Reversible Placemats

Between the general holiday busyness and what feels like super short days here I have to admit that I haven’t been especially motivated to update the blog in the past month. Since it’s now less than a week until Christmas I thought I better try and finish some of the posts that relate to this time of year before they are completely out of date. In the meantime I’m just gonna keep up my fall wreaths until spring comes around just like last year. (If you do something two years in a row it’s pretty much a a tradition right?)

Ok now on to the vaguely holiday related post!

About the same time I made my new kitchen mixer rug I also made a set of new reversible place mats. (Yes that was over a month ago.)

I used some place mats I already had on hand as well as a setting of china to figure out how big I wanted to make my place mats.

Just like with the mixer rug I finished one edge as well as attached a fleece interfacing to one of the fabrics.

After I sewed the two sides together I had the exciting task of hand stitching the opening closed on twelve place mats. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate hand sewing?

Once the hand sewing was done I did come back and do a little top stitching to keep the edges from rolling too much.

After they were all done and set out on the table with my new table runner I was pretty happy with the way they turned out.

For the first year ever we actually had Thanksgiving here at our house.

It was great to finally have a good excuse to bring out the fine china.

Now I just need to find an excuse to flip those place mats over and use them for a Christmas event.

Fall Leaves Burlap Table Runner

At the beginning of October I made some new fall pillowcases for my living room. To go with those I thought it would be fun to have a table runner for the dining room that matched.

I started with a length of burlap that was about 16″ wide. I moved it back and forth on the table until I liked the length on one side. Then I just trimmed the opposite side to match the overhang.

I decided to finish the edges similar to binding a quilt. I cut strips of fabric 4.5″ x 16″ long and then sewed 4 together to make a chain that was a little longer than the runner. I then folded the long strip in half and sewed the raw edges along the edge of the burlap runner with a 1/2″ seam allowance.

From there I ironed the binding away from the runner.

Then I folded it over the back side and pinned it in place. To keep it in place I just sewed close to the seam fold.

To embellish the runner I wanted to add some leaves similar to the pillow cases. Since I wanted to use my silhouette machine I cut several 8×11 rectangles of fusible interfacing.

Then I fused each piece of interfacing to the back side of one of the fabrics I wanted to use.

I laid out all the leaves on the runner and moved them around until I liked where they were placed. Once I liked where everything was I just had to iron them on.

Since these were so small and I’m not that crazy I decided to forgo any sort of stitching around the leave shapes.

It took me just a few hours to make this and I’m pretty happy with the results.

It’s nice to have a little color and pattern on top the table.

Does anyone else fill the need to decorate a table that you never use?

Scalloped Easter Bunny Table Runner

Happy Easter! I meant to post about this project last week but I just didn’t get around to writing it up. So here it is right in time for Easter.

Last year around Easter I bought some cute bunny fabric on clearance. I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do with so it but eventually I came up with the idea to make a scalloped edge table runner.

I whipped out my silhouette portrait (cause well why not?) and cut out various sizes of circle.

I finally decided on the 3″ wide circle to use. It wasn’t the largest one but not the smallest so that I didn’t have to do a ton of curves.

I think I bought about a yard of fabric. I cut a strip of fabric that was 16″ wide for the runner and then two smaller strips about 4.5″ wide to use as facings for the scallops.

I thought I would at least finish of one edge of the facings so I serged it first.

Then I just did a small double turned hem.

To make the actual scallops I used the template I made and traced out a half circle using a disappearing ink fabric pen.

Then I traced the circles using the sewing machine keeping about 1/4″ away from the lines I traced.

Once it was all sewn I trimmed the scallops along the lines and up into the point. In order for the scallops to turn well I really had to trim as close up to the point as I could.

Then I took quite a while turning and ironing get everything to lay flat. It didn’t come out perfect but it worked pretty well. To finish off the edges I just serged the ends and did another double turned 1/4″ hem.

I just couldn’t help but cut out a few more flowers with the silhouette to add a little something more to the table.

Aren’t the bunnies just so cute. Bunnies can totally be a spring animal right? I can just keep this up a while longer I think.

I think if I were to do it again I wouldn’t have made the scallops quite so deep but I do think it makes a pretty cute spring table runner.

Anyone else changing up some table decor for spring?

Hiding the Clutter

After we got married we purchased a china cabinet of sorts to display our china in our rental. When we moved into the new house this cabinet was set into the living room and I actually filled it similar to the way I had before.

It is actually two separate cabinets. One has solid doors and the other glass. I choose these two pieces instead of all glass so that I could store other boxes and extra items on the bottom half.

Not long after we moved in I set both pieces on the floor just to see how they would look under the window in the living room.

I liked everything about this except I didn’t like that the two cabinets didn’t really match each other.

Well after we brought home all the living room furniture I moved these two cabinets into the dining room.

Since I purchased the new china cabinets I didn’t really need these cabinets for display anymore. Now they became storage.

The downside with this is that you can see everything inside, things that aren’t so pretty and are better left hidden. Also the cabinets still didn’t match. So I came up with an idea to make them match and hide the storage.

Now it turns out that the two cabinets are identical except for the doors. So all I had to do was swap one of the solid doors for the glass door. Then I found same scrapbook paper that I already had on hand. I cut squares of the paper a little bigger than each pane. Then I just attached them to the inside of the frame using blue painters tape.

The papers don’t exactly match each other in pattern but now the cabinets match each other and all that storage is hidden. I think it looks so much better now that you can’t see what’s inside.

Anyone else been creating some creative and hidden storage solutions?

Dressing Up Some Windows

Since we’ve moved in both of these rather large windows in the living and dining have been bare.

They didn’t look bad, in fact they are huge windows with overall great views but they felt just a little unfinished.

Well, we’ve been working on a project late this summer. Spoiler Alert: we built a shed! Unfortunately the shed ended up blocking the view out of the dining room a bit. It didn’t go exactly as we had originally planned. So now we have a less than stellar view which was just the push I needed to consider some curtains.

On our last trip to Ikea (our second home) I picked up two sets of curtain rods and curtains. I think it ended up costing around $100 and that’s the main reason for choosing Ikea, I couldn’t find anything else much cheaper.

In the past when I was thinking about the curtains I knew that I wanted something light and airy. I didn’t want to completely cover the windows or block the views entirely, I just wanted to soften the edges a bit. I also wanted to go with a layered look.

After searching the Ikea website I found that the vivan curtains not only came in both grey and white but they seemed to look sheer. The $10 a set price tag was also a a big selling point. So I went off to the store an gathered all the things I needed, including double rods to layer the curtains with.

So enough with the talk on with it! Here’s the dining room with the shades open:

Then on to the dining room with the shades closed. That shed roof is completely out of view now. The curtains didn’t end up being the silky sheer that I originally expected but they are a light-weight more linen look, which for the price was just fine with me.

In the dining room I went with the grey in the front and the white layered in back. I love that they run independently so that I can open and close them differently.

One thing I learned in this is that at Ikea you need to buy one set of the curtain rings per panel not per set of curtains. With only five rings on a curtain they don’t lay very well and they gap awkwardly. I’m looking to remedy that one my next trip to Ikea.

Now onto the living room. Here are the curtains up and open. Actually the window is pretty wide in here and as such if we were to fully close the curtains they would end up almost flat. I’m not too concerned about that since I’m not planning to close them very often, mostly they are just for show here.

I also switched the order of the curtains up in the living room because I didn’t want a large amount of grey showing because of the already large grey couches.

Something you may notice below is that the curtains have a bit of a high water pants issue. Have I ever mentioned that it’s hard to find curtains that are more than 98″ long, especially cost effective ones? Because it is.

For now it was worth the price and I have some plans for lengthening the curtains in the future.

Anyone else have some ideas for lengthening some curtains? Have you made any alterations to basic curtains to jazz them up a bit?