Time is Ticking!

Hi friends!  Hope you had a great holiday last week.  We didn't do anything special, but I spent a LOT of time at my sewing machine.

Time was really ticking away!

I made 7 pillows and 2 slipcovers for cushions and a whole lot of cording to go in the pillows and slipcovers. The ticking pillow above with the clock was made using a graphic from The Graphic Fairy.   Karen has such great graphics to choose from. I used  the transfer paper method again.

Everything I made goes in the loft area where the grand kids congregate when they are here. So I decided in addition to the clock, the alphabet would be fun. That graphic is from The Graphics Fairy, too. Won't these be fun for the kids?

At first I wasn't sure how these would look on the ticking, but they turned out great, don't you think?

See those four denim pillows on the seat of the church pew?  Yep, made those last week.  Also made the large denim pillow, but I think it needs something on it, so will work on it some more.  The flag pillow I told you about here.

The cushions on the wicker rockers needed covers.  In fact, this rocker never had a cushion before.

This pillow was made a while back.  Here is a closer look.

I kept seeing these ticking "maze" pillows everywhere so decided to see if I could make one.

One thing I learned about ticking -- it is not created equal.  Did you know there are different weights of this ticking stripe?  This pillow is made from a denim weight ticking.  The other pillows are more like quilt fabric weight.  The lighter weight comes 54" wide at Jo Ann's.

When this church pew "lived" in the Master Bedroom, it had a skirt so things could be stored under it.  I'm thinking of doing a ticking skirt for it now and maybe painting it white.  This pew is from the church I grew up in.  I remember when they were bought from an older church and refinished, so I would not be messing with the original finish.  Do you think white would be good?

Hope you enjoyed this pillow talk!  I have another pillow to show you in another post later, but it isn't made using ticking stripes.

Until next time,

xoxoXOXOxoxo,

Lois

Joining the following parties:

Nifty Thrifty Tuesday

The Graphics Fairy Brag Munday

Cowgirl Up

French Country Cottage's Feathered Nest Friday

Ottoman Slipcover

Don't you  love it when a plan comes together?  I showed you the early preparations on making the slip cover for the ottoman here.  Yesterday I finished the sewing AND fixed my serger so that the seams would be neat and not ravel.  The serger makes the finished seams so much nicer than just zig zag stitching over them.

Here are a few photos of the process.

The cording is pinned on ready for the skirt to be added.  I really did like the Monet like fabric when the ottoman was new, but later decided white was the way to go.

Keeping the zipper foot close to the cording is important.  I have a few places I think I'll go back and tighten a bit.

And we are ready for tea and lemon pound cake.  It was delicious!

Ahh....... tea and the latest Romantic Homes magazine - pure bliss!

Yep, this is the life!

Nice little pleats on the corners.  oops, need to pull it down a bit, there is a wrinkle.  Well, I have a few of those as well!

Now you can see the whole striped top.

Love those stripes!

Hope you like the ottoman redo. 

Maybe I'll share the lemon pound cake recipe another day.

XOXO

Lois

I'm sharing with French Country Cottage Feathered Nest Friday

Peek at Ottoman Redo

Quite some time ago I bought a drop cloth from Home Depot for two reasons.  I was needing to make a new slip cover for the ottoman in the family room and I had been reading about all the amazing things other bloggers were doing with these drop cloths.

I brought it home and washed it with detergent and bleach 3 times at least to soften it and lighten the color a bit.  And then it sat and sat and sat.  Christmas came and went and still it sat.

Finally earlier this week I cut the pieces that I needed from this huge piece or canvas cloth, but did not get to anything else on it that day.  Yesterday, I finally got the pieces out and started doing things.

First I taped off and using craft paint painted the piece that will be the top.

Sort of looks like driving down the road, huh, with the stripes getting narrower the further away it is.  It's the angle of the camera, though.  The stripes are pretty even, although I did want it to look like an old French grain bag so it wouldn't look perfect.  Underneath the cloth were two contact covered foam core boards taped together so there would be no gap.  Since I was working on the island in my kitchen, I didn't want to get paint where it wasn't supposed to be.  Hmmm, those two dots on my T-shirt don't count, do they?  I think the bottle burped when I opened it!

Here is a detail of what it looks like. 

The next thing I did was to make miles and miles of piping as this is a tailored slipcover.

This is really a pretty easy job, but I did break two needles because I forgot to move the needle to the left when I had to shut the machine off and do something else for a while.  The machine resets both the needle position and stitch length when turned off.

Today I will start stitching the pieces together.  It's been probably 7 or 8 years since the last slipcover was made, so it is definitely time for a new one!  The old one was made from white canvas and has been washed so many times, but no longer looks it's best.  We DO put our feet on this ottoman so it does not stay clean looking all the time!

In the next installment, I'll show you the finished slipcover.

XOXO

Lois