#33...take your shoes on a trip

When traveling, I used to pack my shoes in plastic grocery bags, and although it is great to reuse, repurpose and all that, they sure do not look tres chic when you open you suitcase at your destination. I decided to end the grocery sack ugliness going on inside my suitcase by making some simple, cute shoe sleeves to tote my shoes on vacation.

To make them all you need is a half a yard of fabric (any type of quilter's cotton or cotton/poly blend works great), thread, iron and a sewing machine. Half a yard of fabric will make two sleeves, which can fit either two pairs of shoes or one boot each. These are a great project for new sewers and great gifts for traveling friends. It takes about 20 minutes to make two sleeves.

Here's how you do it:

#1 Cut two pieces of fabric into a square 18" x 18"

#2 Turn under 1/4" on two opposite sides of the square. Press. Turn under same two sides again, totally encasing the raw edge. Straight stitch across the turned under hems. (These sides are the top and bottom of the sleeve)

#3 Fold the square in half with the right sides out matching up the two unsewn sides of the square. Stitch 1/4" seam down side of sleeve. Clip the seam edge close to the seam. Now turn the tube inside out and press the seam edges together from the inside and and sew down 1/4" on the side seam again, this time with the right sides together. When you turn the tube back right side out, the inside seam will be totally encased without any raw edges. This is called a French Seam, and it will help keep your sleeve from unraveling and having messy, stringy hems. Click here to see an online tutorial with pictures of how this seam is made.

#4 Once your sleeve is turned right side out, you now have a finished tube. Simply sew across one of the open sides to close it and form the bottom. Voila....you're done!

When I get home from my trip I simply throw them in the wash with the rest of my laundry. The same 8 sleeves have been traveling with me for several years now, making them a very green travel accessory.

Happy Trails!

#32...learning my upholstery limits

Before

The other day, I posted a chair that I recovered myself.......however, I do have upholstery limits. For example, pictured above is a chair I found on ebay for $10 (please note that it cost $90 to ship to me.) The leather that came on it looks surprisingly good in this photo, but in actuality it was cracked, dried out and came off the chair when you brushed against it. The chair is an Ekornes Stressless recliner from the 1970's. Originally, I really wanted an Eames Lounge chair, but Tyler wanted something a little taller than Eames, so we settled on this vintage Ekornes. I bought $25 worth of white marine grade vinyl and took it to the upholsterer. He charged me $175 to recover it.....bringing my total for the chair to $300, which I was happy to pay, as I could not have accomplished all of the button detail had I tried to recover this myself.

After

#31...make a statement baby

Inspired by the hand printing projects in both Lena Corwin's book Printing by Hand, and Lotta Jansdotter's book How to Print with Anything from Potatoes to Linoleum, I started hand printing these personalized baby onesies as gifts for expecting friends. They were a big hit, and people started placing orders. It just dawned on me that I should list them in my Etsy shop. (sometimes I am slow to recognize business potential)

People have come up with the funniest things for me to print on the onesies. The options are really endless. I print on 100% cotton plain onesies that I buy from the store. I use hard plastic letter stamps that I individually paint with Jacquard textile paint and print onto the onesie. Once printed, the onesie can be machine washed and dried. I like to make a little tulle bag to gift package the onesie in, making it easy to wrap and give away!

#30...upholstered slipper chair

I have tried a few upholstery projects in my day. Some have been successful, others have ended in frustration with expensive fabric cut-up and ruined on the floor. I own several books on the subject of upholstery, and despite that they offer good step-by-step instructions, I find that I have learned the most from trial and error.

I recently bought a new upholstery book, Matthew Haly's Book of Upholstery. The pictures were what sold me. It has beautiful, modern ideas for upholstery projects for the home. I was inspired looking through the pages to attempt covering the below slipper chair for my sister-in-law-to-be Kelly for her birthday. I was pleased with how the chair turned out.

A few things I have learned about upholstery projects:
* If your piece is a family heirloom, antique or expensive piece.....take it to a professional.
* Start with something easy, like recovering dining chair seats

Before

After

#29...wire basket lighting

When I came across this charming and unconventional bedside lighting idea in a back issue of Country Home magazine (march 2005 issue), I set about making my own version to flank my guest bed in my loft space. The bed fits tightly into the space, with only about 18 inches on either side of the bed, so I needed a light that did not take up floor space, lit the dark corners, and served as a night stand.

Inspired by the wire basket, I found two wire window boxes that had a metal tray in the bottom of them for plants. I bent the metal tray edges out a bit, so that it no longer fit inside the window box and actually rested on top, creating a little ledge. I attached the boxes to the wall on either side of the bed at night stand height.

Instead of installing a lamp kit into the wire box (as in the inspiration pic), I purchased two strands of white holiday lights (making sure they were strung on white cord not green), and put one inside each window box in somewhat of a jumbled bird's nest fashion. I placed the tray on top and dropped the plug through the bottom of the box and plugged into the nearest outlet. My wall outlets happen to be connected to a wall light switch, so it is easy to turn the lights on an off with the switch. (If the lights were not plugged into an outlet operated by a wall switch, it would be fairly easy to splice the holiday wire coming out of the bottom of the box and put a small on-off switch on the cord, allowing it to operate like most table lamps. Any home improvement store sells this type of self-install switch, and the instructions on the back of the package are easy to follow.)

This project cost less than $30 for each light. I found the window boxes for $20 each, and each string of holiday lights cost about $5. I love how the guest bed corner sparkles when the lights are on!

#28...help!!!!

Despite the circus-like appearance of this tent, we are not having a grand time under this big top.....but a bunch of termites are! If you live in a wood house in the south, at some point, despite your best efforts at pest control, you may find yourself with a wee bit of a termite problem. In that case, a company comes, tents the house, pumps poisonous gas in, and lets it sit in the house for 24 hours, killing every flying, crawling and scurrying critter. This is not a DIY project, and it is sort of a pain to have to undergo this, but it is one of the challenges of living in an older wooden home.

Today, I am experiencing unusual (much like the oddness of tenting a house like a circus to kill bugs), technical, BLOGGING PROBLEMS! For some reason, blogger is only allowing me to upload one photo to my blog. If I try to upload more, it acts normally for the upload, and then the photos disappear when I try to preview or post. It is some weird circus-like vanishing act! I have tried a few HTML tricks that I found on the blogger help forums, but no matter what I do it only lets one picture post.....if there is anyone out there reading this, who has any idea what I am talking about, I would really appreciate any help/advice..... I am hopeful that someone more computer savvy than I can help me sail through these issues with the greatest of ease!

#27...plumbing pipe decor

When searching for curtain rods for my TV room/home office, I wanted something industrial looking and simple to cover the bank of windows pictured above, and one just like it on another wall. Every curtain rod that I priced was several hundred dollars, and out of my range.

My husband Tyler came up with the idea that we try making our curtain rods out of plumbing pipe, plumbing flanges and U-bolts, that we purchased at Home Depot.

The cost of making plumbing pipe drapery rods was significantly less than almost every other type of rod. Here are the parts that we used to make them:
2 flanges (about $2-$3 each)
2 elbow pieces ( about $2 each)
Plumbing pipe costs anywhere from $1 - $3 a foot. It comes in various thicknesses.....i.e. 1/2" or 3/4" or 1". The flanges and elbows also come in these widths, and you need to be sure that all sizes match. Pipe can be cut and threaded to any length (about 50 cents a cut at Home Depot/Lowe's)
U-bolts to serve as curtain rings (about $1 each)
We really like how the rods turned out, they are very sturdy no matter how hard you yank the drapery back and forth. And the beauty of the pipe is that they will never bow or sag.