Category: sewing

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!

Back in March (which feels like a very long time ago) I attended another Make Lounge workshop. This time it was their Log Cabin Quilted Cushion class.

The class, like all the other Make Lounge classes that I’ve attended, was great. The tutor was really friendly and helpful, the other students were nice and I find learning new techniques from an instructor is so much quicker than trying to track down tutorials on the internet or understand directions in a book.

Even so, it’s still somewhat surprising to me that I managed to sew an entire quilted log cabin cushion cover in around 3½ hours having never quilted before.

I’m not completely happy with my fabric choices. Faced with a wall of fabric rolls and a limited time to choose, I tend to panic and rush my choices. I also tend to prefer single colours and solids rather than patterns so trying to select from heavily patterned, brightly coloured quilting fabrics is very difficult for me.

Some of the fabrics, however, I absolutely adore. This one is my favourite:

Unfortunately, I have no idea what it’s called or who it’s by but I love the furniture images.

My other favourite was this one:

I’m just so much of a numbers person that I couldn’t resist when I saw it on the shelf.

I do love the finished cover though and find myself wishing that I had more uses for cushions as I would love to make loads of these!

Steven and I did some rearranging recently so that the room that was my study is now our bedroom and what was our bedroom is now my study. There are still some problems to work out, but the biggest was the fact that all of our bed linen clashes really horribly with the colour of the walls. The plan is to change the colour of the walls at some point but, as I’m just six weeks away from my next set of professional exams, that is not going to happen for a couple of months at least.

Enter Bright Idea #1: “We could get a bedspread that matches the walls.” So, we looked for a bedspread and they were too big or too small or the wrong colour or the wrong texture and, almost always, really expensive.

Enter Bright Idea #2: “I could just make one.” Usually, those words are a sign that I’m going to spend a lot of money on supplies, start the project, find it takes more time than I expected and end up with a half-finished project somewhere that makes me feel guilty every time I stumble across it. <Looks across room at three dining chairs with cushion pads and one without.>

But not this time:

This time, I bought the fabric (a lightweight herringbone twill), went straight home and sewed until it was done.

I didn’t do anything fancy, just stitched two lengths together so that it was wide enough and then hemmed all the way around. I didn’t bother backing it since the twill is two-sided but I did take my pinking shears and tidy up all the hems. Since I used approximate measurements from the sizes of bedspreads that we had seen for sale plus a margin for safety because I wanted the bedspread to go all the way to the floor, it is actually a bit big. It is however finished and does exactly what we wanted it to do and I love it!