I was taking some photos of our flat in its “finished” state the other day and realised that I hadn’t blogged about some of the things that I’ve sewn for it.
First up: roman blinds for Steven’s study. My thought process went something like this: custom blinds are quite expensive; blinds are just rectangles, really; I know other people who’ve sewn their own blinds (my mother-in-law who has at least 3 decades, if not 4, more sewing experience than I do); my big sewing handbook has step-by-step instructions; how hard can it be?
The answer: reasonably hard but, in the end, actually achievable.
They’re not perfect but I’m pretty damn proud of these.
I went through a similar thought process when I saw some table runners on a display in IKEA. For once, this project turned out to actually be easier than expected since they were selling the fabric with the side edges pre-hemmed so all I had to do was cut it to an appropriate length and hem the ends.
Deciding to then use the same fabric to make matching seat cushion covers was a bit more complicated. The chairs had come without cushions and really aren’t that comfortable without them. It’s surprisingly difficult to find plain square chair pads without ties and the ones with ties just aren’t shaped to fit on chairs with solid backs. We did manage to find some (IKEA again) that had velcro straps that we cut off but they were bright blue so really needed to be covered.
I didn’t have a pattern or instructions to follow for these so just sort of made it up as I went along. I cut the hemmed edging off the fabric and cut squares for the top and bottom of the covers from the geometric pattern centre strips. By undoing the hemmed edging and ironing it flat, I got a nice wide strip that I used for the band around the cushion. I then assembled these as very narrow box cushion covers with an overlapping envelope type opening on one of the narrow sides. Since these sit against the backs of the chairs, it doesn’t matter that they’re a little flappy and don’t stay perfectly shut.
Again, the result isn’t perfect but they do look good along with the matching runners and, hey, at least they’re not blue!