Tween room makeover

Many months ago my daughter requested a room re-do.  It was time to let go of her babyish room and bring it more in line with her tastes.

So she designed this room all by herself.  Her Dad and I just did all the manual labor, although she helped there as well.  Might as well learn young right?

There was a new floor install (which she picked out and helped install)


New paint

and some stenciling

New furniture that her Dad built (yup, he's handy that way) and new custom mattress courtesy of her uncle (that was fortunate).

New curtains that I sewed and some sparkly pillows made (Yes that was xmas time).


Repurpose an old chair, repaint an old mirror, add a shag rug and you have a reading nook (aka home for the stuffies).

New headboard (made by her Dad) and upholstered (me)

and finally some wall art that she wanted, total PBteen hack job.  This sign doesn't come in black in that size - no problem... DIY to the rescue.


Then finally it was all complete! (A mere 6 months later)

She is in heaven and I'm pretty happy with the whole thing myself!

Sometimes that whole DIY and sewing thing really pays off.

Happy Sewing!

ETD a word about sources:
Ribbon Damask Stencil from Royal Design Studio
DIY upholstered headboard tutes at Involving the senses  except we used a plywood board and wood frame. I also used a foam alternative called NuFoam which didn't require predrilling holes in the foam because it's more like heavyweight batting and the needle slid right through it.
Chenille Headboard Fabric and Sequin pillow fabrics from Mood. Linens and shag rug from PBTeen.  Damask Fabric for Curtains from Michael Miller.

A Rainbow for the Table

Napkins!! At our house we have been in dire need of new napkins - reusable ones. So in keeping with my home dec initiative, I made some new napkins for dinnertime. Lots and lots of them ~ 24 which sounds like a lot but really when you use them 4 at a time, that doesn't last so many days. After sewing these puppies all weekend, I'm tired of sewing napkins for now, so these will have to do for a bit.

A sunny rainbow of color for the table.

Notice they are gray in color because that's pretty much the color they are going to end up anyway - no point in slaving over the laundry just to get rid of the spaghetti sauce stains. Nope. Less stress this way! ;)

I roughly followed Penny's napkin tutorial (SewTakeaHike) if you'ld like to make your own napkins.

Happy Sewing!

Back in Business

Well after much worrying and wondering just how much my sewing machine repair was going to cost me, hubby managed to fix it when he got back into town! Yeehaaaw!! I'm so thrilled that my baby is back and it didn't cost me a thing to fix. So, with my machine working again I was able to finish up another project in the dedicated to decorating series.

We redid the kids playroom recently and turned it into more of a den/hangout for the kids. When we did that, we moved the game system in there and it's been in a bit of a disarray ever since. I'm not sure if this is because it's mostly a kids room or just because we don't have the right furniture in there yet but it needed some help. Here is the before shot:

Yeah, kind of a hot mess. So I made another storage box for that area. This one is 12x12x8". That size fits perfectly under that tiny table holding the components. Now all the games and controllers are all neatly organized in the box instead of sprawling themselves all over the place. Much better!

I had a lot of questions on the last post with the scrap boxes about just how I made these boxes. So I'm planning a quick tutorial in the next post along with an upcoming blog-i-versary celebration. So stay tuned.

Happy Sewing!

2011 ~ Dedicated to Decorating!

I don't usually make new year's resolutions. Here's why: I personally feel that you should and can make a change in your life at any point during the year and that you don't have to wait for the new year to reflect on necessary changes. But this year, I'm going to make an exception. I've officially unofficially dubbed 2011 - a year dedicated to decorating. I'm going to attack the many aspects of this house that never quite got to where they were supposed to get from a home decor point of view. Here's the thing, we moved into this house 8 years ago. At that point I had 2 very young children. We got the rooms painted and moved in and we put everything where we wanted it but I never quite got all the little touches done on this house. There is this stack of picture frames sitting in a pile in my front room that have lived there for around 7 years. Yes, 7 years! I know it's shameful really. But there you have it! There was just quite never enough time in the day and after awhile I just plum forgot about them. So I'm going to eradicate that this year. In 2011 I'm going to attack a room every month (some rooms will take more than 1 month) and finish all the final touches. While I'm at it, I'm going to share the process and the journey with you here. Want to join me?

Job 1: Sewing area
Scraps, scraps and more scraps.

Seems that when there is sewing there are always endless, growing piles of scraps. Know what I mean?


My scraps used to live on my floor under the cutting table, in paper bags no less - not very attractive or functional and really an awful place to store them. So I decided to make them their own little bins, color coded to correspond to the fabrics inside.

Voila! I love this solution and I made them big enough that they should hold scraps for a few years to come. Phew! Much nicer looking. Here they are living on top of the fabric stash.
You can make these to! They are just fabric boxes reinforced with Peltex fusible interfacing. There are lots of tutorial on making storage boxes online if you google it, so I'm not going to describe the process here. Plus these use up a few scraps as well - yes! Now I just need to make a couple more.

Much better! I feel better already! I think this year is going to be very fulfilling.