home decor

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.

What was I thinking?

Posted by Nat on Jul 11, 2010 | 2 comments

….or WAS I even thinking?  Not sure.  I will have more to post about this soon, but thought this might entertain some of my crafty friends.  If you hear moans and groans of frustration, it’s probably me.

The Mantle Refurb

Posted by missmusic1976 on Jul 2, 2010 | 1 comment

I recently posted about our house, displaying a ridiculous amount of photos of it.  I didn’t show too much of our mantle/fireplace area because I knew this post was coming. This area of our house needs some major remodeling, but we’re going to have to wait for a while before we can get to it.  When we were doing the major clean-up before we moved in, one thing I did was paint the brick fireplace a clean white, which really helped.  I couldn’t get past the mantle- it has been used and loved and now, as you can see below, it is covered with scratches and wear and tear.  I have longed for a mantle for years, but was a bit deflated with this one because it is just plain tired.  And who can blame it?   It’s probably about as old as I am!

Before:  tired, scratched, worn, you get the idea

(Do you like the Kleenex boxes stacked to the left of the clock?  I think we were winding up a “sickie” phase at the time of sewing.  And those are Anna’s play cupcakes to the left.)

I headed to our local Home Fabrics store.  That place is dangerous!  I bought a ridiculous amount of fabric and got to sewing.  I am so (sew) happy with the end result.  It was really easy, too- I’d show a tutorial or something but I was too dang excited to get this thing on and I didn’t take any pictures.  I love how it hangs, how it looks, etc.  I thought I might have to hot glue it on there, but the frames and such seem to be holding it on just perfect.  The other thing I did (not shown) was I sewed a secret pocket on one end to stash our keys for the gas fire-place.  They were always hidden behind a frame and I was worried they would get lost.

After:

Basically I cut a realllllly long piece of the fabric to cover both the top and the overhang.  I finished the sides and then folded them over and hemmed them.  Then I cut two squares for the ends and sewed it all together.  Hooray for improvisation!  Now we just need to decide what to hang above the mantle.  Someday maybe we’ll have a flat screen up there, but for now….  Any ideas?

Our House

Posted by missmusic1976 on Jun 30, 2010 | 1 comment

Back in November on my other blog I posted a few pictures of our house (click here to see).  I just viewed that post and realized there really weren’t very many pictures of the entire house. All the more reason to post more here!  I’m excited to look back and see how far we get with this house year after year.  As the weeks pass I am realizing that I LOVE it more and more every day, and with the potential it has for gardening, space for kids to play, and more, there’s really no reason for us to leave.

If you told me before I met Michael, or even after we married, that he and I would be living in El Cajon I would have told you to…. do something inappropriate.  I used to view El Cajon and anything in “East County” as too far away from the ocean, too hot, and too many other things to list.  And while it is far from the ocean, this area offers so much.  It’s so much more normal out here than coastal living.  The people are down-to-earth, there are 3 Targets at my disposal- the little things I need as a mom are much more accessible.

Our “to do list” for this house is extremely long, and it’s not on paper because it would be too overwhelming to look at.  But we are getting so much done and I’m so proud of how it’s going.  One thing you’ll notice is that we have lots of color in our house- I’m not a white wall person.  Perhaps it’s a history of white rental walls that makes me want to splash color on everything, but I love painting rooms with colors.  That being said, if I never have to paint again, I’ll be happy because we did a LOT of painting on this here house.

Kitchen:  Not showing too much of the kitchen just yet- trying to learn to love the cabinets.  What I do love, though, is the view from the sink.  It overlooks our entire yard, as well as the plethora of nature we get just by living on a larger piece of land.  I love the yellow- I know yellow kitchens are probably not very “in” anymore, but I still love it.  It’s happy and bright.  Just behind the bananas you’ll see a snippet of our new table that we are also loving.  And bottom-right is my favorite appliance, our Tassimo.  If you are a coffee drinker, Tassimo is awesome!  We just replaced our old one with this new one and it’s even better than the original.

Living/Play Area:  We have two couches right now, and they do not match.  Someday we’ll get a flat screen to hang on the wall and a wrap around couch.  Someday.  I recently sewed up a bunch of pillows (post forthcoming) and they have really added to the couches.  Before we only had 4 pillows and they were kind of blah.  It’s hard to tell in these photos, but they really give us lots of options.  Eventually the kids can build pillow forts, too- very important.  🙂  The play area is where a traditional dining table would go.  The possibility of us having a formal dinner are slim, so I decided to just give the kids a place to play.   I don’t know what I’d do without that IKEA shelf.  It’s awesome!  You can also see the wall hangings I made up close here.

Everyone who comes over for the first time looks down our hallway and says, “Wow!  This is a really long/wide/huge hallway!”  It is!  It will make for lots of fun car racing when Jack is a bit older.  So far I only have the one frame set up (I got it here).  My friend Amber took the photos- the kids look so little in them!

Are blue bathrooms too 70s?  I don’t think so, but I’ve heard some say as much.  It’s hard to tell from this picture, but I’m hoping to develop a sort of tropical theme in the hallway bathroom.  Fun for the kids, fun for guests?  Someday.  And below that is the laundry room.  All hail the laundry room!

Yes, that’s right, it’s a purple office.  I love it.  It’s sort of a dusty lavender, and I sit in it at least once a day and love the color every time I walk in.  This room needs curtains for the windows as well as the closet, but it’s so great to have this space right now.

This is Jack’s room.  Very neutral since we used the same bedding Anna used and we are not pink or blue people.  Baby #3 will use this room someday and Jack will get the current guest room, which is not worth photos right now.

Anna’s room has been the most fun so far.  She got a table & chair set for her birthday that caused us to push the bed against the wall.  That makes the room feel so much bigger.  I still love her bed the most.  The three pictures hanging between her windows were in my room growing up.  She’s told us a couple of times that she wants a pink room, but that isn’t going to happen.  At least she’s not asking for a Disney Princess room- that would definitely not happen.  🙂

Our room needs the most work, I think.  We need a ceiling fan/light fixture, curtains to go over the black-out shades, matching bedside tables, etc.  We did recently get a full-length mirror.  Not sure about how I feel about seeing myself full-length, but it’s nice to know I can determine if I’m put together or not.  The color of the walls has grown on me.  Once we get new bedding and a king size bed this room will really come together.  Right now we have bedding that is really going to be the guest room bedding- I was too tired of our 4-year-old bedding, so we got rid of it and put this on our bed for now.  I didn’t take pictures of our bathroom- it’s too small and not too dazzling quite yet.

Can’t wait to see what lies in the future for this place!