Bright Yellow Kitchen Chairs

I did this refinishing project last fall but am just now getting around to documenting.  I decided it was time to pass along the old kitchen set that my parents had kept for years to my sister (who needed a table), and time for me to do something new! 

Before our big move I bought some vintage chairs with great potential.  They had upholstered seats (which I swore never to get as kids would destroy them), and wobbled quite a bit.  I loved the finish actually, but I knew I needed to add some screws for stability, and on half the chairs the finish was flaking.  So do I go safe and re-stain or bold?

 Bold of course!  I was refinishing the chairs in my parent's garage and after getting a coat of the sunny yellow on my mom casually asked me if I meant it to be so bright (probably thinking--eek!).  Yes I did mean it.  I love bright yellow.

After a lot of brainstorming I decided to try adding a thin baltic birch plywood to the upholstery frame.  I roughly cut out the seat shapes, used some wood clue and clamps to affix wood to the frame, and then used upholstery tacks to secure it in place.  Then I used a router to get the edges flush and pretty.

I am no carpenter but they turned out just as I hoped (quirky and bright).  I left them unfinished as I decided what to do, and then decided to leave them unfinished for fun.  I do wish I had put a clear acrylic on the wood to protect it from stains, I plan to go back and do that someday.

I still enjoy my silly sunny chairs.

DIY Fabric Napkins

I officially have two weeks left until my due date, consequently I've made a massive mental list of projects I would like to do.

One pressing item on my list:  fabric napkins.  Because that is what you need when a newborn is on it's way.  Just kidding.  My oldest has hit a phase where she hates being messy or having a drip of water on her while eating, as well my toddler is too cool for bibs but is a pretty messy eater.  We were going through a lot of paper and cloth towels at meal times.  I wanted something more fun than worn out dish towels and that we could reuse more systematically.

I'm sure it has been done before, but I decided to make my cloth napkins out of flour sack cloth.  They are my favorite towel to have around for drying and covering baked goods.  I grabbed a pack of four at the store and chopped each towel into quarters.  I rolled one edge over twice and stitched, then on the last raw edge I made some colorful bias tape out of fabric scraps (I love yellow in the kitchen!).  At the last minute I decided to add some twill tape so I could hang them if I wanted.

Each family member gets one at meal times and afterwards if it's clean we hang it up to use next time.  As a result of my adorable napkins I now want to build a skinny buffet table for our kitchen (I have the supplies, just need some tools) to house said napkins, cookbooks, and other kitchen things.  Also I want to make an ottoman.  And an over-sized wax canvas bag (wax is in the mail!).  Don't try to follow the thought process of a full-term pregnant woman, we do ridiculous things.

Raglan T-Shirt

Partially inspired by the Spring Top Sewalong, partially due to the fact that most of my shirts no longer fit--I decided to finally sew a new top.  I used a pattern from my Sew U book (which I need to use way more) and altered the front bodice to have more room.

It came together quickly and will be easy to hem and take in a little post-baby.

I've already started plotting a few more t's to keep me from looking shabby this last stretch.

Handmade Teepee

We don't have much going on in our backyard and I wanted to have something fun for the girls to play with this summer.  There are a number of tutorials out there, but I remembered seeing this teepee tutorial years ago.  Like most everything I do, I used her pattern as a starting point and then changed it.

I wanted each section to be equal (rather than have a big opening like Rachel's version), so I cut my panels about 44 inches wide tapered to 5 inches wide at the top.  I thought a round opening would be fun so I just went for it.

I cut a few inches off the wood due to necessity (I may have wedged the teepee against our ceiling...).

I didn't want to sand the wood, but didn't want to hear about splinters all summer.  So I decided to use strips from a vintage sheet I had lying around to hold the wood in place.  I was a little short on the length needed so I added a strip to the bottom of the teepee as well.

I haven't pulled it outside yet, but so far the girls seem to like it and I think it's totally cute and girly. Hopefully hours of fun will be had in this girly teepee this summer.

Big Black Apple Dolls

I love trying to make something homemade for my girls for their birthdays.  This year I decided it would be fun to make them a doll.  I've always thought the Black Apple Doll was adorable, and have sewn a few in the past.  This time I wanted to make them a little more special.  I enlarged the pattern to give me a starting point and then got creative with the rest.

I'm totally in love.  Way more than the girls love them, but isn't that how it always is?

I stressed about the face and left it for last on both dolls.  That was silly to do.  What if I had messed up after I had finished the whole thing? 

I painted the eyes on and then stitched the eye lashes and mouth on.

The hair took forever.  My girls are young and I knew I needed to adhere the hair on pretty well.  So I stitched every piece of yarn on to the head.  I used pins to sort of weave the yarn on the head and then I tacked everything down.  I found the technique/idea here.

The peach doll has tiny suede moccasins..Ack!  I die over them.  My oldest doesn't like to wear shoes so I thought it would be fun to leave her doll barefoot.

Dotty Pillow

I have been in dire need of some fun pillows to offset my vintage couches.  The room was looking a little too seventies for me. 

I have a few more to make.  I love using hidden zippers, it makes the pillow come together so quickly.  Hello bees!  I like adding silly details.

Coat Rack

As with any new space, we soon discovered that the coat closet was not in the ideal place.  Most of the time coats were littering the floor in the kitchen or draped on couches.

  

After much online pursuing (and a good sale going on) I decided on these hooks .  They only went to three, but I wanted five hooks.  So I decided to get all 'no.1' hooks.  Who wants to be 'no.2' anyway?  I think I will re-number them in the future, but for now I think it's funny.

This should have been an easy project, but I ran into a few silly things (I highly suggest buying your own screws, the ones provided were poor quality). It's not a real project unless you've been to the hardware store more than once right?  Despite the setbacks, I'm glad to have somewhere to hang my coats!

Geranium Flower Girl Dresses

My sister's wedding kept me pretty busy this summer.  After finishing some projects with Tracey it was time to figure out what the girls would be wearing.  I looked online, searched in-store...nothing was jumping out at me.  Where have all the cute things for little girls gone?

I had been dying to buy/make Made By Rae's Geranium Dress and this was the perfect occasion.  I had no time for drafting my own patterns and the pattern sewed up like a dream.

 

I lined the bottom of both dresses.   I used the lower half of a formal dress for Ellie's (no hemming!), and happened to have a pretty peach pillow case that turned out perfect for Ivy.

Word to the wise.  If you let uncles play with their nieces you might turn around to your daughter alarmingly high from the ground.  Luckily this time it turned into a great picture.

I think a few more Geranium dresses should be sewn before Christmas (they are so adorable).  But lets be honest, what I'd really love to sew next is a Washi Dress for myself!

An Arthur Halloween

This year I decided it would be fun to dress the girls as Ellie's favorite book series by Marc Brown, Arthur.

Initially I wanted Ellie to be Arthur and Ivy to be D.W., but opinions came out and we switched.  An Arthur costume for Ivy and a D.W. costume for Ellie.  I found the outfits and made some aardvark ears for each.  I may make a pair for myself and Corey to wear on Halloween-we'll be Mr. and Mrs. Read.

Quick homemade costumes are always great.  We spent a fun morning out at a Halloween festival, great time to sport our costumes a little early.

This spring Corey graduated and we spent a busy summer with family planning for a wedding.  We're now in our own space and I'll be playing catch up on missed projects soon.

DIY Play Kitchen

Here is the butcher block top play kitchen I made for my two girls' birthdays:

I had fun making this.  I wanted a smaller cabinet, but this is the best one that I found.  The tall cabinet door is the fridge.  Other than paint and two knobs, I reused or thrifted most things for the kitchen.  I did buy the dish set off etsy.  The plates and bowls are mini (maybe they were a dessert set?).  I've seen way too many cute princess dish sets turn bad once kids get them wet and rip the stickers off. 

My old kitchen cart had seen better days (and the drawer was falling to pieces), so I took the butcher block top, hardware, and scraps to help put this together.  I borrowed a jig saw from a friend to cut the sink and oven.

I love the oven.

I may steal these salt and pepper shakers from them.  They are hard, so if they don't play soft with them I will snatch them back happily!

Having their birthdays so close has it's perks.  I think every few years I may find a fun present to make them to share.

P.S. If you were at a loss when Google Reader announced it was going away like I was check out Bloglovin.  It's pretty similar to Reader. Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Coral Necklaces

I love the color coral. 

I mentioned I wanted a coral necklace and my mother-in-law gave me one of her mother's necklaces to use as a project.  I contemplated keeping it as is (it's so funky!), I wore it a few times but then the string broke I decided that I could take it apart.  My mother-in-law said the Egyptian style was popular at the time.  I used the pretty blue beads to make this necklace. Here's the original:

The coral colored beads were almost the exact size of candy Runts.  I haven't had Runts in years, they sound so good now!

I made this necklace with the clasp and gold beads from the original necklace.  I had bought a strand of small coral beads to lengthen the other necklace I made, and had just enough for another necklace!

Old News

Eons ago (or perhaps last spring) I made a skirt for my sister's wedding.  I didn't have anything on hand that went with her color scheme, so I decided to have fun with a bright yellow skirt.  I made it while I was still pregnant so I had to guess the size--consequently I have it pinned in the back until I redo the waistband as I was a little off.  It's a bit crazy to some probably, but I love it. 

Also, I ran across another mid-century enameled bowl.  I love the bold heart pattern.  Maybe someday I'll sell it (I sold the blue crockpot--which I now somewhat regret), but for now it's happily displayed in my kitchen.

New hobbies

Over Christmas my super fun mother-in-law decided to donate some beading supplies to me.  I've been practicing on a few small things and I finally made a new necklace.  I couldn't find beads the exact same color, so I chose a happy minty green to go with the vintage blue beads.

The green beads were so tiny!  They were about the size of a mustard seed.  Luckily they came strung, so I could pinch off a half inch of them at a time to thread onto the new string.  I have some pretty coral beads that will become a necklace as soon as I can figure out what design to do.

I also finally made my first wood project!  I've been wanting to make something for ages.  We got some tools recently so it was finally more feasible to do.  I made a new frame for my cheap full length mirror.

 Here's a closeup of the frame.  Very basic frame, but I was happy with my first try.  Much better than the plastic frame before.  Next up, mitered corners?!

Mending

Either my girls are hard on thier clothes, or clothes just aren't as sturdy as they were once made.  Or both.  I'm often finding holes in their clothes and I could easily throw them out and get new ones for cheap--but there's something fun about patching little clothes.  You can have fun with it.  I can't get away with this on Corey's jeans.

I did a little honeycomb patch on these jeans.

 And one more to cover another hole!

These got hearts.

 And I decided to have fun and try wool felt stars on these.  I'm hoping the felt holds up.

Only one knee needed mending, but stars on both knees are double the fun.

Ketchup

Just kidding.  I meant catching up.  

I have yet to take pictures of my latest projects, but last night I finally got to a project I've been meaning to tackle for a while.  An ironing board cover!  Not very exciting to most, but I haven't had a full size ironing board since high school.  I picked up the ironing board for a few bucks at an estate sale.

It came together super fast.  I didn't have a wide enough piece of fabric to create a casing for my elastic so after I cut the fabric + one layer of cotton batting to size (with 3-4 inches added all around the board) I just took a long piece of 3 inch wide fabric, folded it in half, and sewed it around the edges to create a casing.  

I did this a few months ago but forgot to document.  I love retro school things and this chair was perfect for my computer desk.  It was in rough shape but after cleaning, lightly sanding, a few coats of Penetrol, and some new feet and it was ready to enjoy.  

Another Halloween

I'm into making halloween costumes.  This year was no different.  Ellie is a huge fan of Pixar movies.  One of her favorites is The Incredibles.  So this year I decided to make an Elastigirl outfit for Ellie and her baby sister was Jack-Jack to keep the theme running.

Ellie absolutely loved her costume.  The first time I had her try it on she was bouncing off the walls.

I used old red footie pajamas as a starting point.  I left the feet open so she could wear shoes, but I plan to add non-slip fabric to the bottom later so she can wear them as pajamas.  The baby onesie was a last minute addition before our Halloween party.