Dress um ups

That's how my daughter says dress ups.  She's been talking a lot lately about how Santa is going to bring her "pink dress um ups."  Although yesterday she was talking about purple ones.  I hope she changes her mind back to pink before Christmas, or she might be a little disappointed.  Here's what I've done so far:

No pictures of the process- it's all after bedtime work, which means pictures would be so crappy they're not even worth taking.  I snuck down to the basement this morning to take these. 

I'm so excited to give these to my girl.  She wears dress up skirts all day, every day.  And to bed.  "Look mommy, I a pin-cess!"  There will be at least one more, made of chiffon.  I'm thinking either a circle skirt or a gored one.  Something more on the long and flowy side of things that will be good for spinning.  I might do a bubble skirt, too.  Now that I've started I can't stop- there's just something so addicting about making these super easy skirts.

So, although I have no tutorial, I do have some tips.  The top skirt is costume satin- finish your edges before you gather anything!!  I didn't for the bottom layer and it was just fraying everywhere.  That satin stuff is crazy.  I zig-zagged all the rest of my raw edges before messing with them and it was a lot less messy.  One tip for the no-sew tutu: if you want it to really stick out, stick some netting in there. 

Piano bench!

It's out of the garage and in the house!  This is a big deal.  I've only ever done one other big painting project, and this turned out well (although spray paint is pretty fool-proof) and it's my practice for an even bigger project that I might just have done before the new year. 

So here's the before.  I know I posted a picture of it before, but then I realized it didn't look so bad, so I went back and took some pictures of how crappy this thing was before I took care of it.

{I suppose it wasn't that bad...from a distance.}

{The glazing or whatever that the previous owner attempted was a really ugly brown.  And they definitely didn't prime before they painted, because it was chipping off like crazy in a bunch of places.}

I had originally planned to just do a light sanding and then priming and painting, but because of the paint chippiness, I ended up pretty much taking it all off.

{I got it down to its original stain or bare wood almost everywhere.  The upped left corner in this picture is white because of sunlight.}

As I took off the paint and uncovered the original stain color, I got kind of annoyed, because the original stain looked really close to what my husband had used on the piano.

An aside:  Here's why this project even happened.  For our first anniversary, my husband got me a piano (he's awesome).  Of course, cash was tight, so he was looking forever on Craigslist for a piano that worked and was in our budget.  He found one a week before our anniversary, but it was ugly.  He bought it anyway and then worked with a friend on it, stripping it down and re-staining it.  They got the whole piano done in week, but not the bench.  He was wiped out on refinishing furniture after that week, and so when he gave it to me, told me the bench was going to be my responsibility.  I was ok with that, and now after almost 4 years later and about 3.9 years after the leftover piano stain was lost, it's DONE!

Here it is now:

I did some light distressing that you can't even see in the photo, and might later go over it was a bit of stain or possibly stencil the top, but for now I have a real place to sit when I play.  It's great.

A detail I love:

I mod-podged some fabric over the bench bottom before I nailed it back on.  I love it.  Bonus tip: When mod-podging over a large area, start in a corner and move out ward a little bit at a time, smoothing like crazy.  Worked like a charm.

I hope everyone had an excellent Thanksgiving and for those of you not in the States, I hope your Thursday was totally rad.

Appliquéd ornament pillow

I love this pillow.  You probably won't, if you really love good embroidery.  Because I'm not an embroiderer.  I know the name of like 2 stitches, and I'm not very good at either.  However, I like my very imperfect, informal style of embroidering, at least on this pillow.  Here she is:

 I used a combination of all the stitches I knew how to do and did some machine embroidering/appliquéing as well. 

{Machine zig zag around the edge, hand sewn buttons.}

{Blanket stitch around the edge plus a running stitch to attach the vintage lace.}

{All machine.}

{Running stitch}

{Running stitch plus back stitching}

I used gray flannel for the pillow body.  I had wanted to use burlap, but then realized that would be really hard to embroider on it. 

It was fun to make this.  I'm no hand sewing expert, so it was just kind of fun to try whatever and just kind of mess around on this pillow.  All the unevenness adds charm, right?

Let the Christmas crafts commence- Ornament trees

I haven't done anything original in awhile, so it's about time.  I thought of doing something like this last year, but was too sick/busy finishing this to make it happen.  So this year, when I saw these mini ornaments at Walmart, I decided it was time.

They were about $3.50 each.  Not bad, but I'm going to check out the dollar store (that was my original plan, but by the time I got out last night, it was closed) next time.  I started by hot gluing some ornaments in a ring about 6-7 inches in diameter.  Then I just kept building up, ring on ring, leaving the middle empty so I could get maximum tree out of the ornaments I had.

See?  It's hollow.

I like it.  It's going to be perfect on the mantle in a week or so, with Christmas lights all around it and reflected by it.  Mmmmm.  I'm going to make a few more, I think, in different metallics.  It's about a foot tall, but I might put it up on a candle stick or something.. 

Here's to the beginning of Christmas crafting!

Big plans

I have a few things I want to make for gifts this Christmas.  The picture above is my plan for a play mat for the little one (from Santa).  I'm going to make it in four sections. 

The first section, the red oval, is going to just be a mirror (one of those child safe ones) propped up on a triangle pillow that will attach to the mat with velcro.  When I say "propped up" I actually mean permanently attached to the triangle pillow.  The reason it will be attached to the mat with velcro is so the mat can be washable.  I'll also put some fabric loops where I can attach toys with those rings you get at the store. 

The second section, with the blue rectangles, will be little flaps that cover pictures that I can remove.  I'm going to make some kind of pocket with clear vinyl so I can just slide them in and out.  This idea, to have pictures of family on the play mat, is pretty much what's driving me to finish it, because I'm pretty sure it'll be a big pain and I'll regret not just buying one.  I'll probably be clinging pretty hard to how cool it will be that the mat is customized with our pictures. 

The third section, the pink square, will be kind of a fabric touch book.  Burlap, fur, minky, fake leather, etc.  I'm not sure if it will be a book, I'll have to see what works.  Whatever happens, that quadrant will be about the sense of touch.

I'm unsure about the green circles right now.  It will be about the sense of sound.  A squeaker, a bell, crinkle flaps, more fabric loops to attach things that will make noise, etc. 

I'm putting the plans up now for a few reasons.  I'm just excited is a big one.  I also want to share with anybody who might be making something similar, and I want to give myself time to incorporate any advice that I might get.  So if you have any, all you have to do is click on "comments." 

ONE WEEK UNTIL THANKSGIVING!! WHAT?!  I wish luck to any of you that are making any of your gifts to give!