Navaho white

I offhandedly said to Scott that after the new slip covers I'd been making for the living room, it might be nice to paint the room. We looked at several paint chips at the hardware store and narrowed it down to Benjamin Moore's "Navaho White", a creamy warm off-white, one that I have been wanted to use on some room for years. Well, after I had to make a long trip to Texas, he surprised me by painting the room himself! Not only did he paint the walls but all the trim as well (it really needed it, lots of discolored patches where I had tried to cover up scratches and scuffs). The whole room is much brighter, lighter, and crisper, while still being warm (it is the fireplace room, after all). 

The mermen

 I saw this picture on Pinterest one day and thought "How cute, I'll bet I could make one of those." And so I did. 

After some research on YouTube on how to make soft dolls I took a crack at it with my 'new' sewing machine. Using muslin, I made a first attempt with a pattern I based on the photo. It was a disaster. Wrong proportions and tight in all the wrong places. Back to YouTube. Amending the first pattern I tried again and it worked like a charm. I set this one aside as it didn't have the tat arm like the reference dolls. The first successful attempt sorta came out looking like me! I used an old piece of bandana for the tail fabric. After I finished it I thought it would be fun to do a second one based on Scott (I used the first form that came out nicely). To make sure it resembled him I made the eyes blue and added one of his signature hats and vests. It was my project while he was away for 10 days at his share on Fire Island. I surprised him with it when he got back. He loved it. Now they sit on the sweater shelf in the bedroom. 

After a while I decided the cutest thing would be to make a Travis "merdog". He turned out adorable too. :) 

My slipcover is showing

 The next big projects I wanted to tackle with the sewing machine were slip covers for several pieces of furniture, items that were in sore need of updating or repair. I researched how to make them from several YouTube videos (thank God for the internet!) and one in particular recommended using cotton drop clothes for the fabric. These are very durable, large canvases that painters use. When they're washed they get super soft and the best thing of all is that the upholstery 'fabric' ends up being very cheap, just a little over $2.00 a yard! I just buy the 9' x 12' size right off of Amazon and they show up in no time.

The first thing I tackled was the kitchen bar stool. It had a 'pleather' seat and it had gotten severely worn with age. I chose not to do piping on it, but I did close up the back with several ties. It's much better than the make-shift piece of fabric I had on it previously.

The next project was the 'Martha Washington' chair in the living room, the one from Ethan Allen. It had a red slipcover that was perfectly fine, but I was in the mood to lighten up the color scheme in that room (the eventual project is to lighten the wall color in there, I'm hoping to get to this in the coming Winter).

This week I finished a slipcover for the long window seat cushion in the bay window. This was very challenging. It was the first time I had really undertaken piping, and there was a LOT of it. The piping here went all the way around the top and bottom edges. There are some very minor boo-boos here and there, but overall it came out pretty nice. I'm proud of the effort.