Family Room Pillow and Seat Cushion

The Finished Product:

I had a really ugly teal pillow that I took apart and we covered with cute fabric to make the couch pillow. 

Then we had this brown seat cushion that needed a little pizzazz:

 

So we picked out the fabric that we thought would go with it and began the project.

First I laid the fabric beneath the pillow and cut around the edges of the pillow, I left about about 5/8ths to an inch all the way around the edge for seam allowance/just some extra fabric to work with. I cut 2 of these in two different fabrics so the we could turn it to the side we were feeling like using.. just to make it a little more versatile.

Second I took the fabric that was to be the strip between the 2 different top fabrics and made a long strip.  I measured the width of the cushion(it was 2 inches) and then added 1 and 1/4 inch onto that  for my two 5/8ths inch seam allowances.  Then I measured the length of what the strip needed to be and made sure to add my 1 and 1/4 inch again for my seam allowances.

For the third step I laid the strip around the edges of my 2 top pieces to get an idea of where the 4 corners were going to be.  I did this because I then reinforce stitched(For this set your machine to 1mm stitches) those corners on the strip so that I could later clip into them.

Here's what the reinforcement stitching looked like.  Do it a skinny 1/8th into the seam allowance from where you plan to sew your actual seam at.

Fourth step, I then pinned my long strip to the top cushion fabric.  For the corners where you reinforcement stitched you can clip into them so that it can turn that corner successfully. DO NOT clip your reinforcement stitching! This is there to help hold your fabric together!

Step Five: Sew your strip and first cushion piece together! Don't forget to press your seams open too! This helps your seam lay flat when you turn it right side out.

For step six just repeat the same process as steps 3-5 but leave the back edge of your pillow open so that you can stuff your pillow inside it.

 If you look closely, you can see that the bottom edge of the light blue fabric is left unsewn:

Step seven: Stuff your pillow inside your newly made pillow covering, and edge stitch your hole closed.

Sorry..this one's sideways for some reason..

 You don't have to do this, but I really wanted the button look that our cushion had before, so I hand stitched into where the "buttons" were on the original and voila! A finished reversible seat cushion!

Shout out: I have to give credit to Joel, he was my photographer for most of these pictures..otherwise I probably wouldn't have had half as many pictures of the process! So THANKS JOEL!:)

Top 10 Reasons Why I'm Excited to be a Dad

1. I will learn patience
2. I can teach her sports
3. I will have even more motivation to work hard
4. I will learn how to not treat Kristin like one of my guy friends all the time... haha (aka not hurt her on accident when we are playing around)
5. I can try to get her to say daddy first before she says mommy... sorry Kristin! ;)
6. I will learn how to change diapers???
7. I will learn how to function on half as much sleep as everyone else
8. I am making my parents grandparents, and my grandparents great grandparents!!!
9. I can re-watch all of my favorite childhood movies and TV shows
10. I get to see her grow and become an amazing daughter of God

So many projects!

Well, where to start? Because I have just graduated and no longer have a job, I have found that I have a TON of extra time on my hands! Normally this would probably drive me crazy, but my mom and aunt gave me some Joann's gift cards for graduation.  I'm not very good at explanations, and I keep forgetting to take pictures of the actual processes of my projects..but I'll get better with time.  Let me know if you have any questions!

I think i'll start with the most boring first:
We have this great rocking chair that we've been meaning to spray paint since we got married but we just hadn't gotten around to it.  But we finally did! 

 

The chair was originally green and had a wood seat to it, but it matches our family room a lot better now!

Next project:

 I had these old green knit sweatpants that had turned into high waters due to shrinking in the dryer..So! I finally just chopped them off and made them into shorts:

Well, after cutting off the excess I totally had a great idea!  I figured that I could take the pieces and sew them together and they would make a great little girl's skirt! Here's what I came up with:

It looked kind of plain though so I decided to add some embellishment to it and this is what I came up with:

I got the idea for the embroidery from Martha Stewart's website:
http://www.marthastewart.com/270877/freehand-embroidery?backto=true&backtourl=/photogallery/sewing-projects-clothes-and-accessories#slide_12

Project #3:

Recently I went to this great little thing called Gifts of the heart exchange.  They take donations throughout the year and then they have a big event where students can go and pick out different things that they need for their kids.  Well, while I was browsing I ran across this shirt that itself was quite ugly, but I thought the fabric had potential, so I grabbed it.

The Shirt:

Well, I was able to get around to doing something with it, and this is what I came up with:

The Process:
Step 1: I found a little dress that I liked off of Zulily.com and tried to make a little pattern off of it
Step 2: Making the pattern.  I found one of my old patterns (the one I used for the baby blessing dress) and traced that same pattern for the shoulder/armhole/chest area.  I then made necessary alterations so that it could look like the dress I was wanting in the end.
Step 3: Cut out the fabric.  For the skirt I just did long rectangular shaped pieces and gathered them along one of the edges.  I made the rectangle I wanted for the bottom piece a few inches longer than the piece used at the middle.

Step 4: I sewed it all together.  For the shoulder straps I just took rectangular pieces again and gathered them to make the scrunched look and attached them to the dress.
Step 5: Adding the embellishment.  I wanted to have some sort of embellishment because the dress itself was pretty plain.  I'm thinking about adding brown ribbon ties that come out from beneath the flower..but that just came to me late last night when I should have been sleeping..so I have yet to do that.  Anyway! I just took the ties from the old shirt and twisted them into the shape I wanted then stitched the flower down with a button in the middle.  And Voila! A dress!

Not sure why..but the pictures are uploading sideways..but oh well, you get the idea.

Project #4
Stephanie, my sister, showed me this great idea from a blog a while ago where you make a wall piece out of broken mirror pieces.  I've been wanting to make it since she showed me(sorry steph!lol) and it just so happens that we had an old mirror that either needed re-vamping, or tossing! SO! That became mine and Joel's project for the past couple of days!
Finished Product:

Well..here's how it went down.
The supplies(p.s. sorry, can't seem to figure out why it won't turn the pictures on here..)

The Board(A 2x4 board from Lowes)

Can of spray paint, liquid nails, and screws

And an old mirror

We spray painted the board white and let that dry, and taped down some plastic bags to hopefully catch the broken mirror pieces.  Joel then took news papers and placed them over the mirror, then smashed the mirror with a hammer(His favorite part of the whole project!).  The result:

We then began to arrange the pieces of broken mirror on the newly painted white board.  We arranged the big pieces and glued those down, then filled in gaps with little pieces and glued those as we went.
This picture was when we were arranging the big pieces:

This was when we were nearly done:

 Then, to joel's disliking we had to decide where we wanted to hang this heavy sucker.  I had joel hold it in a couple of places as I took pictures:
Isn't he so cute and strong?!lol

We finally chose a place for it and screwed it into the wall!
Finished Product:

This was such a fun project!

That's it for now! I've done more projects, but they'll have to be for another post.  Joel just got home and we're now going to watch a movie!