A Sewing Check Up

I tend to dwell in either feast or famine. Hot or cold. Burning or Freezing. You get the idea. I live life on a pendulum, swinging from finding no motivation whatsoever to being overwhelmed with a list I can't possibly fill in any reasonable timeframe.

I've talked before about lists, and mine tend to haunt me at night.

When we moved here, it took me WEEKS to get back into sewing. Although I still find it a challenge to squeeze in time for many projects, "many projects" are flooding my mind, and I don't know if I can live up to my list of ideas.

Quite a while back, I mentioned that I aspire to meet this challenge.

Psshht.

But Liesl is so sweet. 

She hasn't given me one ounce of grief over being a horrible slacker. She aims to encourage, and has assured me that her sole purpose is to get people sewing more (and spending less).

Although I haven't exactly kept my end of the Craft Book Challenge, I have slowly moved toward finishing some projects that I owe to others. I think there's only one left. No, two. But the second one doesn't count because it's a surprise. So, really, if I don't get around to it, no one gets hurt, right?

I've taken sort of a Round-Robin approach to tackling projects. I can't decide which one is more urgent, so I act on inspiration. Whatever strikes me at the moment is what I end up doing.

For instance, I've been waiting for a certain decorator fabric to go on sale so that I may make new bedding for Gabriela's room. Well, I finally bought it, and there have been about two more sales since then; but I have yet to cut into it. I did, however, make the piping to edge the duvet cover I plan to make for her.

See:

I'll be using these for the duvet cover, but ssshhhh! Gabriela doesn't know that I bought the fabric already. I want to surprise her.

I hopped from that project over to something I was inspired to do for the guest room, which was the logical progression of an idea I had for my room. I wanted to take my old white matelassé coverlet from the guest bed and return it to my bed, which was its original home so long ago that I don't recall, exactly.

Taking the coverlet from the guest room would have left a void there, but I'm not willing to buy replacement bedding. The only recourse was for me to take the one remaining unused duvet cover that we had and give it a facelift.

Several years ago, when we moved from Georgia to Alabama, I went on a Potterybarn Kids binge. I can't even bring myself to look at one of their catalogs now (although I still like their stuff). Anyway, I decided to start recycling the leftovers of that decorating season in my life.

So, I started with this: 

(Taken from the archives)

Then I removed that pink pom-pom fringe. Since the guest room usually hosts male guests (and because the wall color is blue), I wanted to give this white duvet cover a piped edge that would welcome a man with dignity. 

I remembered these curtains (from guess where!) that used to be in the boys' room in Alabama:

Bed, quilt & sheets also from Potterybarn Kids
We still have these, by the way. It's time.

With Gabriela's project, I found that making piping is a lot of fun; so I did this:

I found these fabrics on clearance & thought they'd make nice accessories. I'm still searching for other coordinating prints.

The impulse then struck me to do something for my room, so I made a bedskirt to go with the white matelassé coverlet. Something that my heart just can't ever release is toile. And I have lots of it. Even longer ago than the Potterybarn Kids binge, I went on a toile kick. I bought yards and yards of La Dolce Vita by... some designer (I forget now). This eventually became kitchen curtains two moves later, but it is now my bedskirt (and two seat cushions like the one at the beginning of this post):

I learned with this project that a serger is a wonderful thing!

As if I don't have enough projects already on my list to keep me busy until next summer, I'm also considering doing one of these.

Then there's the nagging issue of our sofas. 

*sigh* 

I'm sure that I should just have them cleaned; but I really want to have them replaced. I had considered getting new upholstery, but that costs almost the same as new sofas.

I've started hinting around to the girls that I may employ them in helping me to make slipcovers.

The trouble is that I don't know what I'm doing. I did an online search for tutorials, but I'm terrified of going for it.

If anyone out there lives in the Houston area, knows how to make slipcovers, and takes pity on me, I won't refuse help.

In the meantime, I'm flopping over to a new project. Pillows maybe? Or kitchen accessories? Perhaps a purse or a baby gift? We'll see.

P.S. I wonder what it would be like to have her as a neighbor/best friend.