A bit of master bathroom renovation

So we have been redoing our master bedroom recently, and I wanted to make the master bathroom coordinate a bit. We got a new quilt from Pottery Barn that was the fabric inspiration for the bedroom, and I wanted to bring the colors into the bathroom a bit. Since Pottery Barn was not selling the fabric from our quilt by the yard, I decided to buy an extra pillow sham to dissect and turn into a valance for the bathroom window. I am not in love with unpicking, but honestly it doesn't bother me too much, so it was pretty easy to take apart all the seams in the sham.

I used a piece of plywood I found laying around in the garage.....(I hope my Hunny didn't have plans for it or anything.) and cut it into the right length and height for my fabric and window. I added a bottom swoop (that I am sure has a real name, but I have no idea what it is) for interest. I also cut 2 long strips to attach to either side so that the valance was a sort of box shape coming off the wall.

I made a little pattern diagram showing how the sham became usable fabric.

 

I then put batting over the plywood and stapled the whole thing around the back, I like to then staple a lining on just in case I happen to peek up from below while in the tub. I added white linen fabric strips over the middle seams to lighten and give a spa feel (hiding the seams was a bonus) to the valance. 

I am pretty happy with how this project turned out, my bathroom is now tied into my bedroom, and I didn't have to do much more then pick apart a few seams in order to get custom usable fabric. 

sorry about the crappy cell phone picture.

 The next project was pretty cool too, I added a tile backsplash over the sinks! I was so excited that I have decided to do the same thing in my kids bathroom too, so I will probably take step by step photos of the process then, but for now here is a "after" picture of the tile.

I have since added new faucets, painted away the green, and added coordinating tiles to the bathtub  surround (I think I have process pictures of that, I will have to check, it was very scary smashing out 5 random tiles from the 4"x4" tiles in the tub surround and adding an accent tile with the 2"x2" brown tile from the backsplash. You can actually see the wall color and a peek at the accent tiles around the tub in the valance picture.)

This weekends work

So this weekend we finally dug out the grass from inside the path, so now we are ready to put in the flowers (by we I mostly mean Paul as far as the digging is concerned) but that will happen next weekend since around these parts it will be a 4 day weekend. 

We also put trellis up under the back deck, in order to hide all the garbage (well okay, not REAL garbage, it's all stuff we aren't ready to get rid of,) stored underneath it. I don't have pictures of that project yet, but I will take some after all the planting happens next weekend.

We are going to be putting a fence up around the garden portion of the yard, it will come off the house at the corner next to the trellis and gutter, and then follow the sidewalk around and then turn back towards the garage. We are going to be putting in tomatoes, herbs, peas, and anything else the kids want to experiment with. The front section will pretty much be flowers, and I am excited to see the color all go in. We are going to be putting in a timed drip system so that I don't kill everything by forgetting to water.

There was also some other fun this weekend; we went to some estate sales and got a dresser to paint for Emmie's new room, we went strawberry picking at a local farm, and I made some freezer jam from the spoils.  

I made the white bed drapes for Emmie's bed, and will be adding pictures when I get the velvet canopy done. Tomorrow I have to get the pattern graph together and all the information I need for my jacket so that I can send it off to Handwoven Magazine for the issue I am going to be in (Sept/Oct I think?) so I am not sure that I will be working on the velvet section before Tuesday or Wednesday.

Isaac the Burgess

Soooooo, after I finished Emmie's lion costume, Issac came home from school saying he NEEDED a Williamsburg era Burgess costume for a social studies night, in which the whole 4th and 5th grade were going to act out a living timeline. Although I honestly didn't have time (since I was in school) I couldn't say no after having just spent so much time on Emmie's lion, now could I?

I made the pattern on the fly using pictures of clothing I looked up online, in a sort of general colonial look. The whole coat-vest-shirt part is in one piece including the cravat. All of the fabric for this is from my stash, which I apparently can never get rid of, because LOOK! proof I apparently will eventually find an obscure use for everything!

this is before I made him the pants, so feel free to ignore the jeans!

The back

The hat is a 100% wool felt women's hat I got on clearance for $5 that Isaac usually wears all floppy when we volunteer at Jamestown, and then turned into the tricorn hat by sewing the sides up. The feathers are from Jamestown (Isaac found the heirloom chicken feathers on the ground there a while ago) and the rosette is made from orange ribbon I was given while in England.

This sort of shows the one piece construction, the  vest is sewn into the coat side seams, and the collar is a false one with attached cravat.

The orange courdaroy is left over from the lining to my tree skirt, the rust stripe in the vest is from my living-room curtains, and the rest was all just fabric I had laying around in some small quantity.

Here is is all done up with pants and shoes and everything. The shoes are the ones he wears to volunteer at Jamestown, I didn't think the history police would get mad at me for his shoes being 100 years off for a school thing! Gotta love how his attempt at a casual face looks a tiny bit pompous here. 

The kids lined the school halls with little buttons drawn on their hands, when someone pushed their button, they would come alive and give a little speech about their character. 

Isaac was pretty funny because he would pretend to be asleep between getting his button bushed, and when it was, he would make a big show of yawning and stretching before he would begin his little speech. Apparently his teacher had suggested this to all the kids to increase the "colorful" nature of the evening, but Isaac is the only one who did it, so people were always a little startled when he would wake up. (It sort of reminded me of the Old Country Bear Jamboree, at Disneyland, all of the animatronic bears would wake up too.)   

Linked up at

Emmie's lion costume

So Emmie needed a costume for the school chorus (she was the lion in The Lion Sleeps Tonight) and I was asked ever so nicely by her to make it (I was the only parent supplying a costume, all of the others were already owned by the school.)

Anyway, here is the result! (I actually made this over Spring Break, why yes I am way behind in my blogging!)

I made the mask by covering a black mask from Party City with fur, and then I hand Painted the markings on the eyes with just acrylic craft paint in white, beige, gold, and black 

Here she is trying it on at home.

And finally, at school on the big night!

my head hurts....my thumb hurts.....

I have woken up all week with a headache in the exact same spot on the back of my head, I keep telling Paul it's because I'm dieing, HE says it's because I have been looking down a lot sewing and my neck is jacked up because of it. The only trouble with Paul's theory is I am ALWAYS sewing, AND it FEELS like I am dieing...

Now I have to find something to do with my day, I was going to clean or sew, except I now have a giant blister on my left thumb (I'm left handed) from sewing shoes for Emmie yesterday. (Yes I said shoes, she wanted shoes to go with the dress I made her, so she spent 2 days hand sewing little shoes out of fabric scraps. She was working so hard on them I couldn't help myself and had to help her. She now has matching shoes (if they survive the day at school I will take a picture of them) to her dress. I am not so confident in them that I did not send her to school without back up shoes though.......

I know, I know, the last thing anyone wants to hear is a whiner! I am very happy that this week I get to wonder what it is I am going to do with my day, school is out, and I have already made Emmie a new dress, the aforementioned shoes, and I have many plans in the works! (I also have Emmie's made-over bed to share, her pillows and quilt.

On the agenda for summer so far I have,

Little Red Riding Hood Shorts for Emmie

Saddlebags for my hunny's and my new bikes

Matching Pencil skirts for Emmie and I

Tutus for my sister and Emmie since they are going to be the birthday girls in Disneyland this summer

9 T-shirts printed for my family so we can be matchy-patchy this summer in Disneyland

gnome skirt and shorts with matching T-shirts for Isaac and Emmie

a quilt with my mommy

Making boy shorts out of a swim top I have (in order to match another swim top I have)

a couple of swimsuits for Emmie since I know she will be swimming like mad at my mom's this summer

FINALLY get the garden taken care of

and I am pretty sure this list will get massively added to as time goes by.

Emmie's Bed

So I have my last critique coming up before summer in surface design, I am making a quilt and 3 pillows for Miss Emmie's bed, which has now become a whole big project!!!

When we move next summer we have decided to not take any of the kid's bedroom furniture with us; Isaac's stuff is too heavy and he will eventually need a double bed so that his height won't be an issue as he becomes a teen, and Emmie's bed is just a bit cheap to move again.

I thought it might not be a bad idea to get her a new bed for the critique so that I can set it up at school for a more finished look, I wanted an antique metal bed, but finding one was not easy! One afternoon we went (in an entirely unrelated shopping trip) into The Dump (a furniture store in the local area that is sort of like a TJ Maxx or Ross, it sells nice furniture store stuff that is in perfect condition, just there is only one or something,) and Emmie found every little girls dream bed.......

It's from the Jessica McClintock Home, The Vintage Collection for Young Ladies' by Lea. She has wanted a 4 post bed for as long as I can remember and the canopy is to die for as far as she is concerned! It was originally $950 in the furniture store, but at The Dump it was only $260 after tax. I am not a big fan of light blonde woods, and it wasn't at all what we were looking for, but for Emmie it was LOVE.

(here is a view without the canopy rails)

Anyway, we brought it home with us, but I knew it wasn't staying exactly as we bought it, I wanted to paint it and antique it back in order to go better with the feel of the quilt I am making (and we plan to thrift/bargain hunt for most of her furniture, so I want to be able to unify her room through paint.)

The colors of the painted furniture won't all be the same, (as I plan to do a bunch of bright colors) but the antiquing finish will tie them all together. The bed is going green, well not green so much as GREEN, after a great set of chairs I found at one of my favorite furniture stores Arhaus, I didn't get the chairs since they weren't quite right for anything, but the finish on them was bright green, antiqued back with a bit of a yellow blonde color showing, and then dark brown antiquing medium. (I will have to take pictures of the chair the next time I pop into the store, since I don't have one right now.)

Conveniently for me, my bed was originally blonde, so if some of it showed through, it would be a perfect match! So now I just need to get spraying, sanding, and antiquing in time to have a dry bed for Thursday. I have one coat of green already on the bed, but Paul had to run to get me more spray-paint since I did what I always do and underestimated how much it was going to take to paint the whole bed.

I am going to be making it a bed-skirt and canopy with curtains so that it completes Miss Emmie's picture of the perfect bed (I am using fabric from Anna Maria Horner's Innocent Crush line, which I <3)

I will keep you updated with my progress!!

EDIT: here is the link to Emmie's finished bed project