DIY Pillowcase

Somehow I acquired this body pillow which no one else seemed to want and since it came to me with this horrid colored pillowcase, I had to take emergency action which involved making a pillowcase out of an old curtain (or dust ruffle...or something else...I really can't remember) that was very easy, but did not match my room at all. It was like a white background with a red and yellow flowery pattern. Very old-fashioned. In a boring way. Not vintage, just like some new person was trying to make it look old. 

Anyways...I had brainstorming for a long time about what kind of pillowcase to make. It was one of those things where I had so many options, I couldn't decide on anything. It also didn't help that the fabric I wanted for it cost a fortune (in my opinion). So I finally just settled on a cheap cotton fabric that was neutral and left room for my imagination. 

I had a definite idea for one side: I wanted it to have birds on it. I just had to make a bird pillowcase. So this is the result: 

Ok. I'll admit it. I love this bird. I don't know why these birds make me so happy, but they do. 

I had quite a time figuring out the other side. I originally wanted to do these mosaic-like shapes out of fabric scraps. But this was one of those times when the picture in my mind ended up nothing like the actual thing. It looked really bad. It was like 6pm at night, I had been working on this now-failed idea for a couple days, my room was a wreck, and I was reaching that point where I just had to get this finished. I have this thing for getting things done. If I'm actually in the middle of the project (and I didn't shove it under the bed for a rainy day) then I'm totally obsessed with getting it done. It becomes extremely important I finish it, no matter what. So that evening, it was essential to my sanity that I finish my pillowcase. After some mind (and internet) searching for a new idea, I decided on a theme of leaves. And this is the result: 

It looks like this pile of leaves is being swept across the pillow. It turned out so well, I can't decide if I like it or my lovely birds better. I just cut out like a billion of these shapes (after printing a templete from online) in the different fabrics. It was hard to arrange them because I tend to be very neat and organized, so I kept wanting to make it look ordered and symmetrical, then had to remind myself that they needed to be random and wind-strewn. After they were all pinned down, I just used my machine to sew down the center of each one. This resulted in a lot of loose threads and took some time, but it was worth it. 

I love my pillowcase :) 

Room Tour

I thought I'd just show some pictures of my DIY projects in action or other important things in my room (like my books...)

Of course, blogger is not cooperating, so even though I rotated this photo in iPhoto, I guess blogger didn't like the way I did it. So just turn your head to get the idea. :) All the books on the top shelf (the double-wide one) and all the books on the shelves on the left side I have read. The ones on the right side are my "to be read" pile. 

Next, meet my plants:

If I had to pick favorites, this would probably be it. This plant is just voracious in its growth, and I love seeing the little vines crawling towards my computer. 

In the summer this had these gorgeous hot pink flowers. While it is surviving, I think the pot is too small, so I feel bad that it doesn't have room to grow. :(

On the right is a shoot I replanted from the plant in the top photo. On the left is  a cute little plant that has pink and green leaves and occasionally graces me with tiny, purple, trumpet-like flowers.

And yes, once again blogger did not cooperate. I will repost these pictures another time...the right way. But in the meantime, you get the idea. This is a Norway Pine that my parents gave me for Christmas. The crate is really old (vintage) and super-cool. The books are just random old books I've collected over the years. The little things on the bottom shelf are brass Christmas trees and snowman that my boss made at work from some of our scrap metal. Remember those circular/flower-like paper crafts I did? One was Christmas themed, and one was printed with a black and white pattern? I usually have the black and white one on the middle shelf, but I had removed it to take pictures.

 And like I said, I'll try to figure out how to rotate these soon. I was positive that blogger had an option to rotate pictures after you had uploaded them...but I guess I was thinking of something else.

DIY nightstand (you can see the old pillowcase on the left). And also please admire the lamp. It is an awesome color and style. It was a garage sale find for $2.

My long-awaited DIY curtains. So happy to have these done. :) 

General view of my desk, curtains, etc...

Birds. On a branch. What more do I need to say? 

And an awesome Hamlet shelf. 

Wind-blowing-leaves pillowcase

Adorable-birds-on-branch pillowcase

And I think that about sums it up... :)

Rosette Tutorial

This is part of a much bigger project, but I'm going to be making a bunch of these really cute fabric rosettes and thought I'd share how I do it: 

Start with a 1" wide piece of a fabric. Mine was about 18" long. It is fine to make it out of several strips sewn together if you don't have a piece long enough.

Fold strip in half and iron. The dark spot on the fabric is where my pen leaked while measuring the piece. 

Find a 1/2" strip of cardboard. Mine was just from a normal sheet of cardboard and so was 11" long. Wrap the strip around it on an angle. I wasn't happy with how I started mine...there must be a better way to make it start angled, rather than even...but I just gradually angled mine and it turned out okay. 

When the whole strip is wrapped around the cardboard, iron over it once or twice to make the folds stay. Then carefully slip the fabric off the cardboard so it lays freely. This is the hardest part. I like to slip one end off just an inch or two and pin it down (I'm using my ugly, stained ironing board as a table) so I don't have to worry. The strip will want to unwrap itself, so you have to go slowly and make sure it is all flat and laying the way it was on the cardboard. 

This is the other end of it. I like pull it out a little bit (it will be wrapped pretty tightly over the cardboard). Just go slowly and stretch it carefully so everything remains in place. When you're happy with it, pin both ends down. 

Iron it down. I angle the iron and go up and down over the strip instead of running the iron length-wise over it because the fabric has a tendency to get messed up under the iron and you don't realize it until it is too late. This way you can take it just a bit at a time. 

Find a pencil and roll the strip around the pencil. It is a little tricky at first, but gets easier. 

Finished pencil roll.

This is where you get to decide how your rosette will look. Mine ended up a little looser than I had anticipated. I did a little cluster of them several months ago that are very tight and I was going more for that look, but I think I like the roll uncoil too much when taking it off the pencil. So...slip the roll off the pencil and either let it loosen up or keep it tight depending on how you want the final rosette to look. I did pull mine a little tighter than it is in the above picture. You can do a lot to tweak it right now.

This is a side view of it. Pretty cute, eh?

If you're wondering what to do with the loose end, I just wrap it over the bottom of the rosette. This works best if you follow the folds in the fabric already. In the picture the strip is wrapped over the edge at the pre-ironed crease. I just folded the raw end under itself and pinned while I worked more on the front. 

I like to iron mine down slightly and "smoosh" them a little bit. 

To finish the back, I cut a small circle out of brown felt (using the thread spool as my pattern) and after sewing the end down on the back (the part that had been pinned on) I sewed this circle over it. I'm not sure how I'm going to use these flowers yet, so I made two small parellel slits in the felt so I could tie a ribbon to it, attach it to something, etc...

You can't really see the slits, but they are there. The felt just gives it a nicer backing, stabilizes the shape, and gives you something so you can attach it to other objects. 

Finished rosette! 

Finished rosette on a nicer background. I know I should have put something else in the picture to give you an idea of the size, but this complete rosette turned out to be about 1 1/2" across. It can be done a lot tighter, and you can always add fabric (or cut it off) if you need to adjust the size. 

I really like this one and it turned out very nice, imho. :) 

I mentioned my room decor...mainly the branch on the wall with bird pillows and a nest. I'm thinking of making 6-8 of these rosettes and hanging them from different branches. I think it would help make it more whimsy and cute than "oh, look, she hung a branch on her wall and stuck some birds on it...that's kinda cheesy." By hanging rosettes from it, I'll be saying, "I'm not trying to look like I have a real branch with real birds on it, but I just thought it was cute." Haha, does that make sense? 

Anyways, I may not end up doing that, but I can always put this on a ribbon and use it as a headband or some other cool thing. I love how versatile and adorable these are! 

Crazy Project

I'll eventually describe some of the things I've done in my room, but my latest project has to do with the curtains. Three of my walls are green, and one is brown. The windows and most of the trim is a yellow/gold color. When I picked out my curtains, we really weren't sure how the room was going to turn out (style, feel, etc...) so I just went with these sheer-ish cream colored curtains. They've been fine, but are getting boring. I'm trying to go with a more modern, quirky, geometric look, hence an area rug with squares & circles and a nightstand with polka-dots. Staying with the circle thing, I had the brilliant idea to:
1) cut out circles from cool fabric
2) go over the edges of the circles with fabric glue to stop them from fraying
3) use some sort of adhesive to stick them to the curtains.
The people at Joann's Fabric were helpful in finding what I needed and I got several small sections of uber-cute fabric. Like I said, the colors in my room are brown, green and yellow. I'm also accenting with red, so I found fabric that incorporated all of these colors into them.
It was only after I got home and starting cutting out circles that I realized what a big project this was. I have about 14 circles per panel. This means:
cutting out 14 fabric circles + going over them with fabric glue + trimming off the dark rings that the glue leaves + cutting out 14 circles from the adhesive stuff = a ton of work
When I showed my family the fabrics, they were like, "oh wow...they are all different!" And I realized that everyone had assumed I would use the same fabric for all the dots...which just goes to show how random I am. :)
I have some pictures of some of the new things in my room, plus a couple shots of my curtain project:

My polka-dot nightstand. This lamp had been on my desk. I love it so much. I got it several years at a garage sale for $2. The color and style is perfect. There's an outlet on the base too, which is cool because I can charge my ipod next to my bed and not have to stumble across the room when the alarm goes off in the morning. :) 

 Details...It was pretty tedious to paint this stand. It had been baby blue and I had to do two coats of brown. My dad did most of the green dots with a homemade circular sponge-thingy he made. I bought a smaller sponge at the hardware store to do the yellow ones. It turned out really well, and I made it more interesting by making some circles go around the corner (like the half-circle in the top right of the photo below) and overlapping green and yellow ones. The green isn't as bright as I had hoped, but oh well. Not everything is perfect :) 

 More details...

 Weird, dark view of my tentative curtain plans (the circles are only pinned on)

 Forgot to rotate this one...just turn your head sideways...

 This is the picture hanging above my bed. It isn't geometric, but I like the nature aspect of it. 

 Got a new lamp for my desk, from Target. It took forever to find a cheap cute lamp that would take 60 watts. 

Just a cool view of the circles as I had them laid out.