My Dilemma Wall is No More

Do you remember the wall that mocks me that I blogged about here?

I asked your opinions about one large picture or several smaller ones.  The comments that I received both here on the blog and on Facebook were about 50/50.

I really, really wanted to try my hand at painting something like this...

I'm pretty confident that I could paint a reasonable facsimile.  As badly as I wanted to do it, I had to be totally honest with myself and admit that it would probably never happen.  I was afraid it would be one of those projects that I bought all of the supplies for and then never completed.  Do any of you do that? 

So, I gave in and decided to go with a grouping of smaller pictures.  I found this calendar filled with sweet birdy sketches in Barnes & Noble a couple of weeks ago...

...and this wrapping paper at Tarjay...

...and four of these 18" x  24" frames at Christmas Tree Shops.  They were $12.99 each, which I thought was a pretty good price.  Then to top it off, the cashier gave me a 20% coupon.  Yea!

I cut out four pieces of paper that were the same size as the frames and taped them to the wall to make sure I would like the arrangement.

Doing this makes hanging the actual pictures so much easier.  I made a mark on each one where the nail would actually go.  Once I got the arrangement that I liked, I simply nailed right through the paper and then ripped the paper off of the nail.

I bought four sheets of poster board at the Dollar Tree, cut out the size opening I needed for the pictures and covered the new mats with the wrapping paper.  After I put everything back together and hung them on the wall, this is what I wound up with.

You'll have to excuse the reflection in the glass.  I didn't want to use my flash when I took these pictures tonight, so every light in the room is on.

Now instead of seeing a big ol' blank wall when I walk into the room...

...I see this!

How to Make a Pillow Sham - Part 2

We're in the midst of learning to make this pillow sham...

...that is a part of this group of pillows on the bed in my master bedroom 

.

We left off here in part 1...

Only a leeetle bit more to go.  In Part 1, we cut and assembled the front and applied the cording.  Here in part 2, we'll cover cutting and assembly of the back and the final assembly of the sham.

I only used one fabric for the back of the sham.  Batting is only needed for the front and since this is just for me, I chose not to line the back.  I would certainly line it if I were making it for someone else.

You need to cut two pieces of equal size for the back. Three inches will be added to the width of each piece to allow for hemming the sides of the opening where the pillow will be inserted.  The height of each piece will be the same as the piece cut for the front.

Here's my calculation for the back pieces:
Divide the width of the piece cut for the front, which is 43", by 2 = 21.5".
Add 3" to allow for hemming what will become the opening where the pillow will be inserted.
The height will be the same as the piece cut for the front, which is 34".
So - that calculates that each of the two pieces for the back are to be cut at 24.5" wide x 34" high.

After cutting, the next step is to double fold, press and then sew a 1.5" hem on one of the 34" high sides for each of the two pieces.

I don't like the way pillow shams are prone to gap open in the back, so I use velcro to keep it closed.  Do not use velcro that is sticky on the back.  It will gum up your needle when you try to sew it (ask me how I know).  Cut a piece of velcro 12" long, pull it apart and sew the loopy gripper side to one of the areas that you just hemmed and sew the soft non-gripper side to other.  Position the velcro so that it is about halfway between what will become the top and bottom sides of the sham.  Tip - make sure that you line your two pieces of velcro up before you sew them to the fabric.  The back of the sham will not lay properly if the two sides of velcro are not lined up with each other.

 

 This is how the velcro will look when it has been sewn on.

Now that both sides of velcro have been attached, go ahead and position them like they will be when the back of the sham is closed and "stick" them together.  Now the back is ready to be attached to the front.

Return to your work surface and layer the front and back pieces together, with the right sides of the fabric facing each other, making sure all of your edges are even.  (In case you're wondering, my fabric looks the same on the front and on the back.)

Sew the two sides together on all four sides.  Just make sure you sew as close to the covered cord as possible using either a zipper foot or a cording foot.

Clip the corners either as you're sewing along or when you've finished sewing all four sides.  Be careful not to cut through any of the stitches.

When you've sewn around all four sides and clipped the corners, turn the sham right side out.  Return it to your work surface, making sure it is laying smoothly.  You'll also want to make sure that the covered cording is pushed completely out and not kind of smooshed between the seams.

Creating the flange is very simple.  Lay the sewn together sham flat on your work surface.  I want to wind up with a 3" flange on all four sides of the sham, so I measured and marked 3" in from the edge on all four sides, then used a disappearing ink pen to draw a line around the sham.  Disappearing pens can purchased at any fabric store like JoAnn's or Hancock's.

You're going to stitch on the line that you've just drawn so you'll want to pin all the way around the sham to stabilize the fabric while you're sewing.  Go slowly as you sew so as not to wind up with any puckers.

Now...open up the velcro and insert your pillow.

Voila!  You have a finished pillow sham.

 I'm so proud of you!!!

Sunday Worship

Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

I say to myself, "The Lord is my portion;

therefore I will wait for him."

Lamentations 3: 22-24 NIV

How to Make a Pillow Sham - Part 1

This pillow is part of the group of pillows that I made for the bed in my master bedroom.

I've seen a lot of tutorials for making different designs of throw pillows, but I've seen very few for making a pillow sham.  At least not where I've been looking anyway. ;o)  So - I thought I'd try my hand at putting a tutorial together.  I hope it comes across ok since this is my first attempt at one.

If you're interested in learning how to make a pillow sham, please don't be intimidated by the length of this two part tutorial.  They are not difficult to make at all.  If you can take a few measurements and sew a straight (or semi-straight!) line, you can make a sham by following these easy steps.

I'll go ahead and warn you - the rest of the pictures were taken in my workroom, so the background isn't all that pretty - that is unless you consider a well used work table, sewing machines, fabric racks and other workroom stuff pretty. ;o)

First up - cutting and assembly of the front of the sham.

I used four fabrics:

the main fabric for the pillow sham

white lining

batting

fabric to cover cording (the cording fabric is not included in the picture - bad blogger!)

To begin, measure one side (not all the way around) of the pillow that will be going into the sham, from one side to the other (for the width) and from the top to the bottom (for the height).

 

Using your measurements, calculate the size of the pieces that you need to cut.  I'm making a sham for a king size pillow.  Here is my calculation for the size of the fabrics that I need to cut for the front of the sham:

Width:

36"=width of the pillow

              6"=for a 3" flange on each side

                         +1"=1/2" of seam allowance on each side

                              43"=width of fabric piece to cut for the front

Height:

27"=height of the pillow

                            6"=for a 3" flange on the top and bottom

                         +1"=1/2" of seam allowance on the top and bottom

                             34"=height of fabric piece to cut for the front

In other words - I need to cut the fabrics for the front of the sham at 43" wide x 34" high.  I need to cut three pieces of fabric this size - the main fabric, the white lining and the batting.  I'll explain why I'm using batting and white lining a few sentences down.

Layer all three of the cut pieces in this order:

main fabric on the bottom - face (or right) side of the fabric down

the batting in the middle

the white lining on the top.

The layers will look like this:

Now let me stop right here and explain a couple of things.  Do you know what a flange is on a pillow sham?  I can show you a picture better than I can explain it:

See the flat part that surrounds the puffiness where the pillow is?  That's the flange.

The other thing that I want to explain is why I am using a piece of batting.  I've found that adding a piece of batting to the front of the sham is the only thing that has enough stiffness to keep the flange from flopping over when the pillow is standing up.  I don't like a floppy flange!  You can skip the batting if a floppy flange doesn't bother you though.  

The white lining is added to act as a barrier so that the batting won't get snagged when inserting the pillow into the sham.  If you decide not to use batting, you can skip this too (although I think it makes a nicer finished product when it's lined).

Sew the layers together on all four sides using a basting stitch.  How do you like my old workhorse industrial machine?

The next step is to apply the already covered cording.  There are many places on the web to find directions on how to cover cording, so I won't go into the details about how to do that here (but don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions).

As you can see in the picture, the cording is applied to what will become the front of the sham.  It is turned so that the raw edge of the cording fabric is lined up with the raw edges of the other fabrics.  Simply sew the cording on using a basting stitch.  You'll want to leave a few inches unattached at each end for joining the cord.  We're just basting everything together right now, so at this point it isn't necessary to get your stitches as close to the cording as possible.

Once you've basted the cording to the front of the sham, return to the beginning and end of the cord.  Clip open the stitches from when you first covered the cord and pull back the fabric to expose the cord itself.  It should look like this.

Cut about an inch of each end of the cord so that it will roughly half of it's original width.  Lay the two cut ends side by side, overlapping each other.

Now wrap the layers of fabric back around the cord.  Turn under the raw edge of the top layer of fabric so that you won't be left with a raw edge.  Sew the loose ends of the cord to the sham fabric.

And done!

Let me tell you that it took me a few tries to really get the hang of this.  I might have gotten itchy and sweaty and huffed a lot from being frustrated trying to get the layers of fabric to lay correctly.  I couldn't do it at the sewing machine either.  I had to take everything to my work table, glue all of the layers in place with fabric glue and wait for it to dry before I could sew it.  Just go slowly and most importantly, be patient with yourself.

This is a good place to stop part 1 of the tutorial.  You've cut all of the pieces for the front, basted them together and applied your covered cord.  Great job!  In part two, we'll cover the cutting and assembly of the back and do the final assembly of the sham.

Our Beach Condo - Part II

Earlier this month, I took you on a tour of part of our beach condo.  Now, for the rest of the story (as Paul Harvey used to say.  Anybody old enough to remember him?)

 In Part I we looked at the entry hall, bunkbeds, living room and kitchen.  Today I'm going to show you the bedroom and bathroom.  Remember how tiny I said it was - just over 500 sq. ft.  But don't forget - it.is.on.the.beach.  Here's the floor plan again to refresh your memory.

The bedroom and bathroom were just as disgustingly gross as the rest of the place.  Dirty gross walls, nasty, icky, sticky, smelly carpet, old corroded door knobs.  Ew, Ew, Ew!!!

These rooms are so small that I couldn't get a shot of more than one corner of the room at a time, so as you look at the pics just pretend that you're standing in the middle of room looking around.


Before

Mr. Worthing had the idea that even though we were getting rid of all the furniture, we could keep the mattress temporarily and lay it on the floor to sleep on while we were renovating.  Are you kidding me ???  Don't you remember my reaction to the couch?

Same corner after.

 

The before pics may just look like a case of bad decorating.  You're just going to have to trust me here.  It was just as smelly and dirty as the rest of the place.  I didn't get too close to the bed especially, in case I might brush up against it.  EW.

Before

Same side of the room after.

I'll never forget the first night that I spent here.  All of the furniture had been hauled out, including the mattress.  We brought blow up mattresses to sleep on, thank you very much!  Anyway, I don't think I slept a wink that night.  Not from excitement - but from being so afraid that my hand would slide off the mattress while I was sleeping and touch that nasty carpet!!!!

Before.  These doors were nastier than I can describe.

I'm going to re-purpose them, so I brought them home to clean them up.  Thought I was going to have to pull out a chisel to get all of the gunk off.

After.

This little pillow says "All things are possible with God".  I got these cute knobs at Anthropologie.
 (Sorry for the blurry pic.)

I made the boxpleated bedskirt out of the same fabric that the headboard is upholstered with.

The decorative cording on the headboard is repeated...

...on the bolster pillow...

 

...and on the boxpleated valance.

You can see that all of the fabrics are repeated in the pillow shams, the bolster pillow (don't miss the cute little covered button!), the valance and the blackout lined roman shade tucked up under the valance.

In the bedroom we:
ripped up the nasty carpet and replaced with laminate hardwood
replaced the closet doors
obviously, we painted
redid the inside of the closet
replaced the door hardware
added a ceiling fan and an a/c unit
replaced the baseboard heater

Now you get to see the bathroom.  More grody EWness.  Another room so small that you'll just have to virtually turn your head to look around.

Before.  Look closely at the tub color - hint - it is NOT white.

Just lovely.  As much as I hated sleeping on the floor, imagine how I felt knowing I had to shower in here.  Not good I tell you. 

Another before

After

I found a ready-made shower curtain at HomeGoods and had a sweet friend add the giant "H" monogram.  Hi Theresa!

The reason that I wanted you to notice the color of the tub is because this is what it looks like now.

 It's nice and shiny and clean and white!  Even though the tub/shower surround were filthy and a terrible dark off white color, they were structurally in good shape.  So to save money we had a company called PermaCoat come in to resurface it.  They did a great job and the resurfacing is holding up just fine.

I'll pull the view back and show you that we also installed a washer/dryer stack where a closet used to be.

It isn't as "in your face" as it appears to be in the picture.  You might wonder why I would get rid of a closet in a place so small.  There are two reasons:

• the closet was so gross and musty that I would not put anything in it
• I wanted to have a washer/dryer here.

Before sink and mirror.  You should have seen this mirror in person.  I can't even describe it.

After

You can't tell it in the photos, but in addition to the lovely dark aqua color that the room was painted, someone had tried their hand at a faux raised swirly pattern thing on the walls.  We had to just replace all of the sheetrock in here.

I didn't have a convenient place to hang the hand towels, so I found this little magnetic curtain rod at Lowes and stuck it the side of the dryer.

In the bathroom we:

replaced the sheetrock

tore out a closet and added the washer/dryer

replaced the sink and vanity

replaced the faucet in the sink

replaced the faucet and shower head in the tub

replaced the vinyl flooring with new vinyl

replaced the light fixture

replaced the mirror with a mirrored cabinet

replaced the toilet

replaced the door hardware

replaced the shower curtain rod

refinished the tub/shower

That finishes the tour folks.  I hope you enjoyed it.  It took us about four months to complete all of the renovations.  We concentrated on getting it liveable during the renovation.  It still looks a little plain to me, but I have plans y'all!

Let me share this picture that I took from our deck when we were there a couple of weeks ago.  Just by chance I captured the moon during the "blue hour" that Susan from Between Naps on the Porch talked about here.

Right now we are praying that Hurricane Irene takes a more eastward path, moving out to sea and not striking our beautiful beaches.

Linking up to:
2805