Ironing Board Up Do

Let's be honest - who really spends a lot of time ironing anymore?!?!  Definitely not me (much to my hubby's dismay). If I am really making confessions here, I think in the almost 10 years of having my ironing board I had used it less than 10 times. That was until I started sewing. If you are going to sew, you have to iron!  So out it came and it is used on almost every project. I don't at all mind ironing in this sense. It is fun since it goes with my creations. Isn't it lovely!!!

Well one day while searching Pinterest I came across a tutorial from Sew4Home (which I LOVE) on how to recover your ironing board. Since I had been wanting to buy fabric to make under desk curtains I knew this could go right along with it!  First I had to find just the right fabric. This proved to be the largest challenge since the JoAnn's here in town doesn't have a huge selection. Before my nephew's birthday party we decided to check out the Redlands JoAnn's and I hit the jackpot!  A beautiful set of coordinating fabrics were practically jumping off the rack and into my basket. I love the color combos and the fun in the patterns.

Just a few days later I was following the tutorial to make my new cover. I am horrible at taking pictures along the way so all I have is finished project. I do have a smaller table top ironing board that I plan to recover and I will try to remember set by step pictures of that.

 I love the color it adds to the room. More projects to dress up my craft room are coming. Including a sewing machine cozy and a Pinterest inspired valance. Check back soon!

I wish I had a daughter...

Pinterest strikes again! When I saw these ruffle butt onesies I just had to make them for someone. Luckily, my sweet friend Chelsey was just about to have her second little girl. I knew instantly what she would be getting at her baby shower. She already mentioned wanting Big Sister and Little Sister shirts her daughters could wear at the hospital. Thanks to some iron-on vinyl and pink onesies from Walmart. But they are so boring on their own. 

 
So this is what I did to the back. This is about 5 or 6 layers of ruffles!  {SQUEAL} They turned out ADORABLE!!!  I must say, as tedious and time consuming as it was to cut the strips, overlock the edges to help with fraying, ruffle the strips, and then sew them all on, they turned out great & I can't wait to make more. Just need more little girls in my life!

Evolution of my Crafting Space

I know what you are thinking! She has re-done her craft room again!?!?!  Well yes and no. I finally have found a layout and organization for my craft room that works great. It allows me to get lots of cutting, sewing and other crafting done with ease.

So why the make-over?  Well you see when we first moved into this house, the craft room was my husband's home office. Over the next several years I tried to make some different areas of our home a craft area only to always return to the dining room table. With small children at home, that was not a great solution since they quite often would get into my paints, papers, or glue. Fast forward a few years, my husband's business had grown and he decided to rent an office space outside of the home. I was then allowed invited into the office to have a crafting space. Hence we got this. Trying to share the space proved difficult (I have a lot of stuff!). Then there was this attempt to set the room up. But still it didn't work for long.

My hubby finally gave up any hope of having an office space at home and he moved out of the room completely (except for a TINY desk space in the corner). The result was the beginning of the space I have now. The paint color was changed to suit me SO much better and the furniture again rearranged. At the time we had hopes that the space could also serve as our homeschooling room since we would start that adventure that fall. Quickly we learned that with only 1 in school and the others being a toddler and a preschooler, that just wasn't possible. There was NO extra space to move in there!

A few changes have been made to the furniture layout but I think we finally have a winner! {Pictures will be added to this post soon, thought I had some already on my computer, but I don't and nighttime doesn't provide the best lighting in there.} So now that it is set up properly, I am trying to dress it up a bit.  I have wanted to make curtains for under my desk for some time now, but I cannot find a tutorial on how to do so anywhere. Can you guess what will be coming to this blog really soon!

Thanks to Pinterest, I have a list of other craft room projects I have set to work on. But those are for another post.

Finally my addiction gets funded!

Now that Christmas is over and the new year has come, I finally have some down time. Time to sew what I want! Sew something for ME!  I have long been wanting to make some curtains for underneath my crafting desks in order to hid all the junk storage I have underneath. While that means hours in the fabric store searching for the perfect fabric, it also means LOTS of money (I measured my desk and it will take about 8 yards of fabric to make the curtains! YIKES

So while on a quick trip to the fabric store, I decided to finally listen to my husband (the businessman and entrepreneur's advice) and test the waters in making and then selling my creations to others. Since Valentine's Day is approaching I thought about what I was doing this time last year. I was sewing Valentine Chair bags for my boys with my new machine!  When I made them there were lots of Facebook Ohhs and Ahhs and I even had a few "orders" for bags. So off I went, happily sewing the bags.

Keep in mind a year ago there was no Pinterest in my world so I found the tutorial for these the "old fashioned" way - AKA - my Google reader. 

Quickly, while leaving said fabric store, I typed up a quick Facebook post to test the interest level for Valentine Chair bags. Within a couple hours I had 5 bag orders!  Not too shabby.  A couple days later I was back at the store picking out felt, Valentine fabric, and the assorted notions I would need to fulfill my orders. Fabric was cut, piled, organized and prepped for sewing. Having a bit more sewing experience than I did a year ago and NOT wanting to fight with the bag like I did previously, I made a few changes to the original design making the bottom of the bag SO much easier to sew! Thanks to Pinterest and the amazing Copy Cat Bag tutorial (which is sadly no longer online - so glad I printed the tutorial out!) I saved myself hours of frustration and thus streamlined my assembly process.

Just a little over a week later and my bags are being delivered to customers and received with great joy (YAY- for customer satisfaction). After posting finished product pics on Facebook, I received another order for 2 bags as well as a order from a friend that wanted a purse like mine (again, the Copy Cat Bag!).

Not sure where this will lead as I do have 4 small children, homeschooling to accomplish, a house to manage, and the need for some down time, but I do know that very soon I should have my under desk curtains as well as a few other nice touches to make my crafting space a bit more friendly on the eyes.