The Junk House: sewing

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Pillow of Shame #2

Remember Pillow of Shame #1? And how it was one of my “decorative” pillows for 3 years?

5 months later…meet Pillow of Shame #2:

(I'm not even an Oakland A's fan)

Ohhh, the horror!

OK, the real horror is that I let this live on my couch for 3 years + 5 months!

Finally this pillow is getting a new look!

I started by laying my pillow out on a piece of fabric to “measure”. I say “measure” because I just sorta eye-balled it.

Then I used blue painter’s tape to create stripes on the fabric. I used a couple extra pieces to evenly measure between the stripes.

This is what it looked like all striped up.

While the fabric was just “hanging out” by the pool, I mixed Clorox bleach and some water in a spray bottle. I eye-balled about 1 part bleach, 2 parts water…next time I’d use more water.

Then I lightly sprayed my fabric with the bleach mixture. Just remember you can always spray more, but you can’t spray less! Oh, and please do this outside or in a well ventilated area. I don’t want you getting stoney-boloney off bleach fumes.

The bleach will start working quickly. This picture was taken after only a couple minutes. Let the bleach dry, remove the tape, and then throw the fabric in the wash machine. You’ll want to wash the bleach out of the fabric before using as a pillow, obviously.

Once my fabric was washed and ironed I used the 10 Minute Pillow Cover tutorial from Alicia at Thrifty and Chic to sew a new cover (I used the same tute for Pillow of Shame #1).

And bam:

Bleach striped pillow!

I’d planned to sew a button in the middle to give the pillow that tufted look,

but that plan is on hold until puppy decides to stop chewing/eating everything.

So maybe one day you’ll see this pillow again and it’ll have its button bling…

Disclaimer: I was provided a bottle of Clorox Bleach as part of the Clorox Regular-Bleach DIY Fashion campaign

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Sew Cool

I finally finished the sewing project I mentioned here a couple weeks ago! If you ‘like’ The Junk House on facebook then you already know that I was sewing curtains. I ~~bitched~~ mentioned on there that they were taking forever.

But they are finally done and look awesome, if I do say so myself.

I think the hardest part was finding enough fabric to make 4 panels. I needed 2 ½ yards to make one panel. The first (and closest) Hobby Lobby had enough fabric for 3 of the panels (and 30%-off). The second Hobby Lobby didn’t have any of the fabric I needed. Finally, the third Hobby Lobby (hour round-trip drive) had enough fabric (not 30%-off) for the last panel. Yay!

Let’s get our sew on!

First step, measure and pin! I measured up the side with my handy-dandy tool and pinned/ironed.

Then I folded it over and pinned/ironed. Pinning/ironing is the theme of this post…

Sew, then repeat.

Once both sides were finished I measured a 2 ½ inch pocket for the rod, pinned/ironed, and sewed.

Meanwhile, I hung the curtain rods. I chose the Square Café Rods in Black from Target. They look just like these ones from Ballard, but weren’t $45 a pop! (45 bucks for a curtain rod, are you for serio?)

Anyway, I hung the panel and pinned the perfect length. I sewed up the bottom and BAM! one panel down!