adding some colour

Last night I didn't have any plans so I decided to add a bit colour to the main floor using fabric I had on hand.

First up, a new table runner.

Don't mind my dying hydrangea, poor thing

I used fabric I had leftover from the ottoman I made for Mila's room. It's a bit wonky, but already I feel like it's a bit closer to actual spring than the dreary weather we've been having (although it's quite nice today!).

Next up I made a pillow cover for my chair in the office using some old Heather Bailey fabric I had from way back when I used to make stuff more often.

Just a bit of colour to brighten things up around here!

Have a great weekend! Mila and I are off on an adventure of our own for the weekend. Hopefully she cooperates!

new project: sunroom office

It's time to work on my next project - the sunroom! It's been a bit of a sore spot because it always seems to be the gathering place for everything that doesn't fit anywhere else. I'm always trying to keep stuff to a minimum, but it never seems to work. It's where I work so I'm looking to make it a place that's fun and inviting.

I'm pretty sure I know the culprit - the bench! 

It always looks messy because I've been using it as a shelf for some of my papers and things, but I'm ready to make a change. I'm going to put a cushion on it (a la this bench from I Heart Organizing) with pillows and find somewhere else for all the stuff (it's questionable I even need this stuff!).

I also want to get this room cleaned up because you can see it from the dining room so something a bit more inviting would be nice.

A couple more shots of the really neat space :).

I want to keep the bench fabric pretty neutral and I'll dress it up with some pillows. Here are some options from Tonic Living I'm looking at:

Courtyard, Oyster

Cross Section, Charcoal

Geo Maze, Ash

Graphic Fret, Flax

Small Ikat Dot, Buff

What do you think? What would you choose? Any others from the site? The Geo Maze, Ash and Courtyard, Oyster are speaking to me, but I'd love to know your thoughts!

ps-Thanks to Shannon for giving me some tips on taking pictures of windows! Getting there!

lark

I was just checking out the fabric shoppe on facebook and noticed some new Amy Butler fabrics. They're so bright and cheerful! Here are some of my favourites:

I'm picturing a pillow for this one! I would love this for the basement to add some colour.

This would be so pretty as a headboard for the bed in my sewing room.

The blue version of the first fabric. Would love to see a pillow our of this too (or perhaps a pin board cover??)

You can never go wrong with some cream and black. Not sure what I would do with this one since I'm trying to add some colour into my house!

Check out more beautiful fabrics on the fabric shoppe and amy butler's website.

orange you glad I made this pillow?

har har

So I took advantage of naptime and made a pillow out of my new fabric. But guess what? I didn't get enough for two pillows, which is so strange for me because I always buy way too much fabric...waaah waaah.

I ended up getting a yard only which didn't take into account the fact that I wanted the circles to be in the middle of the pillow. I played around with the idea of cutting out a circle and sewing it on some other fabric, but I really wanted a fully-orange pillow. So I went ahead and made one with a beige backing and I'll just order more fabric for the other pillow later.

I quite like it! It adds a punch of much-needed colour to the room. I still need to make the pillow with the shells, so that will be next up.

pillow fabric is in!

The fabric I ordered from Spoonflower for the livingroom pillows came in and way sooner than I expected. I got a note late last week saying it was going to be another three weeks, so I'm pretty happy.

I chose the tribal orange fabric along with a fun nautilus orange and grey fabric. I'll be honest, the orange on the first fabric is a bit too bright for me, but I think I'm getting used to it.

Stay tuned for the pillow project to be completed next week!

Have a great weekend!

ps - I just realized there is some nice cat hair on the couch already -- I love that my cat chooses the new furniture for his naps...

according to plan

In the spirit of Janice's recent post about keeping it real, I thought I would share a project I half completed that hasn't gone according to plan. Like many of you, I have furniture from my university days (can I still say that when I graduated 11 years ago??) namely two Ikea Lack tables. One is a console table and one is a coffee table. I've had it in my mind to make an ottoman out of each one of them - one for the living room and one for my bedroom. So I finally got to work a couple of weeks ago.

Here's the coffee table before:

I took a trip to fabricland* to pick out the fabric and the foam to make it cushy. I hemmed and hawed, but found some cozy grey fabric with some colourful flecks in it that I thought would be nice for the winter months, but when I got it home I just wasn't sure. I kind of thought maybe the wrong side of it would work better because you could see the colours better.

Ultimately, I decided on the right side and I got measuring. Instantly I realized the the cushy foam wasn't going to be thick enough, but it was all I had (and $35 a metre!!) so I stuck with it. I stapled the fabric etc. and all was fine until I was finished and turned it over.

It was kind of blah.

My hubby thought it was kind of blah too so I was pretty disappointed. So here it is... where it has been sitting for a few weeks**:

Leo has been having fun with it -- using it for balance and such while standing. But I have to do something with it. I don't want to spend the money to buy more fabric because I don't want to be disappointed again, so I still might try to make it work. I dunno. Obviously it still needs legs. I might take a trip yonder to Home Depot or Lowes to see what kind of legs they have to finish it off.

Here it is in front of the couch where I would have liked it to go. I pictured it (with legs :)) with a tray on top (and basically nothing else because I have a child who will knock everything off of the tray...).

So there's my dose of reality for today (that and all the toys laying around!).

What would you do with it? Suggestions welcomed!

*this is getting tougher with a little kid in tow by the way - strolling him through the fabric bolts I'm sure he's wondering where the eff his mother is taking him now...
**What do you think of the martini glasses being so close to the kiddie table with all the books? :)

fabric ramblings

Now that we've managed to get our ginormous sectional into the basement, we're couch-free in the living room. I have two chairs but we've yet to get a couch. As I've mentioned before, we've got our eye on the Karlstad in dark grey and I'd like to pull in some orange for accents. I was on Spoonflower this afternoon and found some fabric I think will do the trick for some cushions.

I love this Tribal Orange colour by Dolphin and Condor

And this Tree Hearts fabric by Holli Zollinger is clean and simple.

And that my friends is where the orange stops because I got distracted (doesn't take much these days) by Holli's other fabric. I love all of them!

Ok I just found her kunda linen collection and now I want reds - beautiful!

This is turning into a weird run-on post so I'm stopping there. What to choose!?

ps-while I was looking over this post for glaring errors I realized it was September. SEPTEMBER PEOPLE. What the eff.

dots

I'm currently sitting in the semi-dark, browsing through sew mama sew for new fabrics. I also just finished eating an apple with cinnamon in case you were wondering.

I seem to being drawn towards lots of dots.

What's inspiring you this week?

chirp, chirp!

Well I got to meet my new little nephew yesterday -- his name is Max! How cute is that. He's a super sweetheart and I'm so excited that I get to see more of him on Christmas Day. In preparation for his arrival, I made Max (and his Mom of course!) a little gift that should keep him warm during these chilly winter months.

The little chicky fabric is from Olive Manna and I use some soft white fleecy fabric for the back I had already. I kinda wish I still had it with me because I'm a little chilly myself right now.

Camo Cool

I was in the fabric store sometime back and I saw this cool camo fabric that was all pixelated (word?) and cool looking. I brought some of it home to make some totes and I showed my sister and she said "Yeah that's what all the soldiers are wearing these days." Oh. I'm not a big soldier or war person, but I still liked it and I still made a tote out of it. I'm glad I did.


This is another one of those me totes. I think I'm going to make all of my totes in this style from now on too. It's kind of cross between this tote and this bag. It's perfect for zipping around town for this and that.



If you think it's cool too you can get it here!

Happy Wednesday y'all

poppies

I just got home from Stratford, Ontario . Have you been? If not you should check out the Shakespeare Festival this year... I should also add that there is an amazing Shakespeare Festival in Prescott, Ontario as well. If I didn't tell you my mother would be quite mad ;). I was in Stratford for work and for the Canada 3.0 forum. It was a crazy and tiring couple of weeks, but very cool to hear the discussions about the future of digital media in Canada.

Needless to say, I'm pretty tired. But when I got home I perked right up because of a very special piece of mail I received. A few weeks ago I ordered a new piece of fabric from Danielle Smeets and I got it today. It's called Poppies and I got it, well... basically because I got married in a town called Poppi. I know, I know... I'm a bit of a nerd.


There it is. Man it's soooo pretty! I can't even describe how pretty, because it doesn't feel like the regular fabric I order. I don't even think I'll sew anything with it. Maybe a piece of art? Who knows. But it's too pretty to cut up.

Ok I'm signing off because I want to veg. I'm going to park myself on the couch to watch the NHL playoffs with the hubster!

Have a good night!
~lealou

zippy

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! I was at a wedding -- my "little" cousin tied the knot... really I can't believe he's married now!

I also dropped off a few things to a good friend -- I made her two of these zip pouches and a paris bag for her little sister. I hope they enjoy them!

On the task list this week are some placemats to match my napkins for a friend here in the city; and a tote bag for my Mom's neighbour -- she likes this one! I'm pretty partial to it too.

Happy Week!
~lealou

a little holiday cheer

The dinner table at my Mom's -- I love her red wine glasses!

We're off to a friend's house tonight to celebrate the big '09 but I wanted to share a few pics of my handmade gifts. This year I made the same thing for everyone -- pillows! My little sister gave me the idea -- she's moving into a new apartment in a couple of days and wanted some new pillows for her new place. The pics I took of her pillows didn't turn out for some reason but you can kind of see what I made through the fuzz.


The second set is for my other sister -- I wanted to give her something fun to brighten up her living room.


And finally -- a set of pillows I made for my Mom. I think they look perfect with her couch!


That's it for now! I hope you all have a wonderful New Year celebration. See you in 2009!

~lealou

a tisket, a tasket...

Aren't these the cutest little things you ever did see? Well I think so. C gave these to me last night as a thank you for making her so many things over the past while. Little does she know I actually consider her my quality assurance manager, so I call it even. These are from Jenn Maruska Design -- the bag is a little sweetie called a "tasket" and then there is a pin cushion and a needle book. I just love them. Thanks C!


On Monday, I managed to get some napkins made -- something I've been meaning to do for a while. I'm calling them The Gold Leaf Napkin set for some reason -- really it was the first thing that popped into my head. I tend to do that a lot. I love this fabric -- it's Anna Maria Horner's Shadow fabric in Ivory from her Drawing Room line, which really looks sharp (yes I just used the term 'sharp') with crisp, white dinnerware. They're in the shop as we speak.




Oh did I mention that I did a spinning class today for the first time in say, four years? YA.... I almost died. The class started at 6:45 and I was one timbit away from leaving at 7 - no kidding. I honestly don't know how the hell I managed to get through it. I think the fact that Obama won kept me going. I kept telling myself that if Obama beat all odds to become President of the United States... I can do this measly spinning class. Anyway I finished it and now I'm not sure I can get out of my seat.

Great, now I have that song in my head....

the kate bag

Another sister tote! Named after my other sister Kate, this tote is a big one (Kate is only big in height I assure you!). I used more of the same fabric I used on some of the napkins I made for Christmas last year.


I love this fabric and really I was thinking of keeping it but I realized that I can't keep them all. The Kate Bag has one big strap that sits across the chest and has a cute little button on the outside. There are two pockets on the inside. This one is in the shop.


Happy Sunday!
~lealou

the stacey tote

She probably wouldn't want to have her name on the 'net but I needed a name for this tote, so I named it after my sister Stacey. Oh well! ;)

This tote totally didn't set out to look like this, but I think it turned out rather cute if I do say so myself. It has Anna Maria's Branching Out fabric on the outside (you know the one I'm obsessed with???) and Amy's green Full Moon polkas on the inside. There's a little pocket in there too to keep all your small goodies. This one is in the shop .


Has anyone ever been to Accent on Toronto? We went last night and it was really funny. I was crying, I was laughing so hard. I kinda felt bad for the woman beside me... I think I noticed her every so politely inching closer to her friend and away from me. Anyway it was a good laugh so you should go next year.

later lovelies!
~lealou

bon

Well it seems people love the frenchies! And although I can't sell them according to the fine print of my frenchy pattern, I made one for my friend's sister out of some extra fabric I had from the other frenchies I made this year. I also made one for my amazing photographer friend who is out in BC so Jenn I'll be shipping it out to you on Monday!

Have a great weekend y'all. I have a busy day ahead of me. Right now I'm waiting for the fabric store to open so I can get a zipper for the zip pouch I'm making to go with my tote for the secret auction at the reunion tonight. I've already delivered the tote so I'll have to sneak in with my action moves and slide the zip pouch into the tote before anyone bids (hopefully someone bids!). At noon we're off to see some friends who had a baby a little over a month ago and then the reunion!

later gaters
~lealou

oui, oui à paris!

C is off to London and then Paris this week with her family and needed a bag to bring all the essentials with her. I made this bag...I'll call her Paris... out of the same grey fabric I made my first Frenchy. It's lined with Amy Butler's grey Lacework fabric.



I brought it out to the movies for a test drive the other night (has any one seen Tropic Thunder?? I think I have a little crush on Ben Stiller now...) and it held up quite well... even with my water, wallet, snacks, camera & lip balm, so I think it'll be perf for the big trip!


~lealou