sew and staple

I upholstered something!!

We got these really cool vintage chairs for free from a friend and we use them as our kitchen chairs. They were already a bit grungy but after several spills of yogurt and milk I decided it was finally time to reupholster. I considered making removable covers and then I thought of the perfect upholstered kitchen chair solution--VINYL!

These were super easy to upholster, though pulling all of those staples from the seats took some time and elbow grease. After I removed the fabric from the seat (and discarded the crumbling, gross foam, eeeew) I ripped the seams and used the two component pieces as patterns to cut the vinyl. Just one seam to sew per chair and the rest is stapled. So simple! And just the thing for our kitchen.

Though it pained me a bit to buy new foam to replace the old it really had to be done. All told we spent $75 on the materials for this project. Not too shabby for 4 totally awesome newly upholstered kitchen chairs!

something to make me smile

During that crazy bad, knock-me-down week one of the many, many things that went wrong was our coffeemaker giving up the ghost. This is a seemingly small thing but it definitely sent us (both) over the edge. We only just got a replacement yesterday, a good old-fashioned french press. And, of course, I promptly made a cozy for it.
I used a vintage, hand-pieced feed sack quilt block from the 30's (I picked up a bunch of these on eBay a while back for precisely this kind of thing) on a linen ground, 2 layers of batting, some thrifted elastic and vintage buttons. It all went together just like a page in my books, though in my haste I made it a wee bit too short. I suppose I'll just have to make another one. And many more for gifts--so, who's got a french press?

donning my fairy wings

Well, my little girl's growing up. Today she lost her first tooth and she couldn't be more excited.

In fact, she was too excited to sit still for a picture. Her tooth has been wiggly for about a week and everybody said it would take a while longer so I wasn't rushing the preparations. Luckily she was at a friend's house after school today when it happened and called to tell me to news. That gave me enough time to stop what I was doing and make a tooth pillow for her.

It's a bit misshapen but she recognized it as a tooth and it will do the trick.

I finished up a book today and am plugging away on a big order which I'll hopefully be able to show you tomorrow. Here's the latest:

arts and farts and crafts

(sorry for the crass title--anyone who's seen it will recognize the phrase from one of my all-time favorite movies, Wet Hot American Summer)

Recently I started volunteering one morning a week at Tigerlily's school to do a craft project with the preschool and kindergarten. I always test things out with T.lil beforehand and it's been great to have that scheduled craft time with her. This week, of course, I wanted to do something for Valentine's Day and I've been promising them that we would do some real live actual sewing. So this evening I let 'Lil stay up a bit and after Lyric went to bed we pulled out some supplies and got to work. Here's what we came up with:

Little stuffed hearts! They were super easy to make and I have a ton of felt and stuffing and floss so it's decided, this will be tomorrow's project. Of course, now I have a million hearts to cut out....

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I've been working for DAYS on this really cool but super intricate rock-themed book and have finally finished up a couple of the images to show you:

I agreed to include Jimi Hendrix thinking that he's totally cool and iconic and I could figure out a way to represent him. As soon as I saw this image I knew I had to use it; I mean, how much more rock & roll can you get? That dude was badass.

Also:

Not my favorite band but a cool logo (a pain to sew, but worth it, I think). This book, when all is said and done (tomorrow, hopefully!!), will also include the Abbey Road and Sticky Fingers album covers. I'm thinking of starting a side business making full-sized fiber replicas of classic album covers. It's SO much fun but also SOOO much work....

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Somehow, in the midst of all of this work and parenting and volunteering I've managed to finish a crocheted blanket for Lyric, using up most of my yarn remnants!

I love to knit but it is unbelievable how much faster crocheting is. Seriously, this only took me a month of little moments here and there, never more than 30 minutes at a time. At 2 years old the poor kid could have had a blanket well before now if I had only known!