Summery duvet cover

With all the greay rainy weather we've had this summer, I've had a fair bit of time to get stuck into some indoor projects, including sewing a new duvet cover and matching cushion covers.

The fabric shop round the corner were selling this fabric at a ridiculous price (I think it was about £2 a metre) so I couldn't say no really, and I'd bought the remnants of the roll before I even knew what I was going to do with it.

I measured the length of one of our other duvet covers and realised that although I had more than enough in length, the width of the fabric wasn't wide enough to match the width of the duvet cover. So, I measured the difference, divided it by two and cut two strips to add down each side to make up the width on both the front and back of the cover.

I pinned all sections together face to face (inside out) on the top ad both sides of the cover, making sure that the main underside bit of fabric was slightly longer than all other sections in order to sew it folded back on itself as pocket to hold the duvet inside. I haven't decided whether I'm going to attach buttons yet.

For the cushions, I measured the cover cases I already had, folded the remaining material into quarters, pinned them all together, measured out the cover dimensions (including 1.5cm extra for the seam) and marked them on the underside of the material with a pencil.

Then I carefully cut out the four rectangles, pinned two sections together face to face, and used the sewing machine to sew the two long and one of the short sides, before turning the covers the right way out. I then folded in about 5cm of the remining ends, pinned them and inserting the cushions.

With the cushion pads in, I then pinned the fourth ends closed, and used a simple stitch to sew them closed.

First foray into furniture rejuvination

Our neighbours over the road have been doing up their flat with extreme commitment and devotion over the past couple of weeks. Yes, I have been spying on them from our first floor flat living room window.

It all began when I noticed the couple knocking down the lovely, old, metal railing fence around their front garden, and replacing it with a wooden picket fence, which they proceeded to paint baby blue (gasp). Yes, baby blue. At first I was horrified, but they have since colour co-ordinated their front door and added some lovely little windowsill faux bushes in pretty white pots and I can now say, peering judgementally from our living room window, that it looks quite quaint (and much more adventurous than our pair of window boxes, packed with dead, dying, and general reject plants from Homebase).

On one spying occasion I noticed them removing a large collection of furniture, old plants, pictures and upholstery from their flat and leaving it on the pavement as rubbish. Having the thrifty, "waste not want not", "make do and mend" attitude that I do, I scurried downstairs and across the road to see what I could salvage. With the help of Jim - who mostly does always have better things to do, but I asked nicely - we managed to sneakily rescue an old home-made coffee table and a large, heavy, eclectic gold and red wooden mirror:

Both items had seen better days, and were painted/ stained in dark dreary colours, that would do nothing for our tiny, shoebox flat (apart from the mirror which generally will be quite good at splashing light around and making the living room seem a tad larger!)

I set to work washing the mirror and table down with some mildly soapy water and an old sponge to get rid of dust and dirt, and used an old knife to get trickier marks off, and then let them dry completely. It might have been sensible to sand down the furniture a bit, but I thought as it is not going to be used outside and none of it was varnished, a few layers of fresh paint would stick well enough to the exsiting paint.

There was a small selection of paint pots left in the flat when we moved in nearly three years ago, none of which has had a chance to be used until now. I picked a fairly safe looking Dulux pot in "Egyptian Cotton" and prised the lid off with a screw driver expecting to find algae and frogspawn inside, but with a quick stir the paint looked as good as new.

I gave the table and mirror three coats of the Egyptian Cotton each, lettign each layer dry completely (over night) before applying the next.

When finished and all dry, I was more pleased with the resulting white/cream colour of the paint on the furniture than the yellowy white colour that the paint pot depicted. Also, the carving on the mirror frame was still visible under three layers of paint, which I had been worried about disappearing.

I had fun playing around with the position of the table, which goes well with the neutral and pale scheme of our living room, but I have yet to find a home for the mirror as we already have at least one large mirror in every room!

Happy painting!

Large stripey cushion cover

I made this cover a good few months ago, but never got round to adding it as a post to the blog.

 

I had found myself with a rather large, bare cushion and some stripey material that I picked up cheaply on a recent trip to Ikea, which had not yet found a use, other than occasionally adorning the side of the sofa with the nail varnish spill on...

After some umm-ing and ahh-ing and a bit of tape-measuring, a handy, zippable cushion cover was born.

All I did was...






Measure and cut out two squares of fabric 1-2 inches bigger than the square cushion all the way around.





I then gathered my tools (pins, needle, thread, sewing machine, scissors) and began pinning the two squares of fabric together, face to face, along three edges. I left the fourth edge open in order to attach a zip later on and turn the cushion cover the right way out eventually.

With the fabric still inside out (two pieces pinned face to face) I sewed along each of the three pinned sides with a sewing machine.

When all three sides were stitched, I folded back the fourth edges by about an inch and pinned them to make the hems for the zip to be sewn on to. I pinned the zip (about an inch shorter than the length of the cushion) to both sides of the top egde to the inside of the hems (now on the outside of the fabric, as it the cover is still inside out). Unzipping the zip at this point makes this easier.

 
When pinned in place, I sewed along each underside of the zip (the bit you don't see when the zip is done up). Where the zip didn't reach to the ends of the edge of the cushion cover, I turned the cover out the right way, and sewed the two sides of the cover together at each end of the zip, by hand, making sure that I sewed right up to where the zip started and finished, at each end, to give a neater finish.

In full swing on the sofa...!

Sparkly greetings cards

  

 

Spring throw

Hi folks! So it's been a while since I last posted on the Faberdashery blog. I have no excuse really. It hasn't stopped raining for the past month so it's not as if I've been undertaking any great outdoor activities instead of crafting. No, I have just been taking my time with the latest project, as I wanted it to be something that would last well - even though it looks like it's thrown together (which it really is). I had the idea of making a "throw" that could be as versatile as possible - used to chuck on the sofa to cover up the unattractive spilt nail varnish stain, to use as a picnic blanket when the sun eventually comes out, or to throw on the bed if the weather takes an even colder spell.

To create a light, easily storable, and versatile throw you will need:

• Squares of fabric (mine are all approx 30cm squared)
• A backing sheet the total size of the throw you want to make
• Needle, thread, pins, tape measure, scissors
• Sewing machine (not vital)

Method:

1. I began by cutting the squares out of various leftover scraps of fabric and then laying them all out on the floor in a haphazard pattern, before pinning them in rows and sewing together with the sewing machine:

2. When the rowns were ready to be sewn together I ironed the underside seams flat so that the throw would lie better while I was sewing and once it was finished:

3. When all the squares had been sewn together to form the main body of the the throw, I pinned a plain old sheet to the top of the throw, so that effectively the topside (the patchwork) and the underside (sheet) were pinned face to face and then I sewed up three sides using the sewing machine.

4. I ironed the fourth unsewn edges back in on themselves to form creases so that they would stay in place when sewing them together by hand, which I then did.

5. When the topside and bottom side were completely sewn together I set about sewing simple white stitches diagonally across each square to create a quilting effect and to hold the two layers of the throw firmly together:

This was the most time-consuming part of the project and I successfully broke two machine needles in the process...oops.

But finally, I ended up with a country-bumpkin-ish spring throw, that can be used whenever and wherever:

 

Perfect for wrapping yourself up in and hiding from the rain until it goes away :-)