The Option Of Pretty

Last week was unbelievably frustrating. I spent the entire week attempting to create my new website and work on the bag patterns and no matter which tutorial I followed, or how many times I talked to the help line, it just did NOT go the way  "they" said it would. 

Since I have more time than money, I wanted to do the work myself - until I ended up in tears. That's when I gave up. This is definitely not worth that kind of stress so I have decided to hire help. With the website, I'll be able to manage it once it's set up and ready but I'll let someone else get it to that stage and the same with the patterns. I'll hire someone to draw the templates for the first group and then, once things are flowing smoothly, I'll have them teach me how to do it myself. This is what I did in the past and it worked then. I'm sure it will work now. 

I ignored anything to do with work over the weekend and finished planting and decorating in the back yard. We'd had so much rain that there were plants waiting weeks to be planted as well as décor items to hang up. I'm still waiting for my swing stand. Once that comes, it'll clean up quite a bit.

These chimes were a gift from my cousin who is coming to visit next week. I definitely wanted them up before she got here. My neighbour says she enjoys chimes so I hung them on the divider between our two decks. It's not very windy there so they won't be chiming constantly and driving another neighbour crazy but I can tinkle them every time I walk by and that's lovely. Since they are healing chimes - LOL - they may get tinkled often as I attempt to learn more technical systems for work. 

Until the end of next week when my cousin goes home, any sewing I do will be for me. Not only does my pattern writing need to catch up with my notes, I could use that nurturing focus of me sewing. The colourful print at left is some fabric a friend sent for my birthday. I wanted to make it into something I'd see often so I decided to make pillowcases for my bed adding a fuchsia flange and a striped band. 

The flange colour changed a few times and I thought I'd settled on blue until I put the fabrics in my room and realized that it definitely had to be a shade of pink. The room is pink, grey, and floral so far. The plan is to add a floral wall paper behind the headboard and you can see in the picture at right that the ceiling is pink. The wall in front of the bed has a huge floral painting done by a friend and there are two very old paintings in antique frames on the window wall as well as a vase of flowers on the dresser. I find it soothing although someone recently said it looked rather plain. Probably it is when compared to the rest of my house but that's okay. I like it. 

I learned to make clean, even flanges from a friend who sewed theater costumes before she retired. She said stitch the flange to the first layer of fabric using the folded edge as a guide. In this case, I used the inside left edge of the open toe foot and moved the needle as far to the right as possible. 

For the next step, the main pillow fabric and the band fabric were pinned right sides together with the flange in the middle and the previous stitches on top and visible. I then stitched over them to secure the three layers together. The idea is to stitch exactly on the previous stitches or ever so slightly to the left of them otherwise...

... that original row of stitching will be visible on the front. I used white thread so you could see what happens. If I'd used fuchsia thread to match the flange, it wouldn't be so visible. To fix this, you can either re-stitch moving over slightly or remove the visible stitches since the second row of stitching is holding the layers together. 

How pretty are these! With home décor, as with fashion sewing, I love that I am able to create exactly what I want and not rely on what's on trend or in the stores. The quilt is made from some sheets I bought at Ikea and the bed skirt is from fabric I found in the bargain center. The headboard was $5.00 at the thrift store. I added remnants of paintable wallpaper in a beadboard pattern and used leftover cabinet paint to refashion it. 

The throw is knit with double strands of Cotton Faire in a seed stitch pattern. I made one of these and gave it to a friend after she lost her house in a fire and another that I kept for myself. My grandsons were here when I worked on them so it often reminds me of our time together. 

 

My gas tank was so empty the other day that the light had come on. Filling it from absolutely empty to completely full cost $86.71 Canadian or $67.84 US. I drive a Toyota Matrix which is quite good on gas. I turned to talk about the gas price with the person next to me and realized he was driving a truck. He said his last fill up was $274.00 ($215.00) and we laughed that I couldn't "complain" to him before having a more of serious talk about the impact of the rising cost of everything on so many people and how grateful we were to be warm, dry, safe, fed, clothed, and loved. I think it's amazing to have the option of pretty. I am grateful. 

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful - a lovely gift, new pillow cases