Favorite Spoonflower Etsy Sellers + Etsy Craft Party 2013

 Grey Forest chair by RubbishRehab, Love bunting by StudioCherie, Wall Art by WildNotions, Baseball pillow by LittleRhodyDesignCo, Tea Towel by HangTightStudio88,  Llama Pilliow by Scarletfig

We can't wait for this year's Etsy Craft Party, an annual celebration of meeting and making hosted in craft parties all over the globe! This year's party happens on June 20th, and you can either organize a party of your own, or join a party planned near you! Here at the Spoonflower Greenhouse, our community crafting and learning space, we'll be hosting a party in partnership with our local Etsy Street Team (details coming soon) for a night full of fun sewing and crafting activities.

The Craft for Community theme for this year's Etsy Craft Party has us thinking about our own fantastic community of Spoonflower designers and makers, so today we'd like to share some of our favorite Etsy sellers who create their handmade goods using Spoonflower custom-printed fabric.  

Baby bib by Miryn, Cloth diaper by Rebourne, Cut and sew doll kits by TastieTreats, Little girl dress by KKchildrendesigns, Little boy shirt by PellerinaDesign

Build-a-Dress by Vivatveritas7, Camera Bag by HappySewLucky, Cowl by VeryCherry, Zipper Pouch by Bang Bang You're Thread, Mason Jar Bag by Lalunedesigns

To see even more handmade goodness, check out our Pinterest board of talented Etsy makers!

January Refresh: Allie's Desk Transformation

Continuing our January project series to show our spaces a little love and create treasures from worn or plain pieces in our homes, Spoonflower staff member Allie Tate transforms her childhood French provincial desk into a fresh work station ready for new creative projects! 

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Growing up my two sisters and I all had matching French provincial bedroom sets. I had kept mine through the years and love it, but it needed some serious updating. Having been through my childhood and too many to moves to count through college and life after, my poor furniture had certainly seen better days.

A fresh coat of paint, some decals, and fabric to recover the chair cushion and it would be good as new! Choosing the right decals and fabric was the hardest part of the whole process, and I went with two longtime favorites, CandyPenny’s Woodtype Alphabet decal design and Wolfie and the Sneak’s Kristen fabric.

To start the project, I removed the hardware and sanded the desk. Since it was already a light color, I choose paint of similar color that contained primer and was able to skip an extra coat of paint.

With the help of a paint spray gun, it was super easy to achieve a smooth, even coat of paint in an amazingly short amount of time!

I chose to update the hardware by spray painting it black to tie in with the black in the decal and fabric designs.

To update the chair, I first painted it a similar shade of blue to the one found in the fabric design.

Recovering the chair, I cut the fabric to size and then used a staple gun to attach fabric to the bottom of the cushion. For me, strategically folding and stapling the corners so they weren't a mess was the most challenging part!

Lining drawers with decal was an easy way to update the drab drawers. I simply measured the inside of the drawers and using large 30”x30” decals I cut a piece to size and covered the bottom of each drawer.

Ta-Da! The end result is a definite upgrade from the sad-looking desk I started with. Now to work on organizing all my crafting and sewing notions that fill the drawers!

Tutorial: How to make a fabric chain garland

My kids and I usually make some kind of handmade ornament every year at Christmas.  Little painted green trees with clothespin bases and glued-on sequins were one year's project.  Then there was the year of the silver pipe cleaner circles with plastic pony beads threaded onto them, among other sweet decorations.  Many such handmade ornaments cover our tree and house at Christmas time and I love thinking about years past when we bring the ornament boxes down from the attic and crack them open each December.  

But my kids' winter break began last week, Christmas is upon us, and until yesterday, we hadn't made a single handmade ornament this year.  Too much busyness should NOT get in the way of our tradition, so even though we're late in the decoration game this year, I wanted to come up with something quick.  Fortunately, a fabric chain garland fits the bill.  It's fast, doesn't require busting out the sewing machine, is kid-friendly, and uses up any stray 8-inch test swatches you might have lying around.  Ready to get started on this down-to-the-wire Chrismtas decoration project?  Let's do it!

Supplies:

• an even number of 8-inch fabric swatches (For this tutorial, I used 10 swatches of Bora's "The Bunny Band" collection printed onto basic combed cotton which produced a 7-1/2 foot long chain.)

• double-sided lightweight fusible web (I used Lite Steam-a-Seam 2.)
• as many binder clips, clothespins, or Clover wonder clips as you can find
• fabric glue
• scissors
• rotary cutter, cutting mat, and clear acrylic ruler (or just use your scissors and a ruler)

First, trim off the unprinted white areas of the 8-inch swatches and press them.  The links of this fabric chain will have printed fabric on both sides so decide now how you'll pair the prints up.  I paired different colors together so there would be some contrast between inside and outside fabrics, but you could certainly opt to pair them in a more matchy way.

Next, unroll the double-sided fusible web and peel back the first layer of paper backing.  (There should be two paper backing layers.) Tile the five 8-inch swatches you want to use as side one of the chain tops side by side in a row and print side up, with no space left between them.  

The fusible product I used is pressure sensitive, meaning that I could lightly stick the fabric squares into place and reposition them as needed before fusing them permanently with the iron.  

Once these first five swatches are laid out in a line, press them with an iron as directed on the product instructions to adhere the fusible web to the wrong side of the swatch row.  Trim the excess fusible web and paper backing from the swatch row.  Check to be sure that the fusible web is adhered to all parts of the swatch row.  Re-iron areas that seem too loosely adhered.  Flip the swatch row over now and carefully peel away the second layer of paper backing from the wrong side.  Be sure not to peel up the fusible stuff, too!

Now tile the second set of five swatches on top of the first set with wrong sides together, aligning all edges.  Press again to adhere the fusible web to the back of the second set of swatches and to fuse the two sets of swatches together.  Here's where a press cloth may come in handy since you may have stray smidges of fusible web sticking out here and there that will gunk up your iron if it makes contact.

Once this second row is fused to the first, you can separate the five sets of swatches from each other.  I could just gently pull them apart; no need to cut yet.  You'll have five 8-inch squares with print on both sides.  

If you see any stray bits of fusible web sticking out from the sides, trim those off.

Again, check to see if there are any areas that seem loosely adhered and re-iron them if necessary.  

Cut each 8-inch square into 8 1-inch strips.  The fastest way to do this is with an acryclic ruler and rotary cutter, and you can stack them into sets of two to go even faster.  You'll end up with a pile of 40 double-sided fabric strips.

Now you're going to turn the strips into chain links!  Lay down some newspaper to catch glue drips and have ready the fabric strips, glue, and binder clips (or clothespins or Clover wonder clips).  Lay a thin line of glue across one end of the first fabric strip, about 1/4 inch from the edge.  

Overlap the other end of the strip to form a circle and clip it to hold it together while the glue dries.  

Add more links in this manner to build a chain, clipping each link to hold the ends in place while the glue dries.  Here's where I realized how kid-friendly this project was.  My two younger daughters, ages 5 and almost-eight, noticed what I was doing and came over to help me.  

The older of the two girls insisted that she could finish the whole chain on her own after I'd done only the first few links, and then proceeded to do it.  I had no idea she was such a proficient crafter'--I'm so proud! 

If you run out of clips while making links like we did, just let the first length dry for 20-30 minutes, then remove the clips and keep going with the next length of chain.  When everything is dry, remove all the clips, hang the chain on your tree or in another place that needs a festive touch, and admire your handiwork--this year and in all the years to come.

Merry Christmas to those of you celebrating, and we hope you're all enjoying a happy and peaceful winter break!  

Tutorial: How to sew a child's baking apron

On my Christmas list this year are the two darling daughters, ages 8 and 2, of dear friends of mine.  It would certainly be easy to buy something for them at the wonderful local toy store around the corner from me, but it's been awhile since I've made anything for these kiddos so I'm thinking something handmade would be nicer. Their mama loves to cook and bake, and I'm imagining a lot of cookie baking projects while the girls are home from school for winter break, so I decided to make up a ric-rac trimmed child-sized baking apron for the 8-year old girl this weekend.

For this project, I used my own almost-8-year-old daughter as a model to determine sizing.  She's about average weight and on the tall side so I think this apron should fit most 8-year old children, especially since the ties offer some flexibility as the child grows.  

And I'm sure I don't need to point this out to most of you, but boys like to cook and bake, too!  Don't forget the boy-who-would-be-chef in your life, too, as you consider this kid's apron project.

Fabric & Supplies:

• I used a yard of Spoonflower organic cotton sateen printed with Sonny&Bee's "Summer time" design.  I love the slight sheen and softness of our sateen but our basic combed cotton or Kona cotton would also work well.  Wash and press your fabric before cutting.
• 1 package of medium ric-rac or pretty ribbon (optional)
• coordinating thread
• basic sewing supplies--a sewing machine, ruler and rotary cutter or scissors, washable marker or other marking tool, Fray-Check (for the ends of the trim if using)

Cut fabric:

• 1 piece 8-1/2 X 10-3/4 inches for apron bib
• 1 piece 21-1/2 X 29-3/4 inches for apron skirt
• 4 strips 20 X 2 inches for neck and wasit ties
• 1 piece 5-1/2 inches square for optional (but useful!) pocket

Note:  If you're using a directional print that has a right side up, pay attention now to how you cut your fabric so that you don't end up with upside-down birds or writing or what-have-you.

Make the apron ties:

1. Press in the short sides of all four ties by a scant quarter-inch.  Then press up the long edges of all four ties a scant quarter inch.  
   
   
2. With wrong sides together and matching up the pressed edges, fold each tie in half lenghtwise and press to enclose all raw edges and create 3/4-inch wide ties. 
3. Now begin edgestitching the ties.  Start from one short end, pivot at the corner, and stitch the long edge.  Pivot again at the other corner, sttich the second short edge, and anchor your stitching.  Repeat with the remaining three ties.  Set those aside for now. 
   
   

Make the pocket:

Stitch across the top and bottom edges about one-eight inch from the pressed edge.  Leave the side edges unstitched for now.  

1. Press the top and bottom edges of the pocket in a scant quarter-inch, then fold those edges over another scant quarter-inch to enclose them. Press. Repeat with the two side edges. 
   
   
2. Stitch across the top and bottom edges about one-eight inch from the pressed edge.  Leave the side edges unstitched for now. 
3. If you'd like to use trim on your pocket, apply it now.  (I'm a fan of trim on pockets because it makes it easier to locate them quickly.)  I used medium white irridescent ric-rac because this particular little girl enjoys a little sparkle.  Set the pocket aside.
   
   

Make the apron bib:

1. Press up the bottom edge of the bib a scant quarter-inch, then fold that edge over into another scant quarter-inch to enclose it.  Press. 
2. Next, fold down the top edge down a scant quarter-inch, then press that edge down into a one-inch hem. 
3. Now fold the two side edges of the bib in a scant quarter-inch.  Fold those side edges in another scant quarter-inch to enclose them.  Press. 
4. Stitch down one side of the bib, then along the bottom, then up the second side, pivoting at the corners and keeping your stitching line about one-eight inch from the pressed edge. 
5. Finally, stitch down the deeper top hem about one-eighth inch from the pressed edge.
    
6. If you're using trim on the apron bib, you should add it now.  More ric-rac is good!   

Make the apron skirt:

1. Yep, there are more edges to finish but we're almost down with that now.  Fold down the top edge of the apron skirt a scant quarter-inch, then fold again another quarter-inch to enclose the raw edge.  Press.
2. Fold up the bottom hem a scant quarter-inch, then press up a deeper one-inch hem.  Press.
3. Finally, fold the side edges in a scant quarter-inch, then fold again another quarter-inch to enclose those edges.  Press.
4. Stitch up one side of the apron skirt, then across the top of the skirt, then down the other side, pivoting at the corners and keeping your stitching line about one-eighth inch from the pressed edge.
5. Stitch across the bottom hem at the folded edge about one-eighth inch from the pressed edge.
6. If you want to add some more trim at the bottom hem of the skirt, now is a good time to do it.  Phew, all those edges are finished now and it's time to put it all together!

Putting the apron together:

1. Lay the apron skirt facing print side down (unlike my photo below) and measure the width of the skirt.  Mark the center point of the top edge with a washable marker or pin on the wrong side.  My skirt measured 20-1/2 inches wide, so I marked a point at 10-1/4 inches.  (Yes, I accidentally marked my point on the front--good thing that marker was washable!)
    
   
2. Do the same with the apron bib, but measure and mark the center point along the bottom edge of the bib.  My bib measured 7 inches wide, so I put a mark at 3-1/2 inches.
    
   
3. Overlap the top edge of the apron skirt over the bottom edge of the apron bib about a quarter-inch, aligning the center points and making sure that the finished top edge of the skirt is lined up with the line of stitching at the bottom of the apron bib.  Pin in place.
    
   
4. Edgestitch the skirt to the apron bib, lining up this new line of stitching with the line of stitching on the apron bib. 
5. Stitch a second line over the line of stitches visible on the apron skirt and about a quarter-inch below the line of stitches you just put in.  You should be catching the bottom hem of the bib under this second line of stitches.  Using two lines of stitching will attach the bib to the skirt a little more securely and will also prevent the apron's bottom hem from curling up as it's washed.

Add the pocket:

1. Find the center of the finished pocket at the top edge and mark it with a pin.  My pocket center was at 2-1/4 inches. 
2. Lay the apron flat in front of you with the print side up and measure a point three inches down from the left corner where the apron bib meets the skirt.  Align the pocket center to that point as shown here.
   
   
3. Pin the pocket in place along its side and bottom edges.  Edgestitch the pocket to the skirt down one side, across the bottom of the pocket (on top of the existing line of stitches), and then up the other side of the pocket.  Don't forget to leave the pocket's top edge free!  

Stitch the apron ties in place:

Pin the apron ties in place at each top corner of the bib and at the top edges of the apron skirt, about one quarter-inch in from the finished edges of the apron. Be sure to run the waist ties out from the apron skirt and the neck ties up from the bib top as shown in the photos below.

  

Once you've stitched on the apron ties, you're all done.  I hope your apron sees many happy, cozy hours in the kitchen!

Spoonflower Staff Holiday Gift Picks 2012

Ten Spoonflower staffers share their picks for cut & sew kits designed by the Spoonflower community that make perfect handmade gifts. A merry crafting and gifting season indeed!

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1.  Theresa's pick: Globe pillow by Evenspor. Here's a great gift for your budding Titan... nothing makes you feel as powerful as sewing & stuffing the world. 

2.  John's pick: Retrotastic Camera Camera Bag Pattern by Happy Sew Lucky. John likes this retro camera bag design inspired by the Diana camera. For instructions, visit the Happy Sew Lucky blog.

3.  Allie's pick: Winter of 2012 - Blue & White bunting by Anda. Anda Corrie is one of our favorite Spoonflower designers. Her winter bunting is just the thing to make your holiday party more festive.

4.  Caitlin's pick: Fresh Palette of Greens! Succulent 2013 Tea Towel Calendar by Emilyann. Caitlin suggests that you check out this tea towel calendar for the coming year featuring succulents created by designer Emily Truong.

5. Kelly's pick: Shift Captain Kelly B. likes Amelia and her Kittens, a cut & sew doll by Bay Area deisgner Stacy Iest Hsu.

6. Jennifer's pick: Customer service ninja Jennifer chose this Tiny Tree Ornament 2012 (also by Anda Corrie), but we're not sure if she realizes they're not earrings.

7. Stephen's pick: Krampus Ornament. The Krampus, according to Bavarian folklore, is Santa's evil doppelgänger, a creature sent to punish bad children during the Christmas season. Stephen hangs it on his tree in the vain hope that it will motivate his children to stop fighting constantly during the holidays.

8. Janet's pick: Skelley Baby Doll  -- while Halloween may be over, any season is good for this skeleton cut & sew pattern by ShelleyFaye.

9. Emma's pick: Customer service newbie Emma has been eyeing this cloth baby book pattern To the Circus! created by Dutch designer (and Spoonflower contest powerhouse) Bora.

10. Darci's pick: Nope, she doesn't have a head injury -- that's just Darci trying on the  Star Map Bandana by PatriciaMassie.

See more picks from our Spoonflower holiday gift guide!

Tutorial: Bolster cushion cover

Guest author Emma Jeffery from the blog Hello Beautiful shows us how to sew a reversible bolster cushion cover.

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Oversize pillows can make a bold design statement whether they are placed on the bed, a wooden bench by the front door or across the back of a sleek, modern couch. Large pillow inserts (or body pillows) are readily available and are pretty inexpensive (I think mine was around $20) but finding the perfect cover can be much more challenging, which is where making your own wins out!

This one has the opposite fabrics on the back, which is a great way to switch out the look of this pillow.

My pillow measures 54” x 20” and this tutorial will show you how to make a cover using one yard each of two co-ordinating fabrics. I used one yard of Grey and White Diamond Linen and one yard of CrossCriss by Holli Zollinger in Kona Cotton. You will also need a 14” zipper and 42” of contrasting piping.

To start, we are going to name your fabrics A and B. It doesn’t matter which is which, but it will make the instructions clearer.

1. First, we are going to start cutting Fabric A. Cutting across the yard, cut 1 piece of fabric 42” x 20”. Make sure to remove the unprinted, excess borders around the edge of the fabric. Turn the fabric 90 degrees and cut one piece of fabric 12” x 20”.

2. Repeat step 1 for Fabric B.

3. To make the cushion front, cut one piece of piping measuring 21”.

4. Lay out the larger piece of fabric A. Pin then baste the piping to one short end of Fabric A.

5. Place the smaller cut of Fabric B on top the edge with the piping. Pin and stitch through all layers.

6. Press the piping to one side and top stitch.

7. To make the cushion back, repeat steps 3 through 6 with the opposite fabric cuts.

8. Lay the cushion front on top of the cushion back, with right sides facing. Pin, then stitch all the way around leaving a 14” hole for turning and for inserting your zipper.

9. Clip all 4 corners and turn the cover the right way out.

10. Pin the zipper into the folded edges of the turning hole and sew all the way around. To finish, insert the pillow form.

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About Our Guest Blogger

Hi! I'm Emma, and as well as working on the Fiskars Design Team, I blog over at hellobeautifulblog.blogspot.com/

I'm an obsessive sewer, often leaping into projects with more enthusiasm than talent, more bravado than skill and more good luck than anything else. This technique has worked well for me so far and more often than not, I make things I love, even if they're not absolutely perfect. And though I'm no expert, I have a passion for fabric, color and design. I know what I like and what I like makes me smile.

Doll's House Wallpaper Makeover

Guest author Emma Jeffery from the blog Hello Beautiful makes over her daughter's dollhouse with custom wallpaper.

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Have you indulged by ordering Spoonflower’s lovely new wallpaper yet? Perhaps you have a few 12” x 24” wallpaper samples hanging around from a recent order that are too pretty not to be used for something wonderful? Or perhaps you feel you need a bit of practice hanging wallpaper before you tackle your own living room wall?

I’ve never hung wallpaper before, but from growing up and watching my dad do it, I assumed it was all about long trestle tables, wide brushes and overflowing buckets of cold, sloppy glue. So I was happily surprised to learn that Spoonflower’s wallpaper already has an adhesive backing, that simply needs to be immersed in water to activate. No mess, easy clean-up and overalls are probably surplus to requirements (always a bonus in my book!) Still, I did decide to start off small-scale and ease myself slowly into this exciting and colorful new adventure of wall coverings.

A few months ago my daughter was given this beautiful 3 story home (sigh, if only it was adult-sized) that was rescued from an abandoned and unloved situation. I knew that with a little love and TLC, it could shake off its dusty coverings and peeling paint, to be beautiful once more.

Of course, it may have been better to survey for any structural damage, assess the age of the shake shingle roof and at the very least, order a termite inspection, but in keeping with the crazy world of home-ownership, my daughter and I were determined to start work on making it beautiful above all else.

I started by removing the original wallpaper, which was easy to do because of its age. It was pretty cool to discover some hidden, handwritten notes on the bare wood from the original construction.

I then measured the walls and spaces under the windows and cut the wallpaper to the appropriate size. I preferred to use a standard paper cutter for cutting.

Next, I followed Spoonflower’s application instructions by submerging the wallpaper in water. Because of the scale of my project I was able to use a large dish, but for a larger project Spoonflower recommends you use a trough or the bathtub.

I then simply hung the wallpaper, using a sponge to squeeze out the excess glue and air bubbles. After allowing it to dry, I trimmed any excess with a small craft knife.

The walls look lovely and my daughter’s enthusiasm for playing with the house has suddenly and instantly been reignited. It helps that I let her pick and choose the wallpaper from Spoonflower’s marketplace of wallpaper designs. She picked designs by PaperSparrow and Kayajoy.

I’m now feeling pretty confident about scaling up and wallpapering something adult-sized. But Mr Rabbit’s not feeling as good about having to lay new carpet in his house.

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About Our Guest Blogger

Hi! I'm Emma, and as well as working on the Fiskars Design Team, I blog over at hellobeautifulblog.blogspot.com/

I'm an obsessive sewer, often leaping into projects with more enthusiasm than talent, more bravado than skill and more good luck than anything else. This technique has worked well for me so far and more often than not, I make things I love, even if they're not absolutely perfect. And though I'm no expert, I have a passion for fabric, color and design. I know what I like and what I like makes me smile.

Tutorial: Make Spooky Halloween Puppets

This week Diane Gilleland from CraftyPod shares a tutorial for making your own Halloween hand puppets. 

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These puppets would be fun Halloween party favors! There's a craft stick inside the skirt to make puppeteering easy for little hands. Older kids might enjoy adding the extra hand controls shown in the video below. Best of all, either version makes up in about an hour.

I designed my puppet faces using a paint program on my computer and printed them on Spoonflower linen-cotton canvas. You're welcome to download my file, or if you have artistically-inclined little ones, they can draw their own puppet faces to print on fabric! My sample puppets have 1 5/8" diameter faces. You could certainly make them bigger if you like.

Materials:

• 1 test swatch of linen-cotton canvas for puppet faces
• 2 fat quarters of Kona® Cotton for puppet dresses
• (I'm using Fiesta de los Muertos by Ljonte and Spidery Web in zombie green by Voodoorabbit. You can get about three puppet dresses from a fat quarter.)
• Ric Rac, about 1 yard (optional)
• Stiffened felt scrap for head (I'm using Friendly Felt)
• Jumbo craft stick, 1 per puppet
• Hot glue gun or white craft glue
• Eyelash yarn, about 3 yards
• Sewing machine
• Hand-sewing needle and upholstery thread
• Scrap of acrylic or wool felt for hands
• 2 thin bamboo skewers (per puppet, optional)
• Black wide-tip magic marker (optional)
• Downloadable pattern for puppet faces (optional)
• All seam allowances in this project are ¼".

A note on glues: I like a low-temp hot glue gun for all of the steps in this project - it bonds quickly and speeds up the process. But, if you're making this project with kids, of you aren't familiar with using hot glue, you might want to use craft glue instead. You'll need to allow some dry time here and there, but it'll save those little fingers from being burned!

Make the Puppet Dress:

1. Print the downloadable dress pattern and cut out four pieces of fabric: the puppet dress back, its center front, and two side front pieces.

2. First, assemble the three pieces of the dress front. Place them together with right sides facing, and sew them along the seam lines. 

Press the seam allowances open. 

Just for fun, I sewed some ric rac on top of these two seams, but you can leave this step out if you like.

3. Now, put the front and back together with right sides facing, and sew the shoulder seams. Leave this seam unsewn between the two seams on the dress front, as shown below. This opening will be the neck opening of the puppet dress. 

Press the seam allowances open (including the unsewn section), and while you're at the iron, fold up the edges of the two sleeves ¼" and press this fold.

4. Stitch along the sleeve hems you made in Step 3. Then, pin and sew the two side seams (again, right sides facing). 

At the points where these side seams curve, carefully clip into the seam allowances as shown. 

5. Turn the dress right side out now. This allows you to easily reach inside and press the side seam allowances open, as shown. Don't worry about pressing the sleeve seams.

6. Now, fold up about a ¼" hem along the bottom edge of the dress, press it, and sew this in place. Your puppet dress is almost ready!

7. To finish up, we'll sew a gathering stitch around the neckline by hand. 

Thread a needle with about 10" of strong thread. Start stitching at the center back of the dress, leaving a 3" tail of thread hanging on the right side.

Take a small running stitch around the entire neckline, ending up back at the center back. Leave tails of thread hanging at the both ends of this seam. We'll use this thread when we assemble the puppet.

Assemble the Puppet:

This video will walk you through making the puppet head and hands, and dressing it up. You'll also learn to add stick controls to your puppet's hands if you want to do some more complex puppeteering.

Happy Halloween!

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About Our Guest Blogger

Diane Gilleland blogs, podcasts, publishes, teaches, and makes videos about all things crafty over at CraftyPod.com. When she's not doing those things, she's doing whatever her cat tells her to do. And what's wrong with that?

Tutorial: Create a custom fabric lampshade

This week guest author Emma Jeffery from the blog Hello Beautiful visits to show us how she used old love letters to create a personalized fabric lampshade. 

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My husband and I got together in the days when people still wrote letters to each other, and because we’ve both lived in various different countries (and not necessarily together, at the same time) we both accumulated a healthy stack of correspondence.

On a recent trip back to my parent’s house where I grew up, I rediscovered the large box of letters I’d amassed that he sent me over a 5-year time frame, chronicling my various university addresses, a summer stint as a nanny in France, a year I spent on a remote island in the Indian Ocean....The envelopes had postmarks and stamps from his various travels too -- a windsurfing trip to Spain with his friends or snowboarding in the Alps. And because he tended to doodle on the front of the envelopes or use folded magazine ads as an envelope, there was an interesting mix of color and design in my collection.

I photographed various parts of many of the envelopes, concentrating on the addresses, stamps, postmarks and my husband’s handwriting and doodling. I zoomed in on various points of interest and panned out on others, for a more overall impression.

Once I had taken approximately 50 - 60 photos, I edited them in Picasa by cropping the photos to highlight the most striking parts.

I then created a collage of the images. Setting the purple background color helped to make the images stand out from each other. Picasa allows you to easily move and turn each element of the collage to create an image you love. Although my usual design comfort zone is subtle and orderly, I very deliberately decided to go bold, random and large-scale with this collage. It felt good to let my design inhibitions go for this project.

In Microsoft's Paint program I resized the image to fit 1 yard of Spoonflower’s linen-cotton canvas. I wanted to use my fabric print for an oversized lampshade for my side of the bed in our room. I purchased the largest lamp base I could find at the thrift store - which cost me less than $3 plus the cost of a can of spray paint to change the ugly black and red design to white.

I selected a large lamp shade to recover and traced a pattern on large piece of paper. I started by rolling the shade over the paper and marking a line with a pen as I rolled it from one side to the other, marking the top edge and then the bottom edge. 

I then joined up the two lines at the sides with a ruler.

I cut my pattern out of the paper and checked it was the right size by placing it over the shade temporarily.

Assured my pattern was the correct size, I was ready to cut my fabric. I added a ¾” seam allowance all the way around the outside of the paper pattern so that I had extra fabric as an overhang. 

To adhere the fabric to the lampshade, I began by spraying the shade with a spray adhesive. It’s best to do this outside or in a well ventilated area.

I then rolled the lampshade over the fabric, checking its positioning as I rolled. At the seam join, I pressed the top raw edge ¼” to the wrong side and glued it down neatly.

In order to neatly finish the top and bottom edges, I first folded the over hanging fabric to the inside of the lampshade and glued it down.

Clothes pins and paper clips were helpful to keep the fabric in place as I waited for it to dry.

Next, I glued a length of twill ribbon over the raw edge of the fabric. It’s an easy and pretty way to hide the raw edge and prevent fraying.

Finally, I secured the lampshade to my new and freshly painted base and placed it in our room.  

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About Our Guest Blogger

Hi! I'm Emma, and as well as working on the Fiskars Design Team, I blog over at hellobeautifulblog.blogspot.com/

I'm an obsessive sewer, often leaping into projects with more enthusiasm than talent, more bravado than skill and more good luck than anything else. This technique has worked well for me so far and more often than not, I make things I love, even if they're not absolutely perfect. And though I'm no expert, I have a passion for fabric, color and design. I know what I like and what I like makes me smile.

Tutorial: Kindergarten Nap Mat and Pillow

When our middle daughter was getting ready to start kindergarten two years ago, we received a note from the school about the supplies she would need. Among them was a beach towel for her daily nap time. "A beach towel?!" I thought incredulously. Lying on a towel on a classroom floor certainly didn't sound very nap-inducing to me, so I immediately decided to make my daughter her own portable nap mat and tiny pillow to keep in her cubby at school for her daily naps. She loved her handmade nap set then and at age 7 now, she still loves it and often includes it in the pillow forts she loves to build.  

Her younger sister isn't due to go to kindergarten until next year but since it's back to school time for lots of others, I thought that a nap mat tutorial might be useful to all you parents with kiddos starting school. Read on for the details of this cozy project!

This finished nap mat is 50 X 34 inches and the little pillow finishes at 13 X 8 inches.  

Materials for mat and pillow:

--2 yards of cotton fabric; I used 2 yards of Spoonflower cotton poplin printed with my daughter's choice of Heidi Kenney's Bunny Bunch design. (Bunnies have been much on our daughters' minds lately as we've just adopted two of our own!)

--1 yard of snuggly backing material that coordinates with your cotton fabric; I used 1 yard of 62-inch wide pink Minky fabric bought from my local fabric shop but you could also choose flannel.

--quilt batting; I used 100% wool batting because it's fluffier than other types, rendering it more comfy for napping. The crib size is large enough for this project.

--extra-wide ribbon or webbing, about 30-inches long; I used a length of 1-3/4 inch-wide ribbon trim I scored at the thrift store. It doesn't exactly match the print, but I think it goes.

--sew-on Velcro

--coordinating perle cotton or embroidery floss for tying the mat

--polyfill stuffing for the pillow

Making the Nap Mat

Cut one piece for the top of the mat from the printed poplin measuring 51 X 35 inches. Cut one piece from the backing fabric measuring 51 X 35 inches.  Cut a piece of wool batting measuring 51 X 35 inches.

Step 1: Layer the poplin, backing, and batting together in one "sandwich" in this order: Batting on the bottom, then backing with right side facing up, then poplin with right side facing down. Pin all these layers together around the perimeter, leaving an 8-inch opening at one short side of the sandwich.  

Step 2: Next, you'll be marking a point for the strap on the other short side--that is, the short side that is opposite the side you left the opening in previously. Mark a point about about one-quarter of the way in from the edge with a washable marker in a light color. (I love this use for washable markers!)  I was apparently a bit math-challenged when I marked a quarter of the way in as 11 inches below! One-quarter of 35 inches is 8-3/4 inches. (Ahem.) Pin the short edge of the ribbon or webbing you're using for the strap, lining up the raw edges of the strap and the mat sandwich. Take care to keep the ribbon well out of the way of the seams you'll be stitching next.

Step 3: Stitch around the perimeter of the mat. Begin your stitching at one edge of the opening you left using a 1/2-inch seam allowance. I used a universal 80/12 needle, 2.5 stitch length, and a tension setting of 4 on my machine without problems, but you may wish to experiment with your machine's settings before stitching to be sure this works for you, especially if you haven't sewn with Minky before.

Remember that strap pinned into the sandwich, and be sure you're not sewing it into the seam!

Once you've sewn around the mat perimeter, clip the corners to minimize bulk.

Step 4: Carefully turn the mat inside out and poke out the corners with a chopstick, knitting needle, or point turner. Press the edges with an iron, pressing the seam allowances of the opening you left to the inside.

Step 5: Now you're going to edgestitch along the perimeter of the mat. If your machine has a walking foot, you may want to use it so that the layers feed evenly and you don't get a lot of wrinkles and tucks. Stitch about 1/8 of an inch away from the edge of the mat all the way around.  

Edgestitching here will strengthen the seam a bit more, enclose the opening you left, and will also create a bit of a poofy edge that to me looks pleasingly like piping.  Once again, be careful that you don't stitch the loose strap into your seam.

Step 6:  Now we're going to tie the mat to stabilize the mat layers so they don't shift as your child uses it. If you've never used this method of quilting, it's super-easy and fast. The first step is to mark the dots using the washable marker so you know where your ties are going to be. Four-inch intervals will do the trick, so I'm marking a 4-inch grid all over the poplin side of the mat. Note that since neither 50 nor 34 is evenly divided by 4, there will actually be a 5-inch gap between all edges of the mat and the first row of dots.  Make the first dot five inches up and five inches over from the bottom corner. The dot next to that will be 4 inches away, then the next dot will be 4 inches away and so on, ending the row with a dot that is 5 inches away from the other edge of the mat.

Continue marking dots. After marking the first row of dots, I used an acrylic quilting ruler to mark the next row, lining up the dots I marked previously with the 4-inch mark on the ruler. Do this until the entire mat is marked with a grid of dots.

Step 7: Thread an embroidery needle with the perle cotton or embroidery floss. Take the first stitch on the first dot of a row, beginning and ending the stitch on the poplin side of the mat.  

Continue along the row, taking a stitch through each of the dots on the same row. There's no need to cut the tail of the thread or to cut between each dot yet. You can stitch an entire row first, then trim the tail to a couple of inches once you've made a whole row of stitches.

Next, cut the thread halfway between each of the dots. Since the dots are 4 inches apart, each dot should have a stitch with a tail on either side that is about 2-inches long.

Step 8: Tie the little threads over each of these dots, being careful not to tie so tightly that the fabric is bunched up in the center. Tie a whole row before you proceed to the next row. You can either trim the tails at the end of each row so they're not so long and dangly, trim them all at once at the end, or even leave them long if you like how it looks.

Making the pillow

We're not quite done with the mat yet since we have to finish the strap that will help to bundle everything together.  I've opted to configure the strap closure so that my child can wrap her little pillow up with the mat, so this means I have to make the pillow first.

For the pillow, cut two pieces of poplin measuring 13-1/2 X 8-1/2 inches.  

Step 1: Pin the two pieces of poplin right sides together and pin, leaving a 4-inch opening for turning.  Stitch around the perimeter, using a 1/2 inch seam allowance.  Trim the corners to minimize bulk.

Step 2: Turn the pillow inside out and poke out the corners.  Press the edges.  Stuff the pillow with polyfill so that it feels like a comfy bed pillow when you're done stuffing and not hard and bouncy. Try to poke the stuffing into the corners, too.  

Step 3: After stuffing the pillow, hand-stitch the opening closed using an invisible or ladder stitch.  

Finishing the strap and mat

Step 1: First, finish the raw edge of the strap. Since I used ribbon for my strap, I was able to fold in the raw edge about a quarter-inch, then fold it down another quarter-inch again to encase the raw edge, then stitch it down. Webbing may be too thick to do this, though. You may wish instead to zigzag stitch the edge to keep it from fraying, or use a product like Fray-Check. I've heard you can also melt the edges of webbing, but that sounds scary! I haven't tried that.

Step 2: With the edge of the strap finished, it's time to roll up the mat so that you can determine where to place the Velcro. Fold the mat in half lengthwise so that the strap is sticking out one of the very short sides. Begin rolling it up at the end opposite the strap like you would a sleeping bag, leaving the strap loose. Stack the pillow on top of the mat, then wrap the strap around this bundle. Wrap it tight enough to be neat but not so tightly that your little one can't manage to get it all bundled up again.

Step 3: Decide where you want the Velcro to be placed on the straps where they overlap. Cut two pieces of Velcro--one each of the hook and loop sides--about 1-1/2 inches long. Place pins on the two sides of the strap at the top and bottom edges of where these two 1-1/2 inch Velcro pieces will be sewn.  

Step 4: Fit the first piece of Velcro inside the first set of two pins and stitch around the edges. Be sure to backstitch at the beginning and end to be sure that the Velcro won't come loose as the mat is used. Repeat with the second piece of Velcro. 

All done--I hope your child finds this nap mat comfy and a cozy, nap-inducing reminder of home!

Tutorial: Fabric of the Week Contest Patchwork Tote

This week guest blogger Diane Gilleland from CraftyPod returns to share a tutorial for turning five favorite Spoonflower designs into a beautiful bag.

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Confession Time: Spoonflower's Fabric of the Week contests are one of my favorite workday distractions. It's lovely to spend a few minutes immersed in beautiful designs, and my favorite part is this:

When I see all the fabrics I've voted for in one place, I always think, "Wow, those would look so great together in a project!" So I decided to design that project – a tote bag that showcases five fabrics, and only requires one test swatch of each one. (In fact, with careful cutting I was able to get two totes out of my five swatches!) You can whip one of these up in just a couple hours.

These fabrics are from the recent Pomegranate Fabric Contest. I used Pomegranate Party by Cherished Dreams, A Jewel of a Fruit, by Floral Fascination, Pomegranates by Zeinab, Pom Pom by Spellstone, and Pomegranates by Fattcheese.

Materials (per tote):

• 5 Spoonflower Kona® Cotton test swatches in your choice of fabrics.
• Cutting mat, 18" clear ruler, and rotary cutter
• 1 yard background fabric (Linen-cotton canvas works great here, as does quilting cotton.)
• ½ yard lining fabric (Kona® Cotton is a nice choice.)
• Thread to coordinate with both these fabrics
• Sewing machine
• Downloadable patchwork pattern

Making the Patchwork Tote Front:

Download and print the PDF patchwork pattern, and decide which of your Spoonflower swatches you'll be using as Fabric A, B, C, D, and E. Then, use a ruler and rotary cutter to cut one piece from each fabric, using the dimensions labeled on the pattern.

Cut a long strip from your background fabric, measuring 1" tall by the width of the fabric (selvage to selvage). Now, cut this strip into four lengths as labeled in the pattern: 4", 4 ½" 5" and 10 ½". When you sew the patchwork, always place the right sides of the fabric pieces together.

All seam allowances in this project are ¼", unless otherwise specified. Feel free to pin the fabric pieces together before you sew them, or not – however you're most comfortable sewing!

Step 1: Sew the 4" background fabric strip to the bottom edge of Fabric A. Press the seam allowance toward Fabric A. Then, sew the top edge of Fabric B to the other side of that background strip. Press that seam allowance toward Fabric B. (This is the finished unit you see on the right side of the photo above.)

Now, sew the 5" background strip to the right edge of Fabric C. Press the seam allowance toward Fabric C. 

Step 2: Sew the two units together as shown here. Then, take a moment and trim any edges that are a little on the wonky side so they're straight. Just line the fabric edges up with the guide lines on the cutting mat, and use your ruler and rotary cutter to make straight cuts. And with that, the top half of our patchwork is done!

Step 3: Sew the 4 ½" background strip to the right edge of Fabric D. Press the seam allowance toward Fabric D. Then, sew the left edge of Fabric E to the other side of the background strip. Press that seam allowance toward Fabric E. This is the bottom half of our patchwork. If you need to, go ahead and trim its edges so they're straight. We'll connect these two finished units with the 10 ½" strip we cut earlier.

Step 4: Now, take the patchwork unit we just completed in Step 3. Sew the top edge of this unit to the 10 ½" background strip. Press the seam allowance toward the print fabrics. Then, sew the bottom edge of the patchwork unit from Step 2 to the other side of that background strip. Press the seam allowance toward the print fabrics again.

Step 5: Now,we'll just tidy up our finished patchwork. Use your ruler, rotary cutter and the guide lines on your cutting mat to trim all four edges so they're straight and at 90 degree angles. Looks good! Let's add some background to the edges.

Step 6: Now, cut another long strip from your background fabric, measuring 3 ½" tall by the width of the fabric (selvage to selvage). Cut one 10" length from this strip. This goes at the bottom edge of your patchwork block. Next, cut two 13" lengths from the long strip. Take these, and trim them so they're 3" tall by 13" long. These are the sides of your patchwork. Finally, cut one 2" by 10" strip. (Depending on the width of your fabric, you may be able to get this out of the remaining long strip, or you may need to cut it from the rest of your background fabric.) This 2" tall strip goes at the top edge of your tote.

Step 7: Let's sew these strips to our patchwork block to finish the front of the tote. Sew the 2" by 10" strip to the top edge of the patchwork. Sew the 3 ½" by 10" strip to the bottom edge of the patchwork. Press the seam allowances toward the patchwork.

Step 8: Now, sew the 3" by 13" strips to the right and left edges of the patchwork. Press those seam allowances toward the patchwork as well. Your finished piece may have some wonky edges again now. Don't worry about it – just trim them!
 
At this stage, I like to use the edge of my patchwork as a reference line for trimming. Here, I've lined up my ruler with the patchwork, and then lined the bottom of the ruler up with a guide line on my cutting mat. With that alignment, I can then move my ruler to the edge of the background fabric and trim it so it's parallel with the edge of the patchwork. (See how I've lined the raw edge of the background fabric up with another guide line on my mat? That's handy for making that trim accurately.)

Step 9: Now that your patchwork block is all straight and square, measure it, and write down those dimensions. (You'll need them again later to make a lining.) Your patchwork will measure somewhere in the neighborhood of 14" by 13". If it's a little larger or smaller, don't worry about it! As long as the background strips on the right and left edges are the same width, all is well. Just use whatever the measurement is to cut an identical piece from your background fabric. This will be the back of your tote.

Making Straps:

Cut two more long strips from your remaining background fabric, each measuring 4" tall by 26" long. (That's just the length I like. If you prefer your tote straps longer or shorter, by all means, cut them to the length you like!). Fold each strip in half lengthwise with the right side facing out, pressing the fold with a hot iron. Open this fold back up and then carefully fold the two raw edges in so they meet at this fold line, as shown above. Press these two new folds as well. Then, refold each strap in half again so the raw edges are to the inside, and press the strap flat.

To finish your straps, stitch about ⅛" away from each long edge.

Assembling the Tote:

This video walks you through the assembly process from this point. We'll add the straps to our tote, make a lining with some pockets in it, and put the whole thing together. I made two pockets for my tote: the larger one used a 12" tall by 8" piece wide of fabric, and the smaller one used a 12" tall by 5 ½" wide piece. You can actually make your pockets any size you like – or even leave them out!

Varying the Size:

This tote is a little on the diminutive side – just large enough to carry your wallet, phone, sketchbook, a paperback, and a small water bottle on your day's adventures. If you'd like it to be bigger, you can always cut the background strips in Step 6 a couple inches wider and longer. Can you imagine having a little collection of these bags, each one with a different fabric theme?

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About Our Guest Blogger

Diane Gilleland blogs, podcasts, publishes, teaches, and makes videos about all things crafty over at CraftyPod.com. When she's not doing those things, she's doing whatever her cat tells her to do. And what's wrong with that?

Tutorial: Make quilted hexagon placemats

This week Diane Gilleland from CraftyPod shares a tutorial for making a modern placemat set using large scale Spoonflower prints and simple quilting techniques.

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I love English paper piecing and fabrics with great big prints, but these two things don't always play so nicely together. So I decided to experiment with super-sizing some traditional paper pieced hexagons. I love the way they showcase these three beautiful designs from Spoonflower designer Holli Zollinger: Coral Lined Mosaic, Fish Scales Slate Full, and Diamond Circles Aqua, and the chevron lines of quilting make a nice frame.

Materials (per placemat):

• ½ yard background fabric (I'm using linen-cotton canvas here, but cotton would be lovely, too.)
• ¼ yard flannel (for batting)
• 3 Spoonflower Kona® cotton test swatches in prints of your choice
• Thread that coordinates with your background and hexie fabrics
• Sewing machine with a walking foot
• Downloadable hexagon template

Choosing fabrics for your hexagons:

For this project, you'll need prints that are large, but not too large for the hexagons. So, download the hexagon template. The hexies I'm using in this project are 4" across, and this measurement is useful as you're browsing for fabrics. Compare that 4" measurement to the same measurement on the handy scale ruler that's pictured with each fabric. How much of the pattern repeat will appear in a 4" x 4" area?

Making giant hexies:

Now, we'll create the big hexies and sew them together. This video shows you how:

      

Making the placemats:

When you have your set of three hexies all sewn together, it's time to assemble your placemat. I highly recommend that you install a walking foot on your sewing machine for this project. We'll be sewing through several layers of fabric here, and a regular presser foot has a tendency to shift those layers around too much while you stitch.

Check with your local sewing machine dealer, or try an online search for "(make and model of your machine) walking foot." If you don't have a walking foot, I've added some suggestions below for alternate ways you can this project.

Cut three 12" x 16" pieces of fabric: two from your background fabric and one from flannel. You may notice that my flannel doesn't match my project at all, and this is okay! It's just used as a batting layer here, and will be invisible in the finished placemat. This is a great opportunity to use up any scrap flannel you have in your stash.

Layer these three rectangles as you see here, with the flannel between the two pieces of background fabric. (The wrong sides of the background fabric pieces should be facing the flannel layer.) Match all four edges.

Now, take the hexie unit you made earlier and place it on top of this fabric stack. Center it side to side, and position the top points of the hexies 2" below the top edge of the background fabric.

Place lots of pins all over to keep all these layers in place. Pin a couple times inside each hexie and all over the background section.

Now, head to your sewing machine. Depending on the colors you’re using, you may want to thread your bobbin with a color that matches your background fabric, and thread your machine with a color that matches your hexies. Stitch the hexies down, sewing close to all the outside edges.

If you don't have a walking foot: You can hand sew along these edges, using a tiny hand stitch.

Next, sew right along each of the seam lines where you sewed the hexies together. If you don't have a walking foot: You can hand sew along these lines, or even skip this step.

With the hexies in place, we'll do some quilting to solidify all these fabric layers. I'm using "echo quilting" here, which simply follows the shape of the hexies. Start by stitching ¼" away from the edge of the hexies. Then, stitch another line ¼" away from that line, and repeat until you've covered the entire background with chevron stitching. I think this design accommodates precise lines or wonky lines equally well, so if your quilting lines get a little crooked, go with it!

If you don't have a walking foot: You may want to play with hand quilting – a placemat is a nice, small project for that technique. Try drawing the lines you want to quilt with an erasable fabric marker, and then sewing through all the layers along these lines with a small running stitch.

Once the quilting is done, it's time to bind our placemat. We're using a time-honored technique here called a "double fold binding." For this placemat, you'll need to make about 60" of binding. Take your leftover background fabric and cut two strips measuring 3" high by the width of the fabric. From here, you can follow Heather Bailey's excellent PDF tutorial to finish and install your binding. The's just one small alteration to this process when you're binding a placemat. Heather's tutorial says to begin sewing the binding on "in the middle of one side." With a placemat, begin sewing the binding along the bottom edge of the placemat, about 2" from one corner.

Give your freshly-bound placemat a good pressing, and you're all set! Variations: You can do all kinds of fun things with this design. You might use a background fabric with a tiny, subtle print alongside those large print hexies. You might quilt it in a more free-form pattern. You might bind it in a contrasting color. You might even arrange your hexies in a different configuration. Have fun giving this project your own unique stamp!

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About Our Guest Blogger

Diane Gilleland blogs, podcasts, publishes, teaches, and makes videos about all things crafty over at CraftyPod.com. When she's not doing those things, she's doing whatever her cat tells her to do. And what's wrong with that?

Tutorial: Make a smock using kids' drawings

This week Anda Corrie from Etsy shares a tutorial for making a kid's art smock. She made one using fabric created from her daughter's own drawings! For more on how to turn drawings into fabric designs, check out Anda's previous Photoshop tutorial.

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This tutorial will show you how to create a very basic pattern and then sew a simple art smock for your child. In this example I’ve first created Spoonflower fabric based off my daughter’s artwork — the techniques I describe in this tutorial might be helpful if you want to do something similar.

Materials:

• a few sheets of 8.5 x 11” paper
• tape, scissors, pencil, & ruler
• sewing machine, matching (or contrasting) thread
• 3 yards of ¼” double-fold bias tape
• 1 yard cotton quilting-weight fabric, or ½ yard of fabric for main and a 16”x6” scrap of fabric for pocket (for a toddler or preschool-aged child)

How-To: Tape two pieces of paper together along their long edge. If your child is older than 4 you may need to tape more pieces together — or just rustle up some bigger paper.

Get a shirt that fits your child comfortably and lay it flat on the paper. Line up the center of the shirt to run along the longest side of your paper.

Trace around neckline, shoulder, side, and bottom. Lift up the sleeve a bit and carefully trace along sleeve seam. Now add ½” seam allowance at shoulder and an extra inch to the side, as shown in the photo.

Cut two pieces of your main fabric from this pattern. On your pattern piece, measure 5” from bottom and draw a straight horizontal line, then cut off that part. This is for your pocket. 

Cut one piece of pocket fabric on fold — it can be the same fabric or choose a different fabric.

Sew bias tape along top edge of pocket piece.

Line up pocket to bottom of front piece, pin and then baste around the edges to hold it in place. 

Measure halfway point and sew a perpendicular straight stitch to connect pocket at center as shown (creating two pockets).  

Sew shoulders. Use a serger if you have one but a straight stitch will do fine. I like to use French seams* purely because they look nice.

*French seams in a nutshell: with fabric wrong side together, sew a straight stitch using a ¼” seam. Trim fabric as close as you can to where you’ve sewn. Press down seam and turn smock inside out so right sides are together. Now sew a ⅜” seam and press. The seam is now hidden and looks very smart, I think! This technique is more often used for delicate fabrics like silk... but to me they make everything look better.

Open up smock, measure to center of front neckline and cut a 4” slit. 

Carefully sew bias tape around slit.

Now measure 36” of bias tape and sew around neckline, leaving about 8” at each end. Those 8” ends will become the tie at the neckline. 

Sew bias tape around (open) sleeves. 

Sew up the sides of smock. Again, you can use a serger, a straight stitch, or French seams as I’ve done in the photos.

Turn smock right-side out again and sew the last of your bias tape around the bottom to hem the smock. You’re all done! 

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About Our Guest Blogger

Anda Corrie is an American illustrator, Etsy designer, and émigré living in Berlin, Germany with her small family. In her spare time she obsesses over vintage children’s books, makes homemade schnapps, sews tiny dresses that her 4-year-old stubbornly refuses to wear, and draws. Visit her Spoonflower shop for some lovely hand drawn fabric designs and her Etsy shop, Boosterseat.

Tutorial: How to create fabric from drawings

This week Anda Corrie from Etsy shares a tutorial for creating fabric designs out of drawings using Photoshop. 

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Make cute and simple fabric from your drawings!

Get some ordinary printer paper and your favorite brand of black marker or art pen. For this project, a thicker-lined pen is best. Decide what you'd like to draw--here, I'm drawing a bunch of smiling little kids--and draw
your subject all over the paper, repeatedly.

Don't worry if some of the drawings look a little off, just keep drawing—you'll get better as you repeat the image. Try a few variations as you go. Once you have a ton of little images all over the page, take a pencil and circle the ones you like best. 

Take a second sheet of paper and lay it on top of the first paper. If you can't see the lines you drew through it, you may have to hold both sheets up and tape to a window. Grab your crayons and "color in" the drawings you like on the second paper. Color loosely, a bit lightly, and use blocky color. Let your coloring go a bit out beyond the lines if you like.

Scan both images at 300dpi and open in Photoshop.

First, make sure the background of the crayon image is pure white. We'll use Replace Color for this.

Click Image > Adjustments > Replace Color, make sure Preview is checked, and set Fuzziness to 25.

Click on the background of the image in the Preview window—this is the hue that appears next to the word "Color".

Now drag the Lightness slider all the way to the right—the "Result" box will turn white. You should see your image background turn bright white as well. (If you start to lose image detail in the crayoned parts, adjust Fuzziness to 15 or 10.) Click OK.

Now's a good time to crop your crayon image.  I like to leave around 1-2cm at the top and left sides, and crop closely on the bottom and right. This will usually make the repeat flow nicely once it's uploaded to Spoonflower. 

You can also open Image > Adjustments > Hue & Saturation if you want to quickly tweak your colorway. 

Now for the line art image. Open Image > Adjustments > Threshold, set it to 128 and click OK. This will make your image completely black and white without any gradient.

Zoom (+) way, way into the drawings you've decide to work with. Using the Magic Wand tool, hold down Shift and click all the black parts of the image until it's completely selected, then copy what you've selected to your clipboard. Just work with one little drawing at a time here. 

Head back over to your crayon image and Paste the drawing as a new layer. Move it so it's positioned on top of its colored-in background, and use Edit > Transform > Rotate if you need to line them up better. 

Repeat with the remaining drawings you've colored. Flatten all the Layers of your image and if you like, open Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast—bumping both up will give you a more vibrant fabric, lowering them a touch will give a more muted image, which can be nice for a vintage look.

Open Image > Image Size and set the print size for your design. I like to set my image dpi to Spoonflower's default of 150dpi here, too. 

Save and upload to Spoonflower! You can preview your pattern in different repeats—here I've decided half-brick is best. You're all done! 

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About Our Guest Blogger

Anda Corrie is an American illustrator, Etsy designer, and émigré living in Berlin, Germany with her small family. In her spare time she obsesses over vintage children’s books, makes homemade schnapps, sews tiny dresses that her 4-year-old stubbornly refuses to wear, and draws. Visit her Spoonflower shop for some lovely hand drawn fabric designs and her Etsy shop, Boosterseat.

Little girl's shirred sundress tutorial

I’m the mother of three daughters who, to varying degrees, are still interested in having their mama make them clothes. Actually, it’s almost a competitive sport around here where handmade clothing equals love points. If one girl gets something made for her, someone else is bound to be pretty cranky about it and demand that she also get a new dress, skirt, or what have you to even up the spread of love.

This means that it’s very useful to be able to make things up quickly sometimes. I do have quite a few lovely, more complicated children’s clothing patterns that I make when I know that I have the stamina for all that tracing and fitting together of many pattern pieces--and most likely, for doing it at least twice for my two youngest daughters. But more often than not, I wing it with simple clothing for them that I can make quickly, more than one time, and without much more work than taking accurate measurements of impatient little people.

This simple shirred sundress that I made for my youngest daughter, Phoebe, is just such a simple project, taking more time to type about than it did to actually make it up. I used a single yard of Spoonflower organic cotton sateen printed with Sally Harmon's -- aka, Boris Thumbkin’s -- dear Train design, and I had a bit of fabric left over to use in patchwork projects down the road. Here’s how to make up a sweet and easy shirred sundress for a little girl in your life.

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First, start with washing, drying, and pressing your yard of fabric. Trim off the unprinted selvage edges of your yard.

Tutorial: Sewing Up A Summer Waterproof Washbag

This week guest author Emma Jeffery from the blog Hello Beautiful shares a tutorial for sewing up a waterproof washbag. 

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A washbag is a useful accessory to have at any time of year, but they’re particularly useful to have around when packing for summer vacations or trips. This oversize bag is big enough to hold all essential lotions and potions and by using an iron-on vinyl fuse, you’re able to choose from the glorious designs in the Spoonflower marketplace and turn the cotton-linen canvas into a laminated, wipe-down surface! Sewing with vinyl can sometimes be challenging but with a teflon coated machine foot that easily slides over the ‘sticky’ surface, it becomes very straightforward. If you are looking to sew with vinyls, laminates or oilcloth fabrics, I recommend investing in one of these for your machine.

Supply List:

• 1 yard Spoonflower’s linen-cotton canvas (I used Krople by Ravynka.)
• 1 yard iron-on vinyl fuse 
• Zipper (I used 22" heavy duty chunky zipper with plastic teeth, for durability.)

Cut:

• 2 pieces of fabric measuring 19" x 13". These will be the side pieces.
• 1 piece of fabric measuring 19" 5". This will be the front pocket.
• 1 strip of fabric 4" x 8". This will be the loop/strap.
• I sewed using a ½" seam allowance.

Carefully remove the release paper from the back of the vinyl fuse and lay on top of one piece of 19" x 13". Smooth it down gently with the palm of your hands to remove any creases or air bubbles. Place the release paper back on top of the fabric and with a hot, dry iron, press the fabric and ensure the vinyl fuse adheres successfully. I recommend you read the directions on your package of vinyl fuse as the technique may vary depending on the manufacturer. Repeat for the remaining pieces of fabric you cut.

Trim the edges of the vinyl fuse so that they are even with the edges of the fabric. A pair of scissors with non-stick blades are very useful when cutting tacky surfaces.

Using the release paper to protect the vinyl surface from melting under the iron, press the 4" x 8" strip in half lengthwise with the wrong sides together. This will be your loop/strap. Open up the fold, and press each side in towards the center fold and fold in half again.

Top stitch along the two sides of the strip to secure the folds and put to one side for now.

Take your 19" x 5" piece (your front pocket piece) and fold over each long edge to the wrong side by ½". Top stitch all the way along the top edge, leaving the bottom edge folded but not stitched, for now. Place this pocket piece on top of one of your side pieces, measuring 3" above the bottom edge and pin at the sides and bottom edge. Stitch the pocket piece to the side piece along the sides (within the seam allowance) and the bottom edge, securing the folded edge down.

Pin the zipper along the top raw edge of the side piece. The zipper will be facing downwards with the zipper pull facing the right side of the fabric.

Using a zipper foot to make sure you’re able to stitch close to the zipper teeth, sew the zipper to the fabric. Remove the fabric from the machine and fold over so that the zipper AND the fabric are both facing upwards. Top stitch along the folded edge, close to the zipper teeth. 

Repeat for the second side piece.

Fold the bag in half with the right sides facing in and sew the bottom edge closed. These seams will be visible from the inside of the pouch so I prefer to finish them with pinking shears to make it look tidy.

Keeping the pouch inside out, bring the bottom seam up so that it is resting immediately above the zipper.

Fold the loop you made earlier, in half, and slip it between the bottom seam and the zipper. Pin in place and stitch up both sides of the pouch.

Measure a 3" square in each of the 4 corners and cut away.

Open up the cut area and press down in the opposite direction to make the gusset bottom. Pin then sew each corner closed.

Turn the pouch right sides out and poke out the corners. It sometimes helps to use a point turner or unsharpened pencil.

Your washbag is complete! You’ll have a convenient pocket along the front of the pouch (sew one on the other side for extra storage space) and a looped strap, which will allow you to hang the bag on a hook.

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About Our Guest Blogger

Hi! I'm Emma, and as well as working on the Fiskars Design Team, I blog over at hellobeautifulblog.blogspot.com.

I'm an obsessive sewer, often leaping into projects with more enthusiasm than talent, more bravado than skill and more good luck than anything else. This technique has worked well for me so far and more often than not, I make things I love, even if they're not absolutely perfect. And though I'm no expert, I have a passion for fabric, color and design. I know what I like and what I like makes me smile.

How to turn handwritten recipes into tea towels

This week guest author Emma Jeffery from the blog Hello Beautiful shows us how she turned her grandmother's handwritten recipes into tea towels for her own kitchen. 

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For a woman who keeps a newspaper from the day she was born, my mum has surprisingly few keepsakes or handwritten memorabilia from her own mother who passed away in 1999. When I asked her to trawl through her old papers and files, she managed to find three handwritten recipes from my grandmother. They appear to be the only remaining examples of her handwriting left in the world, and they are therefore as precious as they are priceless.

I decided to use these recipes to make a set of dish towels for my mum and I. This way, the handwritten originals can be safely stored away yet the joy of being able to see my grandmother’s handwriting in an everyday context will continue to make us smile and feel close to her.

Spoonflower’s linen-cotton canvas is the perfect fabric for dish towels. Linen is known for it’s super absorbent qualities, and with a 54” wide printable area, they are perfectly sized to fit a set of four dish towels on to one yard.

I began by taking photos of each recipe page, saving them to my computer and opening them in Picasa. The originals were old and yellowing with discoloration in some areas, but by using some of Picasa’s edit tools -- specifically the ‘retouch’ option (to minimize some of the blotchy discoloration) -- I was able to get a cleaner appearance to each page.

I then turned each recipe into a landscape orientation.

After selecting all three images (I only had three recipes, so two of my recipe dish towels are identical), I selected the ‘Picture Collage’ option under the ‘Create’ tab. Picasa automatically places the images into a collage arrangement, that you are able to edit and move as you please. I added a grid spacing in between each image so that I would have a convenient cutting line, and by making the grid lines a color, I had an eye-catching feature for the back, hemmed edge of the finished dish towels.

Under the ‘Page Format’ option, I set the size of the collage to 54” x 36”, which will fit exactly on to one yard of the linen-cotton canvas and uploaded the design to Spoonflower.

I always recommend ordering test swatches before committing to ordering the actual yardage, that way you are able to make color and size adjustments without spending a lot of money.

The dish towels were simple to sew up. I cut them out along the grid lines and turned back the hem. I also sewed a small length of twill in one top corner of each dish towel for convenience.

The linen-cotton canvas is a beautiful fabric and will only improve with extensive washing and use. The really nice thing about these is that if they ever do suffer from wear and tear I can simply have more printed, without even having to dig the original paper copies out from storage.

Addendum to original post (11/9/12):

It seems that there is an extra step involved to have your collage of tea towel designs print to fill the area of one yard of linen, which measures 54in width by 36in length, which equals 8100 pixels x 5400 pixels at 150 dpi.

When exporting out of Picasa, the image resolution will be 72 dpi, which is standard for web viewing but which caps the exported file size at 5120 pixel width x 3414 pixel length. Because of this, there is an extra step involved to increase the size of your design collage exported in Picasa before uploading to your design library in Spoonflower.

• You can open the design in Preview on a Mac. Once open, go to Tools and Adjust Size. With "inches" toggled, enter in "54" width and "36" length and "150" for the resolution dpi. Export the resized file as a PNG, and then upload it to Spoonflower.
• If you don't have access to a Mac computer, you might want to try downloading a program called Paint.  Here is a great tutorial for resizing using Paint.   

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About Our Guest Blogger

Hi! I'm Emma, and as well as working on the Fiskars Design Team, I blog over at hellobeautifulblog.blogspot.com.

I'm an obsessive sewer, often leaping into projects with more enthusiasm than talent, more bravado than skill and more good luck than anything else. This technique has worked well for me so far and more often than not, I make things I love, even if they're not absolutely perfect. And though I'm no expert, I have a passion for fabric, color and design. I know what I like and what I like makes me smile.

Happy Home book giveaway and winner of shears set

Ruby on the Jimbo-Jumbo dog bed

We've lived in our house for five years now and we're still not done decorating it and fixing it up.  Do you ever really get "done" fixing up your house? Maybe not. Or at least maybe not if you enjoy making things for your home and for the people who live there. Maybe a color choice you used to love starts to get old, or you find a fabric you just love and must use somehow. Certainly kids grow and you need new ways of organizing their stuff, and so on. I think of dozens of new projects each week that I want to make for our house so it's probably no surprise that some of my favorite crafting and sewing books are home-dec related.

Fortuitously, the kind folks at Chronicle Books recently sent us a copy of author and fabric designer Jennifer Paganelli's new book Happy Home: Twenty-One Sewing and Craft Projects to Pretty Up Your Home, and I immediately found a project that our home needed--or rather, that our sweet new doggy, Ruby, needed.

Ruby was a healthy 17 pounds when we adopted her from a local shelter last winter but now at 8 months old, she's almost 40 pounds and has outgrown the bean bag chair she'd appropriated as a bed from her human sisters. Ruby needed her very own bed that could accommodate the part-Dachsund length she loves to sprawl across the living room rug, half hanging off the bean bag, and Jennifer's "Jimbo Jumbo Dog Bed Cover" fit over a new, large dog bed was just the ticket. I used some pieces of Spoonflower linen/cotton and organic cotton sateen plus some solids and a few other coordinating cotton and linen prints from my stash to make up the new cover to go with our living room. Ruby loves it! (She didn't particularly enjoy having her picture taken on it, though. Witness the pretzel bribe above keeping her distracted from the fascinating camera being pointed at her.)

Today we're giving away a copy of Jennifer Paganelli's Happy Home and you can enter the drawing by commenting below or on the corresponding Facebook post by Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012. We'd love to hear what home-dec projects you're working on next, so please do share. And if you think that one of them ought to be a lovely new bed for your favorite canine friend, you're in luck! Jennifer and the folks at Chronicle Books have provided a project exerpt from the book (below) so you can get started now without waiting to find out if you're our giveaway winner. Thanks, Jennifer!

If you don't have a deserving doggy, there are 19 other projects in this book with crystal clear instructions and plenty of illustrations to inspire you to sew. I particularly liked the look of the "Millie's Market Tote," the "Broad Brim" sunhat, and the "Crocheted Pillowcase" projects. Read on for Jennifer's dog bed how-to!

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Jimbo Jumbo Dog Bed Cover Project by Jennifer Paganelli

Every member of the family deserves a bit of pampering, even the dog. My dog George is a big Labradoodle, and I had a hard time finding an attractive cover large enough for his bed. I then came up with the idea to cover his bed with a simple patchwork quilt, and now everyone is happy. He likes the bed so much that it was difficult to keep the cover clean for the photo shoot! This is a project where you can use any fabric scraps you have laying around.

Note: Since this cover will get a lot of use and needs to be washable, simple quilting stitches will work best (diagonal lines, meandering free motion, or stitch in the ditch). You don’t want to spend time doing delicate hand quilting or tying by hand. We have also given you two options: a quilted top with a quilted bottom or a quilted top with a canvas bottom.

Finished size: 46 by 31 by 4 in/117 by 79 by 10 cm

Materials

For quilted Top and Bottom option:

• Seven ½-yd/45-cm lengths of different printed mid-weight cotton fabrics (45 in/114 cm wide) for pieced Top and Bottom

OR

• Seventy 8½-in/21.5-cm random fabric squares for pieced Top and Bottom
• 3½ yd/3.25 m mid-weight cotton fabric (45 in/114 cm wide) for Backing
• 3½ yd/3.25 m cotton batting (45 in/114 cm wide)
• One 26-in/66-cm coordinating zipper
• One 45-by-30-in/114–by-76-cm dog bed
• Coordinating thread

For quilted Top and canvas Bottom option:

• Seven ¼-yd/23-cm lengths of 7 different printed mid-weight cotton fabrics (45 in/114 cm wide) for pieced Top

OR

• Thirty-five 8½-in/21.5-cm random fabric squares for pieced Top
• 1¾ yd/1.6 m mid-weight cotton fabric (45 in/114 cm wide) for Backing
• 1½ yd/1.4 m mid-weight cotton duck canvas fabric (54 in/137 cm wide) for Bottom
• 1¾ yd/1.6 m cotton batting (45 in/114 cm wide, or crib size)
• One 26-in/66-cm coordinating zipper
• One 45-by-30-in/114-by-76-cm dog bed
• Coordinating thread

From the sewing basket

• Scissors for fabric
• Rotary cutter and cutting mat (optional, but makes cutting all those squares a lot easier)
• Clear ruler
• Pins
• Water-soluble fabric marker
• Safety pins (optional)
• Zipper foot for your sewing machine
• Darning foot for your sewing machine (for free-motion quilting option)
• Walking foot for your sewing machine (for any other machine quilting option)

From the craft cabinet

• Masking tape
• Quilt basting spray (temporary fabric adhesive)

Cutting

For quilted Top and Bottom option:

From pieced Top and Bottom fabrics, cut seventy 8½-in/21.5-cm squares.
From Backing fabric, cut two 60-by-44-in/152-by-112-cm rectangles.
From Batting fabric, cut two 60-by-44-in/152-by-112-cm rectangles.

For quilted Top and canvas Bottom option:

From pieced Top fabrics, cut thirty-five 8½-in/21.5-cm squares.
From Backing fabric, cut one 60-by-44-in/152-by-112-cm rectangle.
From batting fabric, cut one 60-by-44-in/152-by-112-cm rectangle.
From canvas, cut one 51-by-36-in/130-by-91-cm rectangle. (See fabric layout diagram.)

Assemble

Step 1: Piece Quilt

A For each quilted side of the cover, randomly lay out 35 squares in a grid of 5 squares by 7 squares.

B Starting with the top horizontal row, pin and sew all the squares, with right sides together, using a ¼-in/6-mm seam allowance. Press the seam allowances to the left. Return the completed strip of squares to the layout.

C Sew the second horizontal row of squares, with right sides together, using a ¼-in/6-mm seam allowance. Press all the seam allowances to the right. Return the completed strip to the layout.

D Repeat steps 1B and 1C until you have all the squares sewn into 7 horizontal strips of 5 squares each, making sure that the seam allowances are pressed in alternating directions (left, right, left, and so on). This will help reduce bulk and interlock the strips when they are sewn together. (See illustration.)

E Pin the first 2 strips, right sides together, carefully matching each vertical seam between each square. Sew together with a ¼-in/6-mm seam allowance. Press the seam down, toward the lower strip. Repeat until all 7 strips are sewn together.

F Repeat steps 1B to 1E if making the quilted Bottom.

Step 2: Prep for Quilting

A Lay the Backing piece flat on the floor, right-side down, and tape the edges to floor with masking tape. Lay the Batting on top of the Backing. Smooth out any wrinkles, and then place the pieced quilt Top, right-side up, centered on the Batting. Smooth out any wrinkles. The Top will be about 2 in/5 cm smaller on all sides than the Batting and Backing.

B Fold back the Batting and Top so the upper half of the wrong side of the Backing is visible. Spray the Backing and Batting lightly with basting spray. Gradually roll the Batting into place over the Backing. Smooth out any wrinkles as necessary. Then lightly spray the Batting and the wrong side of the Top with basting spray. Gradually roll the Top into place over the Batting. Smooth out any wrinkles. Repeat for the lower half of the quilt. These 3 layers are now called the quilt sandwich.

C Starting from the center of the quilt sandwich and working your way to the edges, use safety pins to attach all 3 layers together.

D Repeat steps 2A to 2C if making the quilted Bottom.

Step 3: Quilt and Cut

A Quilt the sandwiched layers together using your preferred method.

B With the fabric marker and the ruler, draw a 51-by-36-in/130-by-91-cm rectangle centered on the Top. (See illustration.) Cut off the excess Top, Batting, and Backing, making sure that the corners are square and the edges are straight.

C Repeat steps 3A and 3B if making the quilted Bottom.

D Finish the raw edges of the Top and Bottom with a zigzag stitch or a serger.

Step 4: Finishing

A Put the zipper foot on your sewing machine. Place the Top and Bottom of the cover with right sides together, align all raw edges, and pin together along one of the short sides. Measure 5 in/ 12 cm from each side, and clip notches into the seam allowance of the pinned side. Starting at 1 end, sew the pinned side to the first notch, with a ½-in/12-mm seam allowance, then backstitch. Don’t remove the fabric from the sewing machine, and keep the seam allowance even. Change the stitch length to baste, then baste to the second notch and stop. Change the stitch length back to the normal setting, backstitch, and continue sewing to the end. Unfold the joined pieces so they are in a single layer and press the seam open. Center the zipper right-side down over the basted seam, between the notches, and pin in place. Starting at the top of 1 side of the zipper, sew through all layers, ¼ in/6 mm from the edge of the zipper tape and seam allowance. Sewing in the opposite direction, sew the other side of the zipper tape as above. Remove the basting stitches and open the zipper. (See illustration.)

B Place the Top and Bottom of the cover with right sides together, align the 3 raw edges, and pin. Sew together with a ½-in/12-mm seam allowance, pivoting at each corner. Trim off the corners, and press the seams open.

C To create gussets, fold one side seam down to meet and match up with the bottom seam. This will form a triangle. With the ruler and fabric marker, draw a straight line perpendicular to the side seam 2 in/5 cm from the tip of the triangle. This line should measure about 4 in/10 cm. Pin and sew along the line. Clip off the triangle, leaving a ½-in/12-mm seam allowance. Repeat on the other 3 corners. (See illustration.)

D Turn the cover right-side out through the zipper opening, and insert dog bed.

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Here is Jennifer's original version of this project.  Her dog looks much bigger than Ruby but he still fits comfortably on the bed along with his adoring friend!

Jimbo-Jumbo Dog Bed Cover, one of the projects from
Happy Home: Twenty-One Sewing and Craft Projects to Pretty Up Your Home

Last week, we gave away a set of Gingher shears, pinking shears, and thread snips, and I think it's safe to say that a lot of you could really use some nice scissors. Sadly, we could only choose one winner, Zoe Brench in the Netherlands. Congratulations, Zoe, and we'll be sending you your lovely new set soon!

Project Tutorial: Upcycling An Old Ottoman With Spoonflower Fabric

This week guest author Emma Jeffery from the blog Hello Beautiful rescues a worn ottoman with an artful fabric. 

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Ottoman recovered with Spoonflower fabric: Art Deco Rio De Janeiro by Zesti

I recently pounced (literally!) on this old ottoman when a friend of mine told me she needed it out of her house. Yes, it was ripped in places, some of the covered buttons were now rather naked and the dark brown covering wasn’t really to my liking, but it was structurally sound, clean and it fitted in the trunk of my car. I just knew it was begging to be brought back to life and recovered in some gorgeous new Spoonflower cotton-linen canvas.

Though each individual piece of furniture will be slightly different to recover, I thought I’d share some of my methods and findings in case you are also tempted to give something like this a whirl.

Before I could even start thinking about browsing through the mouth watering array of new fabric possibilities in the Spoonflower marketplace, I had to set about taking the old ottoman apart, removing the foam from the wooden base and legs, ripping off the old fabric and sanding down the wood. All the fun messy stuff. I must admit to never having recovered a piece of furniture like this before, so if you are an expert and spot some fatal flaws or errors in my methods, please feel free to leave a comment and advise.

I began by ripping away the covering on the underside of the base and once able to get to the screws, I used an electric screwdriver (thanks, husband!) to take the legs off and separate the base from the foam.

As with any project like this, there are going to be a lot of staples to extract before you can remove the old fabric completely. I’d estimate that there were about 5 million staples in this ottoman (or thereabouts....) and I summoned my inner dentist and removed them with the help of a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. I also discovered a little magnetic dish that was the perfect way to keep the staples away from being stepped on by little feet.

With the wooden base dismantled from the legs, I then sanded down the wood. I didn’t remove the old varnish completely, I just ‘roughed up’ the surface so that it would hold a new paint.

Aside from choosing the fabric, the second best thing about this project was choosing the paint! I consulted with the friendly experts in my local hardware store, who were more than happy to advise me on which kind of paint to use. I ended up using a semi-gloss, which is a paint and primer in one, in bright turquoise. I recommend talking to your local hardware store experts if you have questions about your own projects.

After painting all the woodwork with two coats of paint (and allowing the first coat to dry before painting the next) I was able to move onto the fabric part of the project. I recommend using Spoonflowers heavy- weight linen-cotton canvas. This gorgeous print is called Art Deco Rio De Janeiro by Zesti, the second runner up from the Art Deco Fabric of the Week contest

I wanted some tufting on my ottoman and whilst there were originally 3 buttons on the old ottoman, I decided to add a few more to make a total of 11. The fabric I used lent itself to having buttons placed in the center of the triangles on the design, so I started out by taking measurements from the the fabric. I recorded how far apart the centers of the triangles were, up and down and side to side. My foam was glued to a wooden base so -- turning the base to face me and starting by finding the center point and working outwards -- I measured and marked the position for 11 buttons.

I then used my hand drill to drill holes into the wooden base on each marked point.

I wanted to check I had measured the position of each hole correctly (math is not one of my greatest skills....) so I poked cocktail sticks into each hole I had drilled, and lay the fabric over the base. By doing so, I was able to make sure that the cocktail sticks poked the fabric in just the right place for me to center my buttons. Which they did. Success first time!

Assured that my holes were drilled in the correct places, I covered 11 buttons with the fabric I was using and, having hunted down an 8” doll making needle, I stitched the buttons through the foam. I secured each covered button with a large plastic button from my supplies at the wooden base to make sure the thread couldn’t get pulled back through the foam. No one likes loose, dangly buttons, right?

With all 11 buttons tightly secure and holding the fabric to the foam (I also checked that I pulled them into the foam evenly) I finished by pulling the fabric taut over the foam and stapling the sides to the wooden base underneath.

I made sure that the corners were tidy by stapling each side almost to the end of the base, then folding one side of the fabric over the other, to create a neat fold.

All I had left to do was screw the foam back onto the base and put the legs on, and I was finished. Although I worked on this over a couple of weekends, the total work time was around 8 hours.

I am thrilled to have rescued an old piece of furniture that was no longer loved or wanted and turned it into something beautiful. I haven’t let my children sit on it yet. But I will, once I’ve stopped gazing at it.

Upcycling an old ottoman with fabulous Spoonflower fabric is an easy project

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About Our Guest Blogger

Hi! I'm Emma, and as well as working on the Fiskars Design Team, I blog over at hellobeautifulblog.blogspot.com/.

I'm an obsessive sewer, often leaping into projects with more enthusiasm than talent, more bravado than skill and more good luck than anything else. This technique has worked well for me so far and more often than not, I make things I love, even if they're not absolutely perfect. And though I'm no expert, I have a passion for fabric, color and design. I know what I like and what I like makes me smile.

Tutorial: How to turn Google map images into throw cushions

This week guest author Emma Jeffery from the blog Hello Beautiful shows us how she used satellite images of her neighborhood to make some very cool throw cushions.

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I must be getting sentimental in my (not so) old age as I’m increasingly drawn to surrounding myself with meaningful and thoughtful items. Sure, I’m inspired by designs and trends I see in stores online and locally, but I’m often searching for ways to translate these ideas into something more than a passing fad. I love it when items or objects in my home have a story to tell or a memory to share. They seem to give a depth and richness to my environment that store-bought items cannot.

Ask my husband, and he’ll probably share with you his opinion that we have more than enough throw pillows in our house, but anyone who enjoys fashion, design and sewing as much as I do knows that cushions are a great and easy way to change the look and feel of a room. 

Have you noticed the prolific array of map designs at the moment on all kinds of home decor items, stationery, wall coverings and clothing? I've been thinking about how nice it would be to incorporate this design element into a fabric that actually portrayed a familiar and special part of the world -- a favorite vacation spot, a childhood home, a mountain range once conquered...

I went to Google Maps and typed in the zipcode of the house that my husband and I own, where we were married and into which my eldest child was born. I actually ended up switching to the satellite view, but you could of course use the map view instead.

Next I zoomed in to get a view of our house and its surrounding area. I don’t recommend zooming in too closely as the image will become pixilated when you enlarge it. I did maximize the image on the screen by ‘hiding’ the large directions/places sidebar on the left and turned off all of the map annotation so only the satellite view remained.

I then took a screen capture of this image, saved it to my computer and opened it in Picasa, where I cropped it and used the ‘boost’ option under the image processing tab to brighten the colors and to really make that lovely patchwork of fields pop.

Once I was happy with the image, I then needed to make it the right size - big enough to make three 16” x 16” cushions. I opened the saved image in MS Paint where you can easily increase or adjust the size of an image.

I had this printed onto Spoonflower’s linen-cotton canvas, which has a printable area of 54” wide. I wanted each of my cushions to be unique and to have a different part of the satellite image printed on them so that no two were alike, and I kept that in mind when resizing my image. Spoonflower prints a good quality image at 150 dpi, so to resize you need to do the following math:

Desired fabric width (in inches) x 150 = ___

Desired fabric length (in inches) x 150 = ___

In my case, I wanted the printed fabric image to measure 17” x 51”, to give me a enough fabric to sew the cushions with a ½” seam allowance.

17 x 150 = 2550 pixels

51 x 150 = 7650 pixels

I had my image centered and printed onto 2 yards so that I could use the excess white, unprinted fabric around the edge of the image, for the back of my cushions. Adjust the sizes according to your own preference and projects.

I then sewed them up in one afternoon, and suddenly my couch became not only a comfortable place to relax, but also a great talking point with our children and visitors.

Of course, these cushions will still get thrown around the room and end up on the floor as the kids makes camps and play games (that’s why we have so many cushions!), but it’s so nice to know that we have a few little reminders of a special place that is very dear to our hearts.

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About Our Guest Blogger

Hi! I'm Emma, and as well as working on the Fiskars Design Team, I blog over at hellobeautifulblog.blogspot.com/

I'm an obsessive sewer, often leaping into projects with more enthusiasm than talent, more bravado than skill and more good luck than anything else. This technique has worked well for me so far and more often than not, I make things I love, even if they're not absolutely perfect. And though I'm no expert, I have a passion for fabric, color and design. I know what I like and what I like makes me smile.