The Red Chair

Shortly before I had my first baby, a very sweet neighbor gave me an old rocker she had had in storage for a while. Admittedly it wasn't very pretty, and she hadn't remembered that the back was broken, but I wanted it anyway. I threw a blanket over it and kept it in the baby's room.

When we bought our house I kept it in the play room for a place for me to sit or nurse while the kids play. When I turned my attention on decorating the play room, I finally decided what I wanted to do with that chair.

Here is the before. I had used a blanket thrown over it to cover it up but to also add some cushioning. It, frankly, was not comfortable. So you better believe that when I replaced the cushion (or lack thereof) I used 2" foam. It's comfy now! I know that there are tons of really great tutorials out there that show how to replace the cushion on chairs, so I checked out a couple and jumped right in.

After taking the seat off, I replaced the cushion and added new cute fabric to cover it. I then set the seat aside and began work on the rest of the chair. It had been stained at one point, so I took my little sander to it to get that off. That admittedly took a couple of hours. When that part was finally done, I started painting it. I used a paint plus primer spray paint. I used two cans, but it could have used a third. I was just so ready to be done I called it good. (It really does look fine how it is though.)

I needed a cover for the back not only for some extra cushioning, but to cover up the broken slat. I used the same material that I had used for the seat. I measured across the top and down the back to get the size of  cover I would need. I then cut out 4 rectangles that were the proper size. I sewed 2 of them together inside out, turned, and top stitched. Then with the other 2 I did the same thing, but added batting. I also topstitched 2 lines going down the front to keep the batting in place and to look nice. Then I simply sewed the 2 rectangles of fabric together and using ribbon tied them onto the back of the chair.

What a difference huh? I love it and it goes so great in our play room. I now have a really comfy place to sit with the kids in that room, if they let me. They now think it's theirs! But in my house that is just a sign of how great it is.

 

Butterflies

So while looking for inspirations for décor for my daughter's room I spotted this on a new favorite blog of mine. Isn't she amazing? As soon as I saw her butterflies I knew I needed to make my own. I however used this pattern for my butterflies. I used a worsted weight so they came out the perfect size for what I wanted.

I love how they turned out. They are only two rounds, but they were kind of confusing as I was crocheting them because they look nothing like I thought they would. But as soon as I folded them in half, it's a butterfly! I also did a single crochet "stem" for the body and antenna which I slip stitched on.

I found some round wooden plaques at Joann's that were the right size for these butterflies. I whipped out my acrylic paints and did colors that were similar to the colors of my butterflies. Then I simply hot glued the butterflies to the plaques after the paint was completely dry. After hammering in sawtooth hangers they were ready to hang.

As you can see, I did a trio of butterflies. I just used yarn that I already had. So this was a quick, easy, and pretty inexpensive project that I love.

The House Shelf

I have to admit that I am a Pinterest addict. So of course I have a board devoted to each room of the house. For my daughter's room I found several little house shelves like this one. I immediately fell in love. But of all of the ones that I could find that you could actually buy, the least expensive I found was around $80. And they all go up from there. That just isn't in our decorating budget. So I sadly resigned myself to not having one. Until a recent trip to our local thrift store, and I found this diamond in the rough.

With the shade of wood and especially the blue wood panels it just screamed "country." Which is absolutely not what I like at all. But I knew with a bit of paint and cute fabric on the back, I could get this to look how I wanted.

First thing I did was to pull off the blue panels. They were stapled on so they were pretty easy to pull off. Then I wiped the whole thing down really well to get all the dust off. That was the only prep I did because it was bare wood. Then I used a paint+primer and just sprayed the whole thing a couple of times. Then to add a bit more charm I dug through my fabric pile and came up with a few pieces that I thought went well together. I quickly stapled those on the back, hammered on a sawtooth hanger, and put it up on the wall.

It turned out quite well if I say so myself. It was also very inexpensive. After using fabric I already had, the total cost of the shelf and the paint I had to buy came to a total of about $8.  You can't beat that!

I put a couple of my daughter's little toys on, and placed it next to the butterfly plaques I made a month ago. I'd say that her room is coming along well. Slowly but surely.

 

 

 





Long Break

Wow, I didn't realize I had been away from this blog for so long. It isn't that the summer has been outrageously busy, but it has been busy. The blog just didn't have priority. But that doesn't mean I haven't been creating and doing things, on the contrary, I have lots of things to share. One of the many things that I "discovered" was doll making. I have been an avid reader of Wee Wonderfuls for a while. I have been wanting her book ever since it came out. I had never made any kind of doll before, but hers made me want to try so bad. So on a whim one day I finally bought her book. I have already made 2 dolls with a third in progress.
 "Katie Kitty" was my first. I learned a lot with that one, but I do think it turned out well. I didn't give it any clothes because I didn't think my husband would appreciate our son playing with a cat in a dress, haha. LJ of course isn't really interested in it, yet (hopefully).

Pixie was fun to make. I think it turned out quite cute.
 Again, LJ isn't interested. Hopefully when he gets a little older (he is only 11 months old right now) he'll actually take notice of  the things that I have made for him. As for right now, all I can do is hope, and of course keep making things I think are cute and hope he will like later.

Pretty Pillowcase

As mentioned in my last post, I have really been into embroidery lately. It isn't too time consuming, and it's quite fun to do. Also, unlike hand sewing, I think this is quite easy as well. I'm still not the greatest at it, but again, I am really enjoying doing it right now.
After thinking of things I wanted to do with our bedding, I decided I wanted to have embroidered pillowcases. I saw this and knew that it was perfect. Most embroidered pillowcase patterns are very flowery and girly. I am not a really flowery kind of girl anyway, but I knew that my husband would demand that very flowery pillowcases be immediately and completely removed from our bedroom. So I don't think that he will mind this pattern too much. If he does, I'll just have to come up with more masculine patterns just for him.

Mom's Birthday Gift

I love making gifts for my mom. She loves pretty much anything handmade, and I know her style pretty well. So I can get creative and come up with tons of things that I know she will like. She has a hoosier cabinet in her kitchen that she decorates beautifully every season. During the summer she usually has a small collection of beehive knick knacks displayed in her cabinet. I've been wanting to make something beehive related for a while to give her, and I decided to do this. (She really liked it.) It is a small about 5" square wall hanging.

I have recently rediscovered embroidery. I really dislike hand sewing, but for some reason I really enjoy embroidery. It's just something about seeing a picture come to life with color that I really love.

The Sunday Bag

So, a few weeks ago at church I looked around at all of the other mothers of young children and realized something. None of them were carrying big overstuffed diaper bags like I was. They were all carrying cute little tote bags. This is when I realized that I didn't need my huge diaper bag anymore. All I really need for those few hours is a diaper and pacifier, really. So I decided to join the "in" crowd and downsize to a cute tote bag.
The only problem with this decision was that I didn't have a cute tote bag. I had several plain canvas tote bags, but again, not very cute. I was trying to decide what I could do to spruce up one of these bags when I remembered this. I looked up more images for sashiko embroidery and decided on the pattern that I wound up using. I didn't want to bother with trying to find a pattern that was the same size as my bag, so I grabbed a plastic cup and started tracing. I completely free handed it, so the circles are off center a little bit. But even with those imperfections, I really like how it turned out. In fact, I like it so much that I am now constantly thinking of other projects that I can make with other sashiko designs.

So I took my new bag to church on Sunday and everything I needed fit, plus it looked really good too. 

I learned!

I decided a few months ago that I wanted to learn how to crochet. So when I joined a swap on Swap-bot where you send your partner something that you made which was a new craft for you, I decided to jump in and do something crocheted. I'd seen this a while ago and thought these bracelets were very beautiful and decided to make one. I used larger crochet thread, and so it look me little while to figure out the gauge, but I think it works. My work certainly isn't perfect, but I think that it turned out very nice any way and I sure hope that who I sent it to likes it.  

Christmas Quilt

This is the quilt that I made for Cody for Christmas. I think that it turned out very nice. You can see the quilting detail much better on the back. (Oops, should have taken a lint roller to it before taking pictures.) When Cody and I got married a few years ago I decided that I wanted the color theme for our bedroom to be red and black. So I bought the material for this quilt then, and finally got around to making it for Christmas.

Then I put it on the bed. I decided that even though it is a nice quilt, I am not that fond of it. I don't like the monochromatic look of the red on top of the black. It just isn't my kind of aesthetic. So now I have to go back to the drawing board and figure out a quilt with these colors that I'll like better. I might even change the black to blue.Wish me luck.

Bear Hat

So, before LJ was born I made him a whole bunch of hats, including this one. I just love hats that have ears on them, I think that they are super cute. (Plus it doesn't hurt to have a super cute baby to wear them.) But now that he is here and wearing them, I realize that the ears are too small. So I am planning on cutting these ones off, and replacing them with bigger ears. Hopefully I can figure it out, and actually do it.
One of the best ways that I learn is by messing up and making mistakes. Because if everything that you make is perfect then you will never learn. (Although after frogging a project for the 4th time, I really wish I was perfect.) So, I look at my imperfect projects as learning experiences and hopefully never make that same mistake again. I figure that eventually I will have done every mistake possible and then have perfect projects, haha. Well, time to go figure out how to make bigger circles for ears.