Master bed quilt

About a year ago, I was going through a difficult time, and I felt like I needed something to brighten up my outlook!  I had seen a display at Ikea of a darling yellow & gray bedroom, and I decided that would be just the thing!

However, it has taken me almost a year to complete a quilt to go across the foot of the bed.  I love having a quilt at the end of the bed: it adds variety, makes for cozy afternoon naps, and gives me an excuse to make another quilt!  ;)

So I don't have a lot to say about this quilt, except that I completed it in 2 weeks (because it was wintertime: no yard work needing done!).  It was a pretty quick quilt since it only consisted of sewing a bunch of strips together, cutting them at an angle, then sewing them back together again!  Also, I always wash and dry (yes, in the dryer!) all my quilts before I display them.  I like the way that washing gives them a puckered, vintagey look.

The final product!

Basement

We finished our basement 5 years ago to add more bedrooms, as we were expecting baby #5 and needed the space.  Until about 18 months ago, all of the furniture we had down there was stuff given to us by my parents.  I was grateful to have furniture, but as the kids got older, it was kind of embarrassing to invite friends to watch movies on a couch with stains & holes!  So we got rid of EVERYTHING used, and moved our leather couches down there.   It still seemed kind of sterile, though, so I decided to add a little character to the area.

Our basement family room is a long, rectangular room running the length of the house.  It is divided by furniture into 3 "areas": the couches & TV; a counter height dining table; and an exercise area.  Not very exciting!  I didn't really have money to to exactly what I'd like to do, so I decided I would do what I could with as little cost as I could manage.  

First, I painted our oak bookshelves black.  I've had these bookshelves since I was in college, and they were very trendy in the early 90's, but not so much anymore!  So I painted them & put a panel of fabric in the back of the bookshelf.  In retrospect, I wish I had picked a fabric with more color in it.  It would be easy to replace, so I may do that someday!
I also removed about 1/3 of the books on the shelf (getting rid of some, finding another place for others) so that I could arrange the shelved more creatively.  

Then I bought several secondhand frames & painted them black, and used them to make a grouping on the wall.  Using a can of paint, a few yards of fabric, & some used frames allowed me to make the middle section of our family room a bit more inviting.

For the TV grouping: 
Years ago when my 11 year old was a toddler, and before we had an actual "train table," I bought a cheap coffee table at Deseret Industries on which he could play trains.  It was made of cheap wood, had a natural-finish table top with hunter green legs.  He only used it for trains for a short time, then it became the piece of furniture on which everything got placed when he was required to clean his room.  It has floated from one place to another in our house ever since, never really fitting in anywhere.  Most recently, it acted as a footrest in the basement in front of the TV.   I decided that was actually a great place for it, if I could just make it look like it belonged.  The couches we have there are leather, and I have discovered that finding an ottoman to match leather couches is nearly impossible, unless bought at the same time as the couches (didn't happen!) (no longer available!).  So, since the rest of the basement has black furniture, and red drapes, I decided I would stay with that color scheme for my new ottoman.  

First I painted the legs black.  I bought a piece of foam at a craft store (about 2 inches thick), and cut it to the size of the table top.  I stretched a piece of rectangular fabric over the foam, and staple-gunned it underneath the table.  Finally, I added upholstery tacks around the outside and to the top of the table.  Because this was a very cheap table to begin with, and I hope one day to get an actual ottoman that "goes," I didn't spend a lot of money on any of the materials for my update.  I think the final product is CONSIDERABLY better than before, though, and adds some character to the room.  

As for the exercise part of the basement, I don't know that there's anything we can do for it!

Gretel's Room

In November, Gretel turned 15.  For her birthday, we gave her a "room makeover"; not a COMPLETE room makeover, but a minor making some changes that she has been wanting.  Unfortunately, we were so busy with Thanksgiving and Christmas that nothing got done on it for the next 6 weeks!  Finally, over Christmas break we began attacking different parts of the project.  At the time I didn't realize I would be blogging about it, so I didn't bother to take "before" or "during" pictures!  They would have been fun, considering that a lot of the painting was done by Gretel & her friends!  But I do have "after" pictures, so I'll show some of what we did!

Wait, why this picture?

So, you're probably wondering why I have this 10 year old picture of my dad and my now almost 12 year old son?! I want you to get a look in the very back of the picture, at the brown corner hutch.  This hutch was made eons ago by my great-aunt Grace's husband, Tom Brady.  When she passed away (around the time this son was born!), we got  the hutch.  It worked great in that corner there, but we have had a hard time finding a place for it ever since we moved to our new home in Cedar Hills.  So it has been in Gretel's room.  And she was TIRED of it!  (It didn't match anything!)

So, the first part of the makeover was to paint the hutch white.  During the break from school, Gretel had her best girlfriends come over to help paint!  It was too cold to be outside, so they painted in our finished basement.  I laid out a TON of drop cloths, which MOSTLY did the trick.  I only had to cut out a couple spots on the carpet, and the bench of an organ is now splattered with white paint. (But I don't feel bad about that!  Another story for another day!)

I went back & touched it up a bit, and when it was dry, used spray adhesive to attach fabric to the inside of the hutch.  It fits in much better now in Gretel's room!

The finished hutch

And a closeup

Part 2 involved painting a chalkboard on Gretel's wall.  I had done one of these in the playroom a couple months before (I'll post that another time!).  In doing that, I discovered that textured walls do NOT work well for a chalkboard!  So after a little searching online, I discovered a way to make a textured wall into a chalkboard.  I ordered a roll of wallpaper liner from Amazon.com, then was supposed to paint the chalkboard over that.  However, the wall we had designated for the chalkboard was so terribly textured (my fault, but that's yet ANOTHER story!), that within hours of hanging the liner, it began to peel off!  I realized that the texturing would have to be sanded before putting up more liner.  I HATE it when things like this happen in a project, because suddenly it's out of MY realm.  And I don't like to have to rely on someone else for a step in a project, because I feel like I'm putting them out, and I become dependent upon their availability, & not just my own.  Actually, I was willing to do the sanding, but I think my husband decided he was better suited for it.  So he spent an afternoon sanding the wall.  As you can see, the walls are bright yellow, so just imagine what the room looked like after sanding a 25 square foot area!  I still find yellow dust in my vacuum cleaner!  

Once the sanding was done, hanging the liner was easy, as was painting the chalkboard.  I had intended to buy moulding to make a frame around the chalkboard, but then discovered an easier idea.  I had ordered a roll of gray vinyl with the intention of using it in Gretel's room to make stripes or something on the walls, but we hadn't gotten around to using it.  So I used part of the roll to cut out a border which we attached around the chalkboard.  This was much easier than nailing moulding, and we like how it turned out!  

The last step was Gretel's headboard.  Her bedroom set is another hand-me-down from my Aunt Grace, and while it was charming in the 1970's, I'm sure, it is a bit dated now.  I guess that is the problem with hand-me-downs: they're handy when you have nothing else, but then you tend to never get around to buying a new one because you have one, even if it is rather dated!  So, I told Gretel we could paint her bed frame, too.  We painted the whole thing white to match the hutch, then painted a chalkboard on the headboard!  I have to admit, with this whole project, I did not bother to sand or prime any of the things we painted.  I also just used white paint leftover from when we finished our basement 4+ years ago.  The reason I was not too concerned with preparing all these surfaces before painting is because we really aren't attached to these things anyway, and if it doesn't last forever, that's OK with me!  In fact, the hutch was already slated for Goodwill when we decided to paint it, and like I said about the hand-me-down bed, if it doesn't last, we'll probably be glad to have an excuse to buy something new!  The only problem is that now the bed does NOT match the nightstand or dresser, and they are both so elaborate that I can't bear the thought of painting them!  Maybe someday....

So, here is the finished product (including Gretel's secondhand records & purple fluffy pillow!)

It is certainly a bright, fun room!

(And it is bigger than it looks, but I tried not to get any of the mismatched furniture in the picture!)

New Stockings for Christmas

When my first child was born in 1996, I had a neighbor who had cute patchwork-looking stockings, so I bought the same pattern and made Christmas stockings for myself, my husband, and my son.  Through the years, with the birth of each child, I pulled out the pattern again and made another stocking for them.  By the time my last baby was born in 2009, however, these stockings no longer seemed as cute; rather, they looked very dated!  I decided I would make updated stockings for the entire family, so I never made baby #5 a patchwork stocking.  The problem was, I never thought about stockings until it was Christmas time, and then I was too busy to sew anything, let alone take on such a big project!  I also wasn't sure exactly what the new ones would look like.  So for 4 years, we hung a store-bought fleece stocking for the baby!

This Christmas (2013), I finally decided that my "baby" would notice that his stocking did not match the others, nor did it have his name on it!  So I pulled myself together in November, and began scouring Pinterest for ideas.  I finally settled on burlap-based stockings, knowing that they, too, will look dated in a few years!  (Good thing I like to sew!)  I found all of the fabric I needed at my local Walmart, and embellishments at Hobby Lobby.  Rather than have names embroidered on the stocking, I chose to hang a gift tag from each one with the first initial of each person on them (luckily we don't have any repeated letters, at least if you count mom as "M" and dad as "D").  I finally felt like I was living in the 'teens when I hung my new stockings this year!

Quilt for a friend!

I'll be backtracking for a little while here!
About 18 months ago, a friend of mine (Jenna) saw some of my quilts.  She mentioned that she had been collecting fabric fat quarters for years hoping to one day make them into a quilt, but that she doubted she would actually ever get around to actually doing it!  At the time, I didn't have a need for any quilts myself, and couldn't justify the expense of something just for fun.  So I offered to make a quilt for her!

When she brought the fabric pieces to me, I was thrilled, as they were so colorful and happy!  I was excited to figure out what to do with them!  She wasn't picky about what I did, so I decided to try something I had been wanting to do for years: make a quilt where each block of the quilt is a different pattern.  Jenna wanted a lot of white in the background, so I began going through my quilt block book and choosing designs, then matching them with different fabrics.
It took me quite a few months to piece this quilt (including summer vacation, during which I really don't do ANY sewing! :(  ), but during Christmas break of 2013 I buckled down and finally got it finished!  I gave the top to her to be quilted, as it would be too difficult on my machine.  I do all my own quilting on my regular sewing machine (a Janome Craftmaster), but a quilt like this has SO many corners that I knew it would just break my needles.  When I quilted my own Postage Stamp quilt (I'll post it soon!), I had to replace my needle numerous times from trying to sew over so many corners!
Jenna was thrilled with the quilt, and I had so much fun doing it!  She has decided that what she really likes to do is pottery, so she gave me hand-thrown pottery pieces that she has made in exchange for the quilt.  I LOVE the pottery, and whenever I have guests, they always ask about getting her to make them pottery!

Myself and Jenna with the quilt top

Back at it!

Years ago, I started this blog as a way to post fabric that I had purchased wholesale so my friends and neighbors would have a way to look at it and decide if they wanted to buy anything.  Obviously I haven't used it for that in a LONG time.  But recently I've been doing little projects around the house, and I sometimes want to tell my mom or friends about what I've done.  I know I could take pictures & email them, but I had the thought that I should just post stuff on a blog.  That way, I could show people my projects, but also have a record of them myself!  I'm not sure why I want to keep a record of my meager attempts at creativity.  I guess part of it is because it brings back memories of times in my life.  For instance, the crib sets I made for my babies remind me of the excitement of anticipating a new baby, the nights getting up with them, and the sadness of finally putting all of that away.  I remember certain projects that I worked on during a difficult time, when I needed a project to take my mind off other problems.  So here it is, my very amateur record of what I like to do in my free time.  I've hesitated to take on making this record, knowing that I'd much rather be doing a project than blogging about it.  I'm also not a great photographer, and I don't have the patience right now to take photos of the entire process, so I apologize for my lack of professionalism.  But like I said, the doing itself is what I enjoy, and blogging about it is just a side note!  Enjoy!