Winter Wrap-Up: Part Three

This is the last part of my little mini-series.  I'm so glad I can dream up random projects that I feel really urgently need to get done.  Otherwise I might lose my mind in the long dark winters.

This last project has actually been on my mind for a while.  I'm pretty sure everybody has at least one of those giveaway fleece throws with some company or another's logo on it.  We have one that is a really nice size for a picnic blanket and the kids like to curl up in it to watch TV at night.

The problem with these blankets is that they are magnetic.  I swear if there is a cat hair or piece of grass within a mile it will gravitate to these blankets.  So, I decided to cover it with woven cotton fabric.  Essentially, I used the original blanket as the stuffing for a small quilt.

I found some random fabrics in my stash.  About five yards worth.  All woven cotton.  I gave them a quick pre-wash and dry to eliminate any shrinkage.  Then I got out my scissors and started cutting.  I wanted to get this done quickly, so I cut big blocks.  For the front, I used 3 different patterns and cut them all into 1/4 yard blocks.  Approximately.  I do a lot of things by eyeballing.  So, I folded the fabric in half, cut on the fold, folded again, cut again.  Then I laid the pieces out over the original throw until I had enough pieces to cover it.

I sewed the front together in rows.  Each row has 3 pieces.  Two long and one short.  As it happened, I was about 3 inches short on the length.  So, I took some of the leftover orange fabric and pieced together a long strip to attach to the top.

For the back, I just cut two colors of cotton into big rectangles and did a nine patch pattern.  Pretty easy peasy.

Next, I sewed the front on to the fleece. 

Then attached the back by putting it wrong side out over the front of the blanket.  Once I got almost all the way around, I turned it right side out, closed up the seam and ran a simple top stitch around the edges.  Just to give it a little extra strength, I ran a line of stitches across the front about 1/3 and 2/3 of the way down the blanket.  I'll pretend it's my "quilting".

Now we have a nice little fluffy quilt with kitties on it.  The kids like that it's bright colored and cute, I like that it's not covered in cat hair.  Matt likes that the kids aren't stealing his blanket.  Everybody wins.

Now, on to Spring projects.  Just in time too because the weather is warming up.  Time to order seeds and get things going for the garden!

Oh and before I forget, I got featured on a blog that I dearly love called Little House Living!  Merissa has a new series called "Making the Most With What You Have".  I filled out her questionnaire a few months ago and she published my story last week!  I'm so excited!  Thank you Merissa for publishing my story!

Catching Up

So many things have happened in the nearly three four (!) weeks time since I last posted.  Good things for sure.  But lots of things.  *Please note that I did not do all these things in one day.  I wrote this post over a period of several weeks.*

Natalie officially started Kindergarten.  She absolutely loves it that the bus comes to her house every day and picks her up.  It seems to be her favorite part of school.  She is getting the hang of the classroom, and is warming up to her teachers.  She prefers cold lunch to hot lunch because she can eat right away, and not wait in line.  She has recess before lunch, so she's very hungry by lunch time.  This girl is no fool..

It is full on harvest time. Last week, we picked corn, broccoli, green and yellow beans.  This was way more than we could eat fresh, so most of it got blanched and frozen.  Apples have been coming in and there is a good crop this year.  The past three Mondays I have spent part of the day canning applesauce.  This weekend, we switched gears as my friends Maria and Randy gave us a pile of concord (I think) grapes.  They make the sweetest jelly.  And jelly they have made. About 17 pints worth.

Nights are colder now, so I tackled a project that has been on my list all summer and started to mend one of my favorite quilts.  It is a wonderful cotton quilt that my friend Erin gave me for Christmas about ten years ago and it is showing its age.  Two of its corners are completely shredded, thanks to my dear husband's whiskers and his habit of sleeping with blankets up around his face.  So, today I cut and pressed some cotton twill fabric to reconstruct the two damaged corners, then pressed two yards of some pretty yellow and cream colored cotton into new binding for the edges.  Wouldn't you know that two yards was just a little short?! Grr.  Lucky for me, nobody else noticed this cute fabric that was marked down to $1 a yard and I went back the next day and bought the rest of it.  I am happy to report that it is all finished, two weekends later, but that is beside the point.  I will not be winning any prizes for straight stitching, but there's enough thread on that thing now that the middle will fall apart before the edges do.

Yesterday, on our way home from church, Natalie and I stopped at this little shop called The Kindred House that happens to be right on our way.  I went in to buy a few fat quarters of homespun fabric, since my other fabric option in town, WalMart doesn't carry it anymore.  Natalie found this cute little stuffed cat (naturally) that she just had to have (naturally).  It was pretty darn cute, but it was also $22.  This also happens to be a shop that specializes in primitives.  We looked this cat over, and I told her that I wouldn't buy her that one, but she could pick out some cloth and I'd make her one.  You know she held me to that right?  The minute we got home, I had to start on it.  Thank goodness it was an easy shape.  The longest part was putting the face on.  It took me about an hour start to finish and cost me about $1.25 to make.  And my girl has a new favorite toy.

And now, one more quick sewing project, a little pillowcase, and then its back to the apple harvest.  I think I'm going to do some pie filling today.  And a few more quarts of applesauce.

Bunk Bed Sheets

We got a set of bunk beds for our kids last summer.  We love them because they save space in their tiny bedroom.  The kids love them because it is a combination pirate ship, deer stand, tree fort and bed all in one.    So they are all around a winner.  


However, I just have one little problem with the bunkbeds.  I can't reach to make the top bunk. While the beds were in process (we got them off of Freecycle sanded and repainted them), I sewed  a basic bedspread for each bed.  The blankets are just big enough to cover the tops of the mattresses. So I don't have to wrestle with the blankets, but the sheets are still an issue.  Tucking in sheets is really hard for me. I'm just not tall enough for it.  

While in Goodwill a week or so ago, I found a couple really cool old twin size sheets for $1.99 each.  But they were both fitted sheets.  Then inspiration struck!  These sheets are the kind where the elastic is at the narrow ends, not all the way around, so I thought I'd cut the elastic off the top end, hem it up and have a perfect bunkbed sheet.  And, it worked beautifully.  Here's how I did it.

My nifty sheet before it was forever altered.  I unfolded it and carefully cut the elastic binding off.  Then I had big piece  of fabric with two notches missing out of the corners.  So, I cut the middle part out from between the notches to make the top a straight(ish) line.  Following me so far?  Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of that part.

Then, I took that hunk of fabric that I chopped off the top, folded it in half the long way and cut along my fold, so that I had two strips of fabric.  Then I sewed them together along one of the short sides, so I had one long strip.

Then, I folded it in half again and pressed in the seam.  Next, I folded the edges under to make a nice even finished edge.

Now I had my binding to attach to the top part that I had hacked apart.  I ran 3 lines of stitches along the binding to attach it to the rest of the sheet.  The first to hold the two pieces together, the second for decoration and the third because I missed a spot and my fold came undone.  When I was finished, this is what I wound up with.

A nicely hemmed flat sheet that does not require any tucking.  It just slides over the foot end of the mattress and lays flat at the top.

I'm sure I'm not the first person who ever thought of this, but I feel rather proud to have found a way to solve my bunkbed sheet problem.

Oh and I had a little piece of that binding left, so I made it into a fancy little iron cord cuff thing that I saw on Pinterest.  Theirs had a button closure.  I'm not even going to pretend that I know how to work the button hole setting on my sewing machine, so I used velcro.  The button is purely decorative.  Sorry for the sideways picture here.  It was turned the right way in my photo file, but seems to have flipped back over during the upload process.

Cloth Napkins

I have seen a few articles on the amount of money we spend on paper towels and napkins that wind up in landfills and the solution to the problem was cloth napkins and cleaning rags.  Re-usable cleaning rags, done.  That was easy.  I just demoted my grungiest dish towels and washcloths to the cleaning supply cupboard and use those most often when I'm going to clean up a spill.  Napkins took a little more effort though.  If you know me, you know that I just can't go to the store, buy a nice set of matching cloth napkins and maybe even a few nifty little napkin rings.  I feel compelled to do things the hard way.  As in, make it myself, just to see if I can.  And, tell you that if I can, you can.

I am by no means a seamstress.  I only barely passed 8th grade sewing class and didn't touch a sewing machine again for almost 20 years.  But my dear aunt Iris gave me her old sewing machine a few years ago and my adventures began.   I have made a few respectable projects, but they all tend to be in the shape of a rectangle.  So, when I found a tutorial on Pinterest for cloth napkins, I thought hey, right up my alley, and within my comfort zone.  And, the lady who posted this had them in a basket on her table.  Yay! another use for a basket (just had to throw that in there for my basketophobe friend ;) ).

I ventured to the fabric store, found some fun prints and a couple of months later, finally got around to cutting and pressing that fun fabric and sewing my napkins.  I have made ten so far and have fabric for six more.  We have four people in our family, and though I do a load of laundry almost daily, I'd like to have enough for a few days worth of meals.  I fully anticipate that they will also serve as blankets for beanie babies, barbie dolls and probably the cat.  So, extras are probably not a bad idea.

Here's a link to the tutorial.  how to make cloth napkins  Here's a quick picture of my basket o napkins.

If you feel compelled to count, you'll notice that there are more than 10 napkins in the basket.  That's because I started writing this post before I was done sewing and waited until the basket was full before I took its picture.

We have been using them for close to a week now, and they are a big hit with the kids.  Especially Natalie who has a new found interest in setting the table.  I can also happily report that due to the cloth napkin usage, our paper towel consumption has significantly decreased.  Mission accomplished.