B.A. in Housewifery: Fabric

Monday, April 14, 2014

Upcoming project: Curtains

Tomorrow we receive keys to our new house! If you do not remember, when we moved here we were offered an older house with the promise of a newly constructed house when they were completed. We were not expecting to move until later in the summer, but it came early! I am so excited! We walked by the house last week and I love it.

The challenge is that this house is bigger and has more windows. Therefore, I need more curtains. Target no longer sells the curtains I currently have in the living room, so that means NEW CURTAINS! Darn! (haha) As many people know, curtains are pretty expensive. Since I have some basic sewing skills, I will be making my own.

A lot of people are working with drop cloth for curtains. I looked them up yesterday out of curiosity and I totally see why it is all the rage. I might be jumping on that bandwagon. However, I am going to add some color by sewing some patterned fabric on them. I just have to figure out how I want to do it.

I received a Joann Fabric gift card for my birthday, so I am hoping to use that, but all the fabrics I am falling in love with are on Etsy. I'll have to make a trip to the store before deciding. Here are the fabrics I am considering:

Charles picked this one as his favorite

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Rag Rose Tutorial

The other day one of the blogs I follow had a post about a rag rug. It got me thinking about all the scraps of fabric I have in my fabric bin. I decided to make what I'm calling Rag Roses. I'm sure someone else has already thought of this, but I've never seen it before (that I know of).

Step 1: Cut out three strips of fabric. Mine were about 1 inch wide and about 10 inches long. If you make them longer then your rose will be bigger and if you make them shorter than your rose will be smaller.

Step 2: Hold the tops together with a clothespin. You can just hold it with your fingers, but it makes the next step a little more difficult.

Step 3: Braid your strips together. Make sure the good side of the fabric is facing out each time.

Step 4: Hot glue the ends. I hot glued the 3 pieces at the end together and then folded it over and glued it on itself. I hope you know what I mean by that. It's kind of hard to explain. Just glue it so the ends are kind of tucked under to prevent unraveling.

Step 5: Start rolling it up. Hot glue as you go along. You could sew it together, but I thought hot glue would work just fine.

Once you've completed all your rolling and gluing you should have one completed Rag Rose! You can put it on a pin or make a hair pin with it. Or use it to embellish other craft projects.