Tag: home decor

Posted in knitting, quilting, sewing

First Friday Finishes in 2024

Posted on by Laura Kate

I’ve spent the week productively, finishing my quilted border curtains and also a Seaglass hat. Finish 3 is the off-the-grid mitts that I gave to H at Christmas. All three projects are stashbusters ( a desirable trait likely to carry on with me in the new year.)

It’s been many years since I constructed curtains The only thing I had to buy for the project was lining fabric. The trick for this project was marrying the patchwork border with a king-size cotton sheet. I did this by attaching wide binding strips to both edges of the curtains. Was it a fun project? I would say mixed. Making that border was great fun. Wrestling with yards and yards of fabric, getting everything lined up correctly and stitching it together was not fun. But the result was very worth it. In addition to having an attractive surround for the large bedroom window, the lining I chose has insulation properties. This came in very handing with temperatures plunging. Our bedroom is now draft-free.

Henry happily received his off the grid mitts. They work beautifully for extra warmth over gloves, and, worn on their own, they keep his fingertips free to use his cellphone while wearing them. I was pleased.

At the last minute I decided to make a pom-pom for the top of the child’s Seaglass hat. Now that I have some practice with the 1 + 1 technique and understand how to work my gauge swatch, I can cast on the Seaglass sweater in confidence.

What are you working on this week? Oh, and how do you feel about it?

Posted in sewing

Follow up on Patio Decor Posts

Posted on by Laura Kate

Last week I was finally able to get my Patio Geranium painting mounted into the salvaged wood frame I found and hung on a brick wall of my patio.

Patio Decor – Stage Two

The painting is quite striking, and easily viewed from inside the house as well. To celebrate this event, I thought I would make new cushions for the patio’s chairs. I had been thinking about doing this for years now, ever since one cushion was destroyed by a squirrel, which must have thought it would make good nesting material. The current crop of squirrels seems uninterested in chewing up cushions, so the time was right to undertake this project.

Here’s the outdoor fabric I purchased at Hobby Lobby.

It seems very nice indeed.

To begin work, I disassembled the remaining cushion to use the fabric pieces as patterns and to re-use the padding and cording in the replacement cushion.

Several frustrating hours later, I did manage to sew up one cushion. The fabric was terrible to work with- shredding and fraying at the slightest provocation.

So – while I did make an acceptable cushion, I can state unequivocally that the process was NOT FUN!!! At least it seems to be functional.

……..and the color is nice.

It could be a while before I attempt the other cushion, since I will need to cut some foam rubber to shape into a matching cushion pad.

I’m pretty sure that this task will also be NOT FUN.

If any kind reader has sewn anything using outdoor fabric, I would be grateful for any advice you would be willing to share.

Posted in painting

Patio Decor – Stage Two

Posted on by Laura Kate

Back in May, I started a painting on fabric for the purpose of decorating my patio.

https://wordpress.com/post/dailyfiberfun.wordpress.com/5098

It was May, and the weather for patio-sitting was perfect. But I didn’t finish my painting – I had become obsessed with the Shell Lake Story quilt, and could think of nothing else.

Now that the quilt is finished, AND lovely patio-sitting weather has returned, I got out the fabric paints to work on stage two of the painting.

At the end of stage one, I had a 15 by 30 inch canvass with a nice background on it.

The lovely green-colored folds already looked like geranium leaves. The blank-looking orange blobs will become geranium blossoms.

Using Jacquard Textile paint in colors green, ruby red and goldenrod, I started working from the right side of the canvas to the left. Here is the painting after my first two sessions:

Only one more blossom to go. Today I finished it up,

Hm, it’s pretty obvious that I got better at painting as I went along! While the far left blossom is more carefully painted, it lacks the bright highlights of the first two. This was caused by the tone of the underpainting, which was predominately violet instead of yellow, like the other ones. The only way to fix this is to apply opaque paint. The risk in doing that is overworking the painting.

So I guess I will leave well enough alone.

My next steps are to square up the fabric and staple it to the back of the frame.