Turning cloth napkins into pillows {DIY}

Hi all! Sorry it's been a little while since I've posted...y'know how life can get sometimes. :)

Today I'm sharing my latest pillows. I'm seriously obsessed with making pillows. I just made these ones out of a curtain. It's probably because it's one of the few things I can manage to sew (kind of)!

My newest pillows are made from cloth napkins I found on sale at Target (where else?). I just loved the floral pattern and the blues, greens and yellows of this pattern. I had eyed these napkins for a while but since I didn't really need them, I made myself walk away...until I saw the orange clearance sticker. The sticker said $6.98, but the receipt said $2.98! What a deal! I bought them with the intention of using them as napkins.

Then at Jo-Ann I saw this turquoise remnant fabric that was half off the marked price, and I snatched that up too, again not sure what I'd do with it but loving the color and thinking it reminded me of the colors already in my living room.

Then it hit me -- make some more pillows!

I simply cut the turquoise fabric for the back and didn't even do anything to the napkin -- I just sewed the pieces together. I sewed as close to the napkin seam as I could. The napkins aren't quite square, so I tried to compensate for that, which I dd only somewhat effectively. So if you look close you can tell my pillows aren't square either, or even the same size. But they're good enough for me!

I already had the pillow forms, so these two pillows cost me about $7 total. The pillows like this that Target sells? 24 bucks. What a deal!

As you can see by my pillow collection, I'm slowly becoming more comfortable mixing patterns in my living room.

I'm sticking to blues, greens, yellows and neutrals to keep things cohesive, but I'm mixing geometric patterns and floral patterns with solids, and I've got an embroidered pillow and a couple linen ones that lend some texture. My new floral ones feel like a breath of fresh spring air.

But my favorite couch accessory? This guy.

What a face!

I'm happy to report Colby is healing well from his knee surgery seven weeks ago. After six weeks of restricted activity, his bones have healed and the vet has cleared him to resume some activity. Yay! He's very happy to be taking walks and joining us on the couch again. He should be able to resume his normal puppy activity in about four weeks, just in time to enjoy the summer.

But back to the pillows. I still have two napkins left in my four-pack. What do you think I should do with them? I think I'm maxed out on pillows for now. Maybe I'll actually use them for their intended purpose...what an idea. :)

Linking up!

Curtain turned into pillows {DIY}

Hi everyone! Hope you had a good Monday.

Today I'm sharing some pillows I made for our living room. Did we need pillows? No, we did not. :) But I just love changing out my pillows, especially if I can do it on the cheap by making my own.

I searched high and low for a geometric fabric I liked in the colors I wanted but came up empty-handed. Then I spotted the Farrah Fretwork curtain at Target:

So cute, right? And it was just $20 for one.

Lucky for me, I had pillows at home I wasn't using (remember, I love pillows!) and their covers were removable.

As you might recall, I'm not great at sewing, but I can usually manage pillows. My favorite kind of pillow cover to make is an envelope pillow, because it's removable and I don't have to handstitch it closed -- and because I'm too scared to try a zipper!

When I spread the curtain out and saw the hem, I realized it was perfect for making the envelope part. Don't know what I mean? You'll see soon.

The pillow forms were 20 inches x 20 inches, so I cut my fabric at 21 inches square, leaving a half-inch for a seam. For the envelope part, I cut the two pieces 21 x 15 inches and 21 by 11 inches, with half-inch seams on all sides, making the final dimensions 20 x 14 and 20 x 10. The bigger piece is on the inside, and the smaller piece goes on the outside.

With just a little cutting and sewing, I got two new pillows for just $10 each!

Here's the envelope back. See what I mean about the hem? That's the finished edge you see here. It saved me some time from having to finish the edges myself.

I was worried they'd be blue overload with our blue walls, but I don't think so.

And I even have some fabric left over to make something else!

Have you ever used a curtain to make pillows? Shopping the curtain or sheet aisle can sometimes score you some great fabrics and patterns for a cheaper price than shopping the fabric store.

White-and-aqua striped curtains {DIY}

Hey all! Hope you're doing well! We finally dug ourselves out of the blizzard. Now we get to deal with slush. :)

Today I'm sharing a project that has been on my radar for a while, and took me a loooong time to finish. I think nearly every blog-reader out there has fallen in love with the Nester's striped curtains:

Source: thenester.com via Mindy on Pinterest

Gorgeous, am I right? I totally wanted striped curtains for my office. But try as I might, I couldn't find striped fabric like this. What's a blogger to do? DIY, of course!

There are a lot of tutorials out there for striped curtains using fabric or even paint. I read a bunch and used them all to tackle my own striped curtains. And I'm sharing how I did it with all of you so you can make your own too!

 
 
*Big, giant, gynormous disclaimer --  my sewing skills are very amateur. There will probably be lots in here that will make people with real sewing talent cringe. I'm hoping there are lots of beginners out there who will find this helpful, and for you pros -- humor me :)

Even though I'm not great at sewing, I decided to go the fabric route instead of paint because I wasn't sure how paint would look and how it would hold up. I also decided that the easiest thing for me would be to buy curtain panels and add fabric stripes.

I bought four of these Grayson white curtains from Target in the 95" length.

They have a grommet top that I didn't want to include in my measurements for the stripes, so I measured the length of the curtain from the bottom of the grommet section to the bottom of the curtain. There was a little variation in the length of the curtains, but they were about 90 inches.

Next, I had to figure out how many stripes I wanted and how big I wanted them to be. I needed to come up with something easily divisible, so all the stripes would be easy. Luckily, I was working with an easy number.

I sketched out a couple options....

Fifteen-inch-wide stripes only gave me three colored stripes, which didn't seem like enough. So I landed on 10" stripes, which gave me five colored stripes and four white stripes, for a total of nine. With four curtains, that was a total of 20 colored stripes. I allowed for an inch of hem for each stripe, so 11" of fabric for each stripe -- equaling 220 inches of fabric needed, or a little more than 6 yards.

Then I ventured off to Jo-Ann to find some fabric. I wanted something not too expensive, something in a material similar to the curtain material, and something a light-aqua color to coordinate with this lamp I have in the office:

I ended up with this Symphony Broadcloth. Luckily it was 45" wide, perfect for me 41"-wide curtains!

I started by measuring out my 10" stripes on my curtains and marking them with a light pencil mark on the back. Like I said earlier, the curtains weren't all exactly 90" long. I started my measuring from the top, so that if my bottom stripe ended up a little bigger than 10" it would be less noticeable.

Then, I measured my colored stripes. I measured 11" so I'd have plenty of room for error hemming.

Next, I got out my rotary cutter and my quilting grid and got to work cutting my stripes!



After they were cut, I measured the half-inch hems, pinned them and ironed them so they'd lay flat.

Then, I pinned the stripes to my curtains. This seriously took the longest amount of time. I had to make sure each stripe was straight, evenly spaced and smooth, and every little movement of the fabric meant things were shifting around. I used nearly every pin I had to keep these things together!

At this point, I seriously considered skipping the sewing and using iron-on adhesive to sew everything together. But I decided to whip out the sewing machine. Why? Well, I figured if I made a mistake sewing, I could rip out the stitches and try again. But if I messed up with adhesive, well, I'd be out of luck.

So, time to sew! Okay, maybe this part took the longest. I sewed about two-and-a-half curtains before I lost my momentum and took a break for a few weeks months.

At some point I got sick of my naked windows and the pile of fabric taking up space, I regained my momentum and finally finished sewing on the panels. I used white thread for a little contrast to give the curtains a casual look.

On the bottoms, I wrapped the aqua fabric around the hem of the curtain and folded the corners.

I did pull out the Heat & Bond to finish the edges of the stripes and keep them lying flat on the back of the curtains.

Finally, it was time to hang them -- on curtain rods that we hung high and (a little) wide.

Here's the finished product!

With the light behind them, you can see that my sewing isn't always straight -- but only if you look closely. It's definitely not bothering me, but if it starts to, I can always line them.

I love those code flag posters! They were the initial inspiration for our office redo. They're from etsy seller Empressionista.

My sewing isn't perfect, but I'm totally loving these curtains! They have the nautical look that I was going for and add some color to our gray walls.

There are lots of striped curtains out there, but I'm so happy I jumped on the bandwagon! Even Colby likes them.

What do you think -- are you nuts for striped curtains too? Have you made any? I'd love to see what you did!

Links to other great DIY striped curtains!

A Thoughtful Place
Teal & Lime
The Thrifty Abode
The Yellow Cape Cod
A Spotted Pony
Hodge Podge
A round-up by Apartment Therapy

Linking up!

 

Entryway evolution, part two

Hi all! Any of you in the middle of this crazy blizzard like we are? It's still snowing, and we've already gotten more than two feet! It's by far the most snow I've ever seen in my life...totally crazy.

Colby is loving it, though!

I'm back with part two of our entryway redo. We left off here:

I forgot to mention in my last post that I also had to paint the ceiling, since we took down walls and had to patch drywall. We also got a new light fixture from Lowe's. This semi-flush mount was only about $100. I love it!

This is the only picture I have of the old light, from back before we even bought our house. The new one is big improvement!

So now we had a nice big, open space in dire need of some storage. Obviously, we wanted a place to hang coats and store shoes, but we also had an opportunity for some additional storage in this space. I was picturing some open storage with cute baskets, like this:

Source: bhg.com via Mindy on Pinterest

But the hubs was envisioning some cabinets for closed storage. In the end, he won me over, and we came up with a plan for a floor-to-ceiling pantry and a row of cabinets along the ceiling, with coat and shoe storage underneath -- similar to this:

Source: bhg.com via Mindy on Pinterest

We were hoping to find some off-the-shelf cabinets that we could make work for our plan, but our space is odd-shaped, so that was out. We needed to do something custom, but the price of custom cabinets was out of our budget. Handy hubs to the rescue again!

With his dad's help, he designed and built custom cabinets to fit our space. He made them out of birch plywood, with face frames made out of maple.

To make them safe and secure, he installed them onto strips of wood screwed into the wall studs.

Once the cabinets were installed, I was up again, paint brush in hand. I primed them with some Zinsser B-I-N and painted them with semi-gloss white latex paint by Behr. It took a few coats to cover them. To get a smooth finish, I used some Floetrol to extend the drying time.

I painted the cabinets before they were installed, and I didn't paint the face frames, because we wanted to fill the cracks to make them look like one piece.

A simple wooden rod installed under the cabinets serves as a coat rack.

With the cabinets in place, it was time to tackle the floor. As I mentioned, we had to tear out the old floor because we removed walls, leaving gaps in the tile, and we could find anything to match it. I was kind of sad to tear out the old tile -- it wasn't my favorite, but it was slate, so it felt kind of wrong. While some of it broke when we were taking it out, we were able to save a good amount, so hopefully we can reuse it somewhere else.

Not only did we have to tear up the tile, but then we had to rip up the plywood the tile was stuck to, since it was all covered in old thinset and super uneven. (Sorry I didn't get any photos of this process -- it was ugly and I just wanted it over!) There was a second layer of plywood under the first, leaving us with what you see above.

We decided to go with tile again in this space instead of hardwood since it would get exposed to a lot of moisture. But we had never done any kind of tile and were a little nervous about it. We also were looking for something we could do fast, since we were trying to get it done before winter came and we were trudging in with wet boots.

While perusing tile at Lowe's, I stumbled onto this:

Have you heard of it? It's called SnapStone, and it's porcelain tile with a rubber grid and plastic tabs attached to the bottom. You don't need to use thinset -- the tabs click together and hold the floor in place. It's essentially a floating tile floor.

We did some research on it and decided to go with it. It sounded easy to use and fast to install. It's a little more expensive than the cheaper regular tile, but we didn't need to do a very big space, so it wasn't too bad. We picked a 12-inch tile in a color called Camel (it looks like it's no longer available). They come in boxes of five for $30, and we had to special order it through Lowe's. We bought a total of 13 boxes to make sure we had enough in case we broke some or made mistakes (and we did!), and we had one box left to spare when it was all over.

Before the tile went down, the hubs installed some luan -- a thin type of plywood that was just the right thickness to get the tile even with the hardwood in the kitchen. Then, we plotted out how we wanted to lay  the floor. I swear this took longer than the actual labor. We wanted to make sure the design looked right and that we ended up with as few little pieces on the edges as possible. We ultimately decided to go with an offset pattern running from the front door into the kitchen...does that make sense? Maybe this photo will help:

I installed the tile while the hubs did the cutting on the end pieces. I'll have another post on the details of installing the tile, so for now I'll just say that it wasn't as easy as the installation videos made it look, but overall it was fairly simple and I'd definitely use it again.

We finished the installation in a day -- and next time we use them it would take even less time, since we know how it goes.

Now it was time to grout. Because it's a floating floor that will expand and contract, you have to use a flexible grout that they make specifically for SnapStone. There are a few color choices -- we chose Mushroom. We picked up two buckets at Lowe's but only needed one in the end.

The grouting went very fast -- I did it in a couple hours.

You aren't supposed to grout around the wall -- you're supposed to leave it open, or use a silicon caulk if you have a high-moisture area (like a bathroom). We left it open around the walls, since the baseboards will cover the gap.

We used caulk between the tiles and the two doors, since there's no trim to cover the space -- they make a caulk that matches the SnapStone grout. The silicon cracked when it dried, so we need to add another layer on top.

I was sad to tear out the slate, but now I'm not missing it at all -- I love this floor! I love the variation in the colors and the warm hue.

After the floor was finished, we added shelving to the cabinets. Since our cabinets are a custom width, that also meant custom shelves. The hubs made these out of birch plywood and trimmed the fronts with pine trim. I primed and painted them like I did the cabinets.

Meanwhile, I was also busy planning out what to do in the corner where the small closet was. I really, really love entryways with benches. They're a place to sit to put on your shoes, to toss your purse when you get home -- and they're also totally cute, right?

We decided not to go the custom route this time -- luckily I found lots of benches that would fit nearly perfectly on this wall. I picked up this one from Target:

I was happy to get my open storage and baskets! I totally have a thing for baskets -- they're like everywhere in my house. The hubs thinks it's weird... :)

To give this bench a custom look and jazz it up a bit, I decided to recover the cushion in some fabric I had on hand. I'd bought it because I loved it but wasn't sure what to do with it. The colors went great in the entryway!

I am not a good sewer, and I kind of made up making a new cover. It's definitely not pretty -- don't look too closely or you'll see all my mistakes! On the bench, though, you can't tell. I didn't make the cover removable -- I just used no-sew fabric tape to seal the back edge together.

The Target cover came with Velcro pads on the bottom that stick to ones on the bench. I used a seam ripper to get them off the original cover and then handstitched them to my new cover. So cute!

So, here's where we are now!

In case you can't tell, I did not stage these cabinets -- this is really what they look like, full of tools and supplies to finish the job, plus some random baskets of mittens and scarves.

There's still lots to do in here. We need to install a permanent shoe rack -- it'll probably just be a shelf along the bottom with space for shoes above and below. The hubs is adding drawers to the bottom of the pantry cabinet, and he needs to make some doors.

I also need to paint the face frames and the doors, once they're made. We also need to trim out the gaps underneath the cabinets, and the base of the cabinet. The trim has been cut and primed, so now it needs to be installed, and then I'll paint it.

The trim around the doors and the baseboards need to get reinstalled and given a fresh coat of paint. And the outlet and light-switch covers need to go back on. And over the bench I have plans to make a cute shelf with hooks underneath. Something like this:

Source: gthegentleman.tumblr.com via Mindy on Pinterest

Lastly, we need some hooks near the door for keys, and I'd like to add a place to put mail too. I'm working on those details!

Let's put this all in a list, shall we?

Left to do:

• Install a shoe rack
• Build and install drawers
• Install and paint trim around cabinets
• Build and paint cabinet doors
• Replace trim around doors and baseboards, and paint
• Replace outlet covers
• Make shelf and install hooks over bench
• Make a key-and-mail holder

We're so close -- I can't wait to get this done! Even though it's not finished, I think I can finally call this a mudroom instead of an entryway -- it feels like a real room now.