Sewing Straight

I realized that the last three projects I have worked on were all sewn in straight lines! This is the latest. Although I sew garments with home dec fabric a fair amount, I have not really done much home dec sewing. In the past, I have made some pretty crappy curtains I wasn't very proud of, but I am very proud of these. I measured and got the repeats perfect on all six windows! I did measure and mark four times before I got the scissors out. Pretty good for a newbie.

Daytime, back lit

The room I made these for is a dressing room with a vanity. In addition to doing our makeup, my daughter and I also keep our jewelry and accessories in it. It has windows on three sides, so we sometimes felt like we were in a fishbowl, especially like when a guy was cutting a tree down next door! Hey there, guy with a chainsaw! It fells a lot more private now.

The main reason I wanted to re-do this room was so that I could move my beading supplies out of my sewing room. My husband let me have the old childhood desk his dad made for him. You can just see the edge of it on the lower left. The desk has lots of storage for my bead horde and tools.

Nighttime with artificial light.

I hung these tie backs up to store necklaces. Its a good solution for keeping everything tangle free and easy to find.

The room is now a cozy, peaceful place for beading, reading and drawing. This weekend we are doing a lot of painting in the house and I have five more windows to sew for, so I don't think I'll be able to spend too much time in there just yet!

I'm so nice

I made my husband 14 new dish towels! 

The solid green ones are pique. When I inherited the fabric from Gwen it was white. I dyed it with regular old Rit dye in apple green. It was a dismal dull dirty blue green almost like hospital scrubs, only uglier. If I ever saw an apple that color I would not eat it!  I over dyed it with lemon yellow. It became exactly the color I hoped for in the first place. I left the selvedges on and simply serged the other edges. 

The chinoiserie print are 100 percent linen home dec samples from the free table. They are tea towel weight and perfect for covering bread dough. I made fancy mitered corner hems on these.

My husband looks very handsome with a dish towel in in hand!

Well, that didn't work!

I got these tanks from Landsend. I like that their tops never fade or shrink, but even though they are petites, I thought they were a bit long on me. I have no explanation for why I bought the striped one at all!! 

I thought I could save some time by hemming them with my cover stitch machine using clear thread. Ha! Ha! No cooperation whatsoever. I could never get clear thread to work properly in my regular machine, so I really don't know what kind of insanity let me to think would work in the cover stitch.

After an hours' frustration, I came to my senses and did it the hard way--re-threading for each color--which, of course, was really the easy way after all.  

The Big Skirt Project: Part Nine

I had these three small pieces of fabric in my stash, acquired at different times, but none of them were big enough to do anything with alone. So I combined them.  Tertium Quid!

The Big Skirt Project: Part 8

For version eight of my skirt, I added  angled princess seams.  

The fabric in the center is home dec. I'm  not sure where or when I acquired it, but I'm sure it was free. It was only 14 inches wide so I created this pattern to accommodate the narrow width. The gingham part is a bed sheet. One things about sheets--they do not wrinkle! I had been wearing this sitting in a car all day before I took these photos. 

You can see I very carefully matched the pattern in back. The zipper is in the center back. 

Two more to go!

Distractions

I've had two weeks off work, a birthday and a weekend away but did not sew a single thing. I did acquire a few things:

One piece of fabric has goats! I always wanted a goat until my sister in law got two Nigerian goats. They were as cute as can be until they jumped on top of my Mini Cooper! Now I stick to goat cheese (or fabric). The buttons and buckles were unbelievably inexpensive--so I couldn't resist.  I'm not really a belt wearer, but I thought the buckles might make interesting jewelry.

I also made this table top. It had been on my to-do list for two years:

So what did I do on my vacation--if I didn't sew? A bunch of stuff around the house. We took down the dining room wallpaper. Two layers. It was a quite a chore. But  nothing compared to the excruciating process of James Mason and I agreeing on the new wall color and fabric for drapes.

In the meantime, I have started on another room. It was once a sitting room, then art studio where my husband used to work (we're both illustrators and work digitally now). Several years ago, he built me a beautiful vanity in it. Its a nice sunny room with windows on three sides. I decided to move my jewelry crafting operation  there from my sewing room in the basement. The way it was, I could sew or I could bead, but I couldn't do both at the same time. I gave the chair that was in the room to a friend. The next day she confided in me that it had never occurred to her before, but she now realizes she also needs a beading room! I have appropriated a desk from my husband and I'll be making new drapes. I bet it gets done before the dining room.

Today, I am going to be spending some quality time in the sewing room. We've missed each other.