New Skirt and Around the Village

I sewed up a skirt for Olivia today, one of the many projects that made me so excited this weekend thinking about them that I could barely sleep, I mean seriously I stayed up until 2 am Sunday night and only went to bed because it was 2 am, if you know me you know  how unlike me that is.

Back to the skirt.  Olivia is very into Hello Kitty right now, we took a trip the a mall this weekend and saw a Hello Kitty shirt in the window of H&M so we went in, we let Olivia pick what things she wanted.  What did she really want?  Just a shirt and a package of iron on patches.  I told her I would make her some bottoms to put the patches on, so one done today.  We had to go to the village store to get a few things so I took the camera along and snapped some pictures.  Now I will just let you enjoy!

Just outside our house

A foot path that leads to the church yard

She had the idea to pose here but as I was taking the pictures she saw a dog being walked and commented on the purple dog waking towards us, it was wearing a purple coat.

The village church.

Something Different

Adding some new products to my inventory, this is a peak at some new bibs I'm doing up.  This one is in the ETSY shop already.

 

I know I have lots of baby gifts to do up in the next few months, this would complete a gift basket perfectly.

Brighten Up Dreary Days

On my last trip to IKEA I randomly bought some pillow forms.  That's a problem with IKEA I buy a lot of random things, good thing I don't live closer.

I bought them and thought I could make cute covers for them, and then they got stuck in my studio, and buried, and almost forgotten about.  Then I remembered and an idea started to come into my head.  I had umbrella and rain drop fabric I had bought ages ago.  I don't even remember what I was going to make with them but I knew I could come up with a  very cute spring pillow with some of it.

Oh goodness did I really just type all that without showing a picture? Sorry about that.

I have been wanting to do a Union Jack project for a while, they are all over the gift shops here and I thought it would just be fun.

I used wonder under to fuse the ribbon and rick rack to the rain drop back ground.  Applique and piping are new for me.  I have no idea why I have not used piping before, it really adds a great touch to the fabric.

Perfect for sitting in the window seat and watching the rain fall.  Don't tell Olivia this is done, the whole time I was making this she was ready to claim it!  If I can sneak it into hiding it might just be a birthday present.

I designed my own sew in labels the other day.

I also got over my dislike of zippers, this one didn't fight me at all, but then I was not trying to hide it like I do on clothing.

Hand embroidery along the umbrella adds a special touch.  Now go out and do some puddle jumping!

I'm joining the Blogger's Pillow Party over at Stitched in Color, go on over and check out the other great pillows.

The Story of a Headboard

I like interior design.  I am always tweaking things in my house and it drives me nuts that my living room is so long and narrow and no solid walls, but this isn't about the living room, that's another post.

This post is about a headboard for my bed.  For over a year my bed has been a blah mattress and box spring on a metal frame I'm on a mission to change that so I have been looking for ideas.  The problem I am having is I don't really know what I want.  What ever I do has to be able to mounted on the wall because right behind our bed are pipes leading from the boiler to the radiators and hot water taps in our house, not only to they create an obstacle but after you put a king sized bed in a 10'x12' room there is very little room for anything else.

I'm leaning toward an upholstered headboard mounted on the wall like this

If we were in the US I know I could pull this off, however I have yet to see a set of folding doors here.

I'm leaning this way because other than some wood and possibly some trim I have all I need to make one. The current issue of BHG has a shorter headboard a compilation of art work above it and I really like that. Or I could get some long narrow pictures for either side of the bed.

I really like this one

Just a couple of minor issues, the whole radiator pipe like I mentioned before, and the fact that I'm pretty sure this headboard is wider than my entire room.

Doors also seem to be all the rage for headboards. I wish I could find a picture I saw the other day of a set of doors being used as a head board it was beautiful and made we rush to EBAY UK to look for doors, unfortunately I did not see any that inspired me.

Lovely dark wood, I could probably make a new door look like this.

Hum, now this is a possibility.

This has the height that would go well on our wall, if I could find folding doors. It would also have to be a different color as it would blend in with our off white walls too much and I'm just not feeling painting in this house.

Hum, now this is a possibility.

As I was looking online today I noticed a lot of fire place surrounds being used as head boards.  LOVE the idea.

 Just enough detail and the middle can be filled with a piece of fabric covered MDF.

 This is just eye candy.

 I like this one but I don't know if I could trust it to stay in the wall.

Now if I wanted to do some painting there is this, I could actually see this in Olivia's room with a pink background.

I pulled this photo because this is what my room really needs as a whole, but Alas the whole pipes coming out of the wall and no room to walk at the end of the bed if we have to accommodate a large headboard behind it thing.

Then as I sit here writing this I relize I could let my husband expand his colections of giant pub signs, maybe.....

Picture credit www.BHG.com

Corners of My Home

I started to do a home tour on my old blog ages ago so I'm sure that family out there will appreciate this post, mostly I'm just putting off folding laundry by playing with taking pictures and editing them honing my photography skills.  Our house is a pleasing mixture of old and new.  Part of it was originally two flint stone cottages, that is cottages built out of flint rock not built by the Flintstones I'm pretty sure it's not THAT old.  In recent years a modern addition has been added to the house to add a very nice sized kitchen bathroom and a room to use for whatever you like (a bedroom for us because the actual bedrooms in this house do not accommodate adult furniture).

Today I'm going to show you our entrance.  The layout of our house is interesting as there is no "front" door.  The house is a U shape around a large patio (or court yard if you want to sound fancy).  There is a proper entrance door along with two sets of french patio doors, we don't use the small door as it goes into my sewing studio.  The doors we use are the patio doors from the kitchen.

This is almost an entire wall of windows!  I love it, this kitchen has the best lighting on sunny days, not as good on dreary winter days like today but still brighter than the living room which is in the old part of the house.  I have done some changing here recently.  I had the curtains on rods and had them on all the windows and the birds of paradise plants were in the narrow windows.  I got tired of that, for one the curtains just created dust bunnies, for another I really wanted to be able to show off and use those tall narrow windows.  My fix was to buy a couple of shelves from IKEA, they fit perfectly.  If I ever remember to go pick up some potted herbs I will have them on these shelves, I have visions of green peeking out from these shelves and possibly even spilling out.

In theory this basket will keep things that I need to grab when going out the door, my coupon book is in there right now, along with a couple of packages that need to be mailed.

This is for my mom.  Mom just so you know there is no shortage of clocks in my house now, as long as you don't go to the kids rooms, but hey they can't tell time anyway.

I bought these birds of paradise plants the first summer we were here so three years ago.  I had wanted some for the longest time but could not bring myself to pay for a mature plant, they are lots of money and I was afraid I would kill one.  One day we were at Homebase, a chain here like Lowe's or Home Depot, and they had little ones on sale for what worked out to be about $4 each.  Score!  I could totally not feel guilty about killing a $4 plant unlike killing a $100 plant.  I got two of them and they are still alive, they love the light in this kitchen.

You can see the tall narrow window here.  Total sun trap in the summer, not so much in the winter.

Since we walk right into our kitchen and practically right on top of our dining table when we enter the house we have to find a way to corral all the coats and shoes. Around the corner down a small hall way we put this wardrobe. It's holding our shoes, hats,, gloves, scarves, etc.  Next to it we have a coat tree and next to that is a dog kennel that really has no good home.  I had a picture that showed more but I don't know what happened to it.

Hope you enjoyed!