Ruffle Bum

I have always been taken by things that are small. Baby clothes are no exception. I was so excited to hear that friends of ours were having a baby... for the sake of having a baby, but also because I knew it would give me an excuse to make them something. I was even more excited when I found out it was going to be a girl! The only tough thing about it was picking out which pattern to use. I ended up going with an "It's so easy it's Simplicity" pattern (A1826).

If you need to make a Christmas gift for a baby, I definitely recommend this one. I had to stop myself from making 5 more and hoarding them away in the closet for my own future offspring.

The process was pretty simple - you need just a little bit of fabric, bias tape, and skinny elastic. There is elastic around each leg and the waist. The ruffles were easy to make - this is where I deviated from the pattern a little. The pattern suggested having a raw top edge on each ruffle and covering it with ribbon. I assume they proposed this because making a tube out of fabric and turning it around is time consuming, but I just made fabric tubes (by cutting long skinny strips of fabric, folding them hot-dog style with right sides together, and sewing along the long edge), turned them right side out, and used those to make my ruffles. That way the top edge was finished. You can see the gathering but I thought it looked better that way than with oddly placed ribbon along the top of each ruffle. Below you can see my stitching lines for each ruffle and how the bias tape was used to make a casing for the thin elastic around the waist.

Such a fun little project! Sorry I do not have a picture of a baby actually wearing the diaper cover... I will work on that!  

Seeing Spots

McCalls Pattern 6518

  

  

  

Bench Recovery

While on my project kick this weekend adding storage to our laundry room I got around to recovering the bench that lives in the front hallway. I have been meaning to recover it for awhile, especially since I dropped a paint edger on it face-down (oops!) and got a big gray rectangle on the fabric when I was repainting my office. I absolutely love how it turned out. Something about how the white and gray fabric makes the brown wood parts look like dark chocolate looks so chic! The old cream and orange fabric brought out more of a warm chocolate color. You can see what the bench used to look like before and after I recovered it a few years ago here (and below).

Recovering a bench is CRAZY EASY. It took me all of one hour to recover this bench in two different fabrics. I did a white layer first to make sure the old fabric didn't show through my new fabric.

Here's the bench before... notice the gray paint on the upper right!

The first step is always removing the bench seat from the legs. This step should be very easy. Just flip the bench over and unscrew the top (should be 1 screw located near each leg).

My next step was to find some white fabric to use as a barrier from the old fabric to the new fabric. I tested it first and knew the old would show through the new.  I simply laid the fabric out and eyeballed how much I needed by laying the bench seat on the fabric and cutting about 4 inches extra all around it.

Next, basically wrap the seat like a present. Pull the fabric really tight and staple it in place on the four straight edges first, then fold in the corners and secure with more staples. I repeated the same process with my new patterned fabric. I was careful to look at the printed side first and decided which part of the pattern I wanted to be centered on the bench.

Reattach the top to the legs, and viola! New bench: