Sewing for your home and other DIY stuff.
Twelve Days of Christmas Day 4…The advent wreath.
I’ve always admired Advent wreaths from afar…AKA the World Wide Web. :). But the candle lighting tradition just hasn’t been a thing in my family…til now. The clearance box of advent candles at JOANN ignited my desire to make an advent wreath for my dining room table….
Day three of the Twelve Days of Christmas Crafts series…Hand Knit Christmas Stockings.
My Grandmother was an award winning and very prolific knitter. She won blue ribbons at the Minnesota State Fair year after year. Her sweaters and afghans are epic. 
Fortunately, I inherited many of her beautiful sweaters and a couple afghans. Unfortunately, she notoriously had questionable taste when it came to picking yarn colors. She really liked the unnatural colors. Even though the craftsmanship was exquisite , the colors(mostly the colors), sizes, and styles of the sweaters prevent me from wearing them often, if ever….
This is day two of my Twelve days of Christmas Crafts. Today I made Christmas lumbar pillows for my dining chairs.
I bought these dining chairs just a week before Thanksgiving from a Craigslist seller. They’re vintage Drexel and are super solid, super comfy and I love them. The color of the wood is not perfect, but its factory finish and in really good condition. I love the velvet on the seats and backs. Eventually I’d like to reupholster them in a deep navy or something like that, but for now they’re fine. So to make them feel more integrated to my room I made these cute little red lumbar pillows with white welt….
I bought a full box of vintage sheet music at a garage sale a while ago knowing that I could use it for all kinds of crafts. This DIY paper fan tutorial is the first of many projects.
This happens to be the second box of vintage sheet music I’ve had. The first box my SIL gave me shortly after we moved into our house, and I used it to cover my kitchen floor. We had awful green and black linoleum, so I glued down the sheet music to cover it up and sealed it with a boat load of polyurethane. It lasted a couple years and was ALWAYS a great conversation starter. For some reason people really marveled over it. I thought it was a cheap, fast cover up and was a bit embarrassed by it….
I’ve been hosting Thanksgiving dinner for the last 21 years. The turkey cooking torch was passed to me before I was even married. I’ll never forget my very first Thanksgiving… I cooked the turkey using a Martha Stewart recipe that called for butter soaked cheesecloth draped over the Turkey while it cooked to keep it moist. The problem was, at some point, I removed the foil from the bird and the cheese cloth caught on fire. I saw a small flame in the oven and when I opened the oven to see what was going on, the rush of air started the whole bird ablaze. I doused it with a pitcher of water and it was fine. The turkey was a little grey on the outside from the smoke but the inside was nice and moist.
Fast forward 20 years and now I have a little more experience and a lot more confidence…and a much larger crowd to cook for. These days we average 28 people at our Thanksgiving table.
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Ever wonder why your seams don’t line up at the end of a long line of stitches? Or why your curtain is not straight across at the floor? This tutorial on how to cut fabric straight and square(on grain) will explain it.
Cutting your fabric straight is probably the most important part of home decor sewing. Your whole project stems from a straight, square cut.
If the fabric is not cut straight your curtain won’t hang straight, your pillow will be wonky, your slipcover will stretch oddly and have a poor fit, your seams won’t line up, etc. etc.
Not to mention fashion sewing. It’s even more important to cut on grain in fashion, so your garments will fit properly. Everyone has had a shirt with a side seam that winds around the front of the body. Or a sleeve that twists around your arm. This is a result of an off grain cut….
