Martha, I Made It!

Picture Frame Gallery

Posted by Nat on Jun 3, 2011 | 2 comments

We have a ranch-style house (I think). It’s all one level, which I love, and it has a loooooong hallway down the bedroom side. We’re talking 30+ feet. Really long.

When we moved into this house, which my husband grew up in, we had tons of projects, so for quite a while this one sat by the wayside, waiting to be done. I had lots of thoughts about how to hang pictures, but it wasn’t until I saw this idea on Martha’s website that I got my rear in gear and starting putting this together.

Here’s the before, with just our small photo gallery that my mom gave me from Red Envelope. (I actually need to email them because some of the frames aren’t holding up…) Many apologies for the lighting- there is very little natural light in this hallway. We hope to put in skylights someday, but until then…

And here’s the after: voila!

I really love the end result. Here’s a little bit about my process.

This was a very overwhelming task now that I look back and think about it. Because of the layout I decided to do things in a way that felt a little bit backwards- I didn’t even think about what pictures to use- I just collected frames. I wanted the frames to be uniform in color, and most of them were black. But we were definitely on a budget and I didn’t want to buy frames unless I needed to, so I went through our huge collection of unused frames and pulled any that were black, or useable, but not black. Then I spray-painted the ones that were not black.

I did have to make a trip to get a few more- I chose to hit up Wal-Mart. My theory on frames is that once they are on the wall, it doesn’t matter if it was $3.00 or $30.00- it’s a frame. This was a good thing, because Wal-Mart has some cheap frames!

I followed the directions on Martha’s website pretty much verbatim. The one thing that I was very glad to have was the laser level with 3M Command Strips- that way I could easily make sure the dividing line was/is level. Lots of painter’s tape was involved as well. Lots.

Once I had the frames ready, I taped off the dividing center line. Then I grouped the frames into four groups so that I wouldn’t have two identical frames right next to each other. This made hanging go a bit faster because I didn’t have to stop and think- just measured, taped, nailed and hung. It took several hours to do.

(horrible lighting- sorry!)

Once the frames were up it was time to think about pictures. I didn’t want them to be haphazard- I wanted each row to have it’s own theme. I came up with this formula (pardon the elementary-ish Photoshop skills):

Then I started a folder on my laptop and dumped photos into it whenever I had a chance. I used Photoshop Elements to print a contact sheet with little thumbnails of the possible pictures, and I taped them onto the frames so I could go over them with Michael and we could decide.

(our whole hallway looked like this for quite a while)

I had most of my family history pictures, but I had to coordinate with Michael’s mother and father to get his side. Once the last few pictures went in it was like our house was complete (in a few ways, at least).

Did I leave anything out? Let me know if you have questions- this was so great for this super long hallway. How do you like to hang your picture frames?

Martha! I Made It! Sewing Notions Organizer

Posted by Nat on May 30, 2011 | 6 comments

Whew! I’m back! I’m sure there are still several things to tweak on this new (and hopefully improved) site, but I need to get posting, wouldn’t you say?

I completed this project months ago and am so happy to a) have made it, and b) never have to make it again. Ever.

You may have seen in my post about our house that we have an office. It looks much different than it used to because now it’s a guest room AND my craft room AND an office. While I didn’t need the office desk anymore, I did need help with all of those sewing notions that pile up. I hate digging for stuff. Maybe it goes back to my lovely run-in with scabies in Italy (shall I post about that sometime? You tell me….), or perhaps it’s just that when I have to dig for something it’s a reminder that I should be more organized in whatever area it is I’m digging in. This project eliminated a lot of that. I am also a huge fan of taking advantage of vertical space. Hence:

These sit above my sewing table, and they hold not only the things I use most when sewing, but also some crafting tools, as well. And of course, it’s all because of Martha….

If you consult your Martha Stewart’s Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts, you’ll find this one on page 267. I apologize in advance for not taking great pictures- this was definitely in my “blog break” time and I was really doing this for myself.

I’ll walk you through what I did and what I used- I used the instructions in the book as a guide, but really had to wing some of it. As a result some of my pockets didn’t turn out super swell, but that’s okay- they work. You’ll see in photos below I actually made three of them, and the middle one has office supply things in it, which is nice.

In the book they suggest using homasote fiberboard. When I went looking for homasote fiberboard I could not find it in a small enough size. The one size I saw at Home Depot was big enough to warrant bungee cords on top of my car, and that felt a liiiiiittle over the top, so I opted for some plain pieces of wood. The two squares are 24×24, and the middle one is 12×24. I then used some quilt batting and spray adhesive to give them a softer look. I wrapped them up with the fabric and taped them in the back temporarily while I figured out what was going to go where. Then I pulled everything that was driving me crazy and laid them out like you see here just above. This took a long time. I really wanted to get it right, so I debated for probably-excessive amounts of time making sure I could fit everything I wanted. I really took the photos of the layouts so that I could refer back to them while I was in the process- if you decide to make one or more of these I highly recommend it!

The most time-consuming part, however, was cutting the fabric for the actual pockets. The book gives you a formula for adding length and/or height depending on the pocket you want to make, so I followed that and for the most part it worked out just fine. What was challenging was keeping them all straight so that I didn’t a) get them mixed up and b) remembered where they were supposed to go. You also have to press them and sew the tops over so that they look nice (who’d-a-thunk- Martha wants something to look…nice?).

Here is a collage of some of the process. You can see that I ended up using some office labels to keep everything organized. This worked nicely because they stuck nicely to the fabric without ruining it, so once I had the pocket in place and ready to go, I could toss the label and it was like checking off an item on a to-do list. Done!

The bottom left photos shows the middle panel I made for office supplies- and you can kind of see that I taped a border around the edge. I did this to help myself remember where the edge of the wood would end up being- sort of helped me keep everything level, I guess. And the bottom right is just a sketch of each board so I could write down measurements, placement, etc.

Once I had the pockets sewn on I stapled them to the wood on the back with a staple gun about 8 million times. My husband helped me place the hanging wires on the back and, since we used wood which is much heavier than the fiberboard, we made sure to hang them on studs in the wall so that they wouldn’t fall off eventually (crossed fingers). Here are a few more pictures of the final product as it looks in my office:

It’s hard to tell in these photos but my office is still a dusty lavender- quite similar, actually, to my new background color on this blog. I love it. And the gray of the fabric and the print really looks nice. You can also see that I made some little cups to hang- it looked sort of empty in between and I had a ton of fabric left over, so I made six little hanging….cups(?) to put things like buttons, pins and safety pins in.

How do you organize your sewing notions? If you decide to make something like this, give yourself plenty of time and don’t rush. I didn’t rush this one and I still made a few mistakes, but I still love the final product. My pockets don’t look nearly as perfect as the stuff in Martha’s book, but it’s so very nice to have this stuff right in front of me whenever I need it. If you have a question, if I left something out, please leave a comment! I’m going to link up to some link parties, too, as soon as I get a chance! And if you’re all the way down here at the bottom, thanks for reading this far!

I linked up to:

Night Owl Crafting

Sew Much Ado

Creations by Kara

Martha, I Made it!….. It’s just a pincushion

Posted by Nat on Oct 30, 2010 | 0 comments

I know- it’s just a pincushion. But I made it. Ta da!

(Please pardon the poor lighting- I did this one at night.)

You can find the instructions (which are uber-simple) for this lovely heirloom tomato pincushion in your Martha Stewart’s Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts on page 278.

By the way, I’m in the process of making something else from this book that I am super excited about. It’s taking a long time to make- silly thing I have called a job keeps getting in the way. But it’s going to help me organize my sewing notions, get rid of my desk, and make way for a guest bed- wowzers! Can’t wait to show it to you!

Martha! I Made It! (…or, I made more of it.)

Posted by Nat on Aug 26, 2010 | 4 comments

This is a continuation of my original post in this series. I made some baby shoes way back when for Miss Clare. Then another friend of mine came to mind because she has a little girl about the same age, “V.”

When I made the first pair of shoes I was quite excited to make them. They were easy and quick. I also noted, however, that the buttons were hard to do when they were on Miss Clare’s kicking feet, so this time I decided to do snaps and elastics to give them a whirl. What did I learn? I hate sewing on snaps and I hate sewing elastic.

In Martha’s book they show the shoes with these perfectly sewn squares on the elastic. Can anyone tell me how they did that? Impossible. And the snaps? Oh, the snaps. They took forever, too. Once I finally got them on I was also left with ugly shoes, so I had to get a bit creative and cute them up. Here’s the finished product (I made two sizes since V’s measurements were a bit bigger than Clare’s):

And here’s a picture of the pink ones on Miss V’s feet:

I just love the heart on the bottom. And I put hearts over the snaps- that was part of the “cute them up” I was mentioning. My other feat with this project was sewing on the rick rack. In the book they tell you to use fabric glue. Using fabric glue on baby rick rack is like ironing a noodle. It’s very unproductive. So I sewed them on very carefully and it turned out much better.

My other accomplishment with this was that I altered the pattern in Photoshop to make them bigger for Miss V. Lots of accomplishments for such a small project.

In other news, I am back to work. Meh. So I will be posting less, I’m sure, though I can’t seem to stop sewing. On our first day we had to write what we needed to “let go of” on a paper plate and throw it in the trash. As we threw it away we were supposed to tell the rest of the group what was on the plate. My plate said, “I’d rather be sewing.” I made more pouches of my own design, so I’ll have photos of those up soon.

If you are awaiting paper from my post on the Beer Makeover, I am going to mail them tomorrow!

I am officially rambling, so I’ll sign off for now. :)

Martha! I Made It! #2: The Duvet

Posted by Nat on Jul 22, 2010 | 15 comments

This is going to be a long post. I hope you read it and validate my psyche, because after this project, I need some validation. Whew! I am, however, totally okay with you just looking at the pictures and then posting a comment (ha!).

This project started a long time ago in my head. Michael and I have been dreaming of getting a king-sized bed for months and months. When your husband is 6’3″, you need a big bed. In mid-June Michael noticed that Macy’s was going to have a stellar sale on mattresses and said we should go ahead and do it. I was so excited and petrified. We chose gray for our master bedroom, and while I like the gray, I’ve had a hard time deciding what to do with the bedding. I don’t want more gray bedding- to dreary and plain. And supposedly gray is neutral, but I think it’s a tricky neutral.

I did have two sources of inspiration. I saw this photo in a magazine and loved the look of orange, white and gray on the walls. (My dog is cuter than that dog, BTW.)

Then I saw this photo in (you guessed it) Martha Stewart’s Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts. It’s on page 150/151.

(I took this photo with my iPhone and hope I don’t get in trouble for posting it, but couldn’t find it online anywhere).

I didn’t like the idea of having a white comforter. With a little black dog who likes to snuggle in our bed while we get ready in the morning, I could just see it getting covered with little black hairs. And Michael and I are hard on things- white would just get dingy and dirty too quick. But the tones in Martha’s book were a bit too muted for me- I wanted something a bit more striking.

I headed to BB&B and found some sheets. I chose a copper color- it was as close to orange as I could find. I did like it a lot. I wanted to add a second color as an accent, so I chose an olive green that was near it because they just seemed to go together. What follows is a sort of pictoral journey, if you will. But if you don’t want to scroll through them, I’ll put the finished product first to save you the scrolling (aren’t I nice?). :) Ta da!

(Please don’t look in my closet- it needs some work. Should have closed the dang curtain…LOOK AWAY!) I think the white pillows made it look complete. I love it. Really, I do. I’m just not sure about the color combo with the gray walls.

Now, onto the process….ah, the process…

One of the wonderful things about Martha’s book is you get templates and patterns. Lots of them. This particular template was a doozy, though, since it’s soooooo big. Many pages to tape together. I also used that to cut out the teardrop templates.

I set to cutting out the appliques. There were a lot of them. It took me an entire morning- I caught up on a lot of Oprah. The process outlined in the directions basically tell you to use the template to trace the pattern onto your sheet with transfer paper and a tracing wheel. Transfer paper is also… a doozy. I even bought the same transfer paper used in Martha’s book- you can find it here. I wish I could tell you that I love transfer paper and it worked like a charm. I do not love transfer paper, and it did not work like a charm. After 45 minutes of tracing the pattern onto my sheet, I pulled it away and there was very little to show for my lower back workout. So I had to resort to my own brainpower because I wanted to get to sewing. Bad. What I ended up doing was placing the appliques and tracing them with disappearing ink. I learned, however, that on this particular sheet at this particular time of year, the disappearing ink disappears quickly- overnight. So I worked one circle at a time. I placed the appliques on the inner circle and then sewed them down. Then I worked my way out from there.

Tracing paper (and Sophie, wondering what in the world I’m doing)

One of my learning moments was the stitching for this project. Martha’s book talks about using a satin stitch, but I couldn’t find anything in my sewing manual about satin stitching. So I zig-zagged the appliques to the copper sheet (Martha and her editors said that would be okay). Let me tell you- a king sized sheet- that’s a lot to work with. This was my world for several days:

Things moving along…

Here was my problem, though- sometimes the zig-zags turned out okay (pre-trimming)…

And other times they pulled away- either due to my poor stitching skills or they just pulled out of the threads- a little bit of both. When I saw this happening, I became a bit depressed. I spent so much time on this project, and felt like it wasn’t going to pan out. Then (enter angel chorus music) I asked my friend Kari for help.

Thankfully, Kari didn’t have to make a special trip- she was already coming over for a get together. I brought her back to check it out and she set me straight on how to satin stitch. Basically you set the zig zag setting on your machine at opposite ends to make it as wide and as close together as possible, and ta-da! Satin stitch- looks much better, eh?

Once I finished up the satin stitching (several days later) I was finally ready to make the duvet. I followed the directions in Martha’s book on page 147. I’m glad I took my time with this part. My white sheet was significantly larger than my copper, AND they were both larger than my comforter, so I had some work to do.

Ready to sew it up!

Up close in our room.

And the final product again. *sigh* I love it.

I’d love to know, if you’ve gotten this far (thanks!) what you think of the copper and gray situation. Is it bad? Different? Too different? Awesome? Okay? And what would you hang above it? Please don’t tell me to make something. Ha!

Whew! I’m ready for a teeny, tiny, miniscule project now. Maybe a pincushion or something…

New Series on Crafting Crazy: Martha! I Made it!

Posted by missmusic1976 on Jul 21, 2010 | 6 comments

I love Martha Stewart. For a while I was in denial. I was one of those people who was all like, “That Martha- she’s too perfect. Who really lives like that? I mean, it’s nice and all, but…..” Then I couldn’t deny it any more. I just like the look of nearly everything in her magazines. I don’t watch her show very often mainly due to a lack of time, but I do like the simplicity of the Martha Stewart Style. So, I gave up, gave in, and now I’m a Martha Wannabe. I have a long way to go.

Enter her new treasure, “Martha Stewart’s Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts.”

Soon after I purchased my sewing machine I went out and bought this book. (Thankfully I had some help with a generous gift from our PTA at school- it was Teacher Appreciation Week and we all got $50! Nice, eh?) I actually went to Barnes & Noble and pulled a bunch of sewing books and literally sat on the floor and drooled over patterns and pictures of things I’d love to know how to make (remember- no idea what I’m doing). I ultimately chose this book because it has a little bit of everything- clothing, gifts, doggie coats, you name it.

I thought it might be nice to showcase what I make from this book. It’s one thing to look at a project in any book and say, “Hey- that’s rad. I could make that.” It’s another thing entirely to follow the directions (I’m not always good at that) and see if you actually get what’s pictured. And since I’m such a novice, I think at the very least I will give a good laugh, right? So here we go: Installment #1 of, “Martha! I made it!”

On page 311 in the book are “Felt Baby Shoes.” They looked adorable, and awfully simple to make. First I just went to Michael’s (or Joann Fabrics- can’t remember) and bought a cheap sheet of crafting felt in pink and white. I wanted to see if they would turn out right using the pdf pattern included with the book. In less than 15 minutes I had an adorable pair of shoes, but because the felt only cost 29 cents/sheet, I could tell they were not going to last very long. So I headed to the back of the Encyclopedia and looked up where Martha got her felt. I love the back of the book- you can look up where they purchased certain fabrics and such- not everything is listed, but in this case I was lucky. I surfed over to Magic Cabin and ordered some of their wool felt. When it showed up I started drooling it was so nice. And here’s my end result:

First and most importantly, meet Clare. Isn’t she adorable?

Clare’s mommy, Elizabeth (E for short) agreed to let Miss Clare model my shoes. Of course, Clare gets to keep them, too. I wanted to see if they would actually fit a baby’s foot. For reference, Clare is 3 months old.

Here are the shoes- I think they turned out adorable. You’ll see that I added a little heart to the bottom of one for flair. I know- I’m so forward-thinking, right? No one does that, I’m sure. Ha.

And now my critique of the directions and steps in the book. I think these will be helpful to anyone else in case they decide to make something from this book.

This How-To was great- the pattern was easy to use, the felt is very easy to work with. I do need to buy some smaller pins because I did stick myself a lot since I only had standard size pins. I used a 1/16″ punch for the little holes just as they described and it was very easy to use. I have to wonder if gluing rick-rack, as they suggest would hold up, but that will have to wait for another pair.

Other notes: In the future I will not use buttons. These shoes barely fit Miss Clare, so these are best used as a newborn gift so that mommies can decide when to use them. Because Clare is 3 months old, the buttons had to be readjusted a bit and they did work, but I would worry about the felt not holding up to her little kicks and such since the fit was a bit snug around her cute ankles. Clare was also kicking up a storm, so they were hilariously challenging to get on. I did use a crafting knife to cut the button holes- it was very easy, but I’m glad I used the sharp knife and not a pair of scissors. This allowed me to be more exact.

A few other photos to share:

The shoes on Miss Clare’s adorable feet (this girl has long toes!)

Full shot- I feel horrible for cutting off her head, but still- is she not just the cutest? Talk about baby fever… E said that she wore them for quite a while and didn’t seem bothered by them at all, which is also nice to know.