I Made Curtains!!

Well, a curtain :)



My bathroom faces due east, and is in such a position relative to my bedroom that in the morning, light just pours in. Not so good in the middle of the year like now, when the sun starts to rise at about 4am. I had a lacy white net curtain over the window, but that kept out none of the light at all. So I wanted something that would block out the majority of the light in the morning.

I got some fabric from my fabric stash - some sort of purple satin-y stuff - sorry to anyone who wants to know more, I'm such a beginning sewer that I don't even know what kind of fabric it is. It was given to me in a huge pile of fabric from a friend who was clearing out her own stash. It was long enough sideways to make a curtain the same width as the original net one, that was what I was bothered about yesterday :)

I laid the net curtain over it, and cut it down to the same width. It was a little longer, but I was going to hem it and anyway, it would just cut out more of the light if it was longer. So I folded over the sides and bottom to make a hem (I should really have taken pictures of all these steps, but I was concentrating too hard on getting them done. One thing about sewing, it's not like knitting where I'm happy to spend loads of time on the process. I just want it sewed up as fast as possible :)

I did an invisible stitch to sew in the hem (kind of like mattress stitch in knitting). I should probably mention here that I handsewed the curtain, not machine sewed. I'm still a little scared of my machine. Stupid, I know, but there it is. Then I folded over a much larger portion at the top to make a kind of slot for the pole the original curtain was on to go through, and I invisible-stitched that too. That invisible stitch probably has a proper name, I should look that up at some point!

And voila, I sewed a curtain!! It's more than a little lilac purple, which is not one of my most favouritest colours, but it's what fabric I had in my stash, and it works. I've decided not to buy any more fabric till I've used all or most of the fabric I have, and practiced on that.

I'm quite proud of this curtain, despite its glaring lilac-ness. It's rectangle-y with only one wonky corner, and the sewing is not too badly executed. That's probably just my perfectionism and tendancy to talk my own work down showing through though. It's a good curtain, for my very first one ever!!! I'll probably make a different one at some point, in a more suitable fabric, but this one definitely works for now. I wasn't woken up this morning by insane sunshine, or the dog getting overexcited by the fact that the sun is up, and demanding we get up too! So, yay!!

Sewing Cushions

There's not been much knitting or crocheting going on round here lately :( And it's all because of spring being on the horizon. (I say "on the horizon" because we actually had heavy frost/snow here yesterday, and now we have gale force winds, sigh)

My partner/bf/other half (why is it so hard to decide what to call him if you're not married?!) has got a serious case of spring fever and is going mad spring cleaning the house. I know, it could be far worse, and he could be a man who expects me to do it all, but it's kind of annoying watching this whirlwind going through the house trying to tidy when I'm so naturally messy, and don't get the whole spring cleaning thing. Anyway, last year I'd decided to sew some cushions using the stuffing from old pillows, but only got as far as pinning bits of material into squares, then shoving them into a bag. And recently the questions started... "When are you going to finish those cushions you started?" etc. So I decided to start finishing them.

I've made three cushion inserts so far.



Each cushion insert has the full stuffing from a pillow, so they're very soft and squishy :D

They're all hand-sewn, so it's taking forever to make the inserts, and I haven't even started thinking about the covers yet.

I used some material that I had lying around, that I had received from a friend of my bf's mother. It was about 12" wide, and yards long. I wanted 18" cushions, so I sewed two strips of it together side by side to make the 18" (you can sort of see the construction in this photo. I didn't cut the material apart from lengthwise, so I sewed two seams over the overlapping bits.)



Sorry about the blurriness, it's very hard to take a picture indoors of black thread on black fabric, when the weather sucks so bad :(

Anyway, then I tacked all the way round the edge, leaving just a bit at the corner for turning inside out and stuffing, which I then did. Then I sewed round the edge again, using an invisible seam that I learned at a sewing class one time. So it's taking ages, but it's definitely not going to fall apart!

I have enough black material for 5 cushion inserts altogether, but I have another 5 old pillows to use for stuffing, so I'll need to make another 3 inserts after the black ones, I think. At least. But, at least I'll have some lovely new cushions instead of squished old pillows.

I had been a bit worried at the start of all this if the inside of the pillows would be all grotty and dirty, because they had been used as pillows by us. But they seem fine, and the cushions are going to be used by us too. I would feel a bit differently about using someone else's pillows I think, but when I took the pillows apart, the stuffing looked clean, and the only problem was that it was all squished down. Now it's torn up and put in the cushions, it's all fluffy again :D

Unfortunately, this means that I haven't had much time for knitting or crochet. I've done a bit of spinning though, and I'm trying to fit in my other crafts around cushion making. I'm trying to convince myself of how lovely it'll be when I have all these cushions, and no old pillows or this fabric lying around, but I may have to cast something new on soon to break the monotony! :D