clear alot of it in the new year with some scrap-busting projects. A shelf of my vintage sewing baskets and tins store less-frequently-used items, like press studs, zips, alphabet stickers, and button poppers. Hmm have I missed anything out, let's see: deer ornament collection over the mantelpeice, vintage Singer sewing machine and spools of bakers twine = my perfect studio. 

Monday, 12 December 2011

Christmas Decorating

Christmas 2011 has officially landed in our house. The decorations are up and I'm so pleased! Didn't feel quite ready for it this year as the house is STILL not ready, but I guess Rome wasn't built in a day...
I spent all of yesterday evening popping popcorn for the tree garlands and the mantlepeice. It's not the most enjoyable Christmas chore, but I do love the effect. It's so cosy and reminds me of my childhood helping my mum doing it. 

Did you also notice my Christmas stockings! they were the sneak peek image from my last post. They were such fun to make, I followed this tutorial to put them togther and made up my own stocking template and quilting design - using a quarter square triangle method. I really like the effect, and do a great job of brightening up the room!
I've been decorating with my usual mix of handmade, shop bought and a few 'new' vintage decs I have collected over this year. I also managed to find a new home for my quilted Christmas table runner that I made last year (tutorial here). It sits really well on my teak sideboard - perfect! ;) And there is still more decorating to do, I'm tackling the hallway tomorrow. I forgot how long it takes? or maybe it's just me?

Tuesday, 6 December 2011

Christmas Project Sneak-Peek

I've been working on a very festive project of late, and I'm feeling rather pleased with myself. It's my first sewing task in the new craft room! I've been so busy painting and cleaning I've not really had the energy - or motivation to get my sewing head on.
I would love to have shared all of it, but unfortunately I have misplaced the lead for my camera to laptop so I can't upload any images dohhhh! (this one above is a quick iphone snap) though a new one is on it's way and I will be back on the blogging track as soon as it's here ;)