Hey friends! Hope you all had a great weekend. I won't bore you with all of the details, but we had quite the interesting weekend with another trip to the hospital with false labor. Who would have thunk that intense contractions five minutes apart or less at 39 weeks did not indicate labor?! Oy! Needless to say, little miss is still happily residing in my belly. But, thankfully, doctors are saying that she is incredibly healthy which is all we can really ask for!

Today I'm excited to share a little sewing project I created for Little Lady June. I'm not sure I have broken out the sewing machine since I finished up HDawg's DIY black out curtains! Which was, like, two years ago. Crazy. So it was kind of refreshing to pull out the ol' sewing machine.

There's a little back story behind this project. We had this Fisher-Price play mat for HDawg when he was an infant and absolutely loved it. Unfortunately, the play mat didn't make it through our two moves last year and was completely ruined. Luckily, the arms and electronic parts of the play gym still worked great. So, of course, instead of purchasing a new mat for LLJ, I decided to make her a new one!

I went back and forth as to what shape to make the mat. The original mat was a circle with loops around the circular edge to capture each "arm" of the gym. I could have created another circle mat, but was a little apprehensive about sewing a circle since this was my first project back at the sewing machine in a long time. Momma needs straight lines, people. So, I decided to go with a square and figure out a way to capture the gym arms another way!

Step one. Cut your fabric.
 

I purchased 1.5 yards of two different kinds of fabric and cut each into a square. I bought a heavy weight cotton/polyester blend red fabric for the bottom of the mat and a soft turquoise blue "minky" fabric for the top of the mat. After posting a photo on Instagram, I learned from many of you that minky fabric is notoriously difficult to work with. Oops! Didn't know that from the beginning, although I quickly found that to be the case.

I cut the minky fabric about one inch less on every side than the red fabric so that it would create a border of red around the mat once I sewed it together. Unfortunately, this didn't end up working as I describe below, but that was the game plan.

Step two. Pin your fabrics together.

I pinned the two fabrics together inside out, with the front faces of the fabric facing inward towards each other. The reasoning behind this approach is to sew the edges together, with the exception of about six inches on one side, inside out and then turn the piece inside out again... or right side up.

I decided to use a hot pink contrast stitch and simply sewed a straight stitch down the edge of the two inside out pieces. The crazy minky fabric decided to sort of stretch itself out as I ran it through my machine, effectively closing the gap with the border I had created by cutting the blue fabric one inch shorter than the red. Basically, the two pieces ended up being sewed directly on top of each other if that makes sense. I probably should have basted the blue fabric on the red before I sewed it or at least had the knowledge that the fabric would stretch so bad so that I had a game plan to avoid the stretching. Oh well, you live and you learn!

Step four. Add batting.

Once I finished sewing the two pieces together inside out, I cut a piece of square cotton batting to match the fabric sizes. I loosely (like, only a few pins!) pinned the cotton batting onto the fabric and then turned the entire thing right side up. I then sewed around the edge of the entire piece, attaching both pieces of fabric and the batting together. I simply reached in the six inch gap I left to pull out the few batting pins as I sewed down the line. 

Once you stitch around the entire edge and close up the six inch gap, your basic play mat is complete!

Step five. Add the loops.

Now that the actual mat is finished, it's time to add the loops that will hold the play gym arms safely over your baby. My first thought was to create some sort of button-hole type fixture within the play mat to hold the feet, but then I decided that I'd like to be able to use this mat without the play gym. So instead of cutting through the fabric, I simply hand-stitched ribbon onto the mat to hold the legs. That way I can pull out the ribbons once we're done with the gym as LLJ grows.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the project. You can see that the sides of the blanket sort of pucker up where the stretched out minky fabric pulls on the red cotton fabric, but I think that will work itself out with use.

I'm a big creep and wanted a model for my new play mat so instead of attempting to capture a rambunctious HDawg lying still under the mat, I used his baby doll. I'm weird, I know.

B-T-dubs, the majority of the photos I took looked like this. Hello, belly.


I'm pretty happy with the project! I spent about $20 on the fabric and batting, which is a lot better than the $60 to buy a new play gym. Plus, I've got a universal play mat that we can use with or without the gym for Little Lady June. I like it!


Leave me a comment if you have any questions about the process or sewing tutorial!

Check out more of sewing projects and info about what kind of sewing machine I use right here!

I am so excited to share this sweet little project and tutorial with y'all. For awhile now, I've wanted to create a magnet board for little HDawg. He's in love with the bright and colorful fish in the tank at his school and at his aunt's house, so I thought a fish tank would be the perfect route to go.

So precious, right? And honestly, so easy. Here's the how-to.

What you'll need:

I found a pile of bright felt pieces on sale a few weeks ago (30% off, woot) at Hancock Fabric. They're usually about $0.29 a square anyways, so it's a pretty cheap investment. I actually found the magnets at Home Depot (also pretty cheap, I think $1.99 for an eight pack?). Since I already had the glue gun, thread, spray paint and pillow stuffing, I made out like a bandit with this project under $10.

Step one. Cut your fabric.

I decided to free-hand a few fishies and other aquatic shapes which is pretty easy, right? Wrong. If you're Michelle. Check out my first attempt at a clown fish (sitting next to David's attempt). Yeah, I suck at felt fishies.

At this point, I decided to search Pinterest to see if I could find an aquarium template to help with my ridiculously bad cutting skills. I ran into this divine template from the PurlBee. Sure enough, she had used the template to create a felt magnet aquarium, too! Great minds think alike. So I decided... when in Rome... and used her awesome template to help me create my sea creatures.

Ah, much better.

Make sure you cut out two pieces of each main shape so that you can sew it together eventually.

Step two. Assemble your magnets.

I started off by hot gluing all of the "extra" pieces to the top felt piece (the stripes, polka dots, etc.). Next, I simply hot glued a magnet to what will be the inside of each back felt piece. Since you have two identical felt pieces, one is the top piece (with the decor hot glued onto it) and one is the back piece. You'll eventually sew the two together, so the magnet needs to go on the inside of the back piece.

Next, I hand stiched the two felt pieces together. I could have pulled out my sewing machine (I was all about my sewing projects for awhile!), but I was feeling a little lazy... I didn't want to have to rethread the machine for each thread color or have to worry about moving the machine around the small cut outs. So hand stitched, I did.

I decided to add a very small amount of pillow stuffing to each magnet right before I completed the last few stitches. I wanted the magnets to be a little puffy, if you will. They could easily be completed without any stuffing. Also, I have had no problems with the magnets sticking to the board through the felt and hot glue layer. I didn't want the magnet to be too strong anyways (HDawg is not Hercules) but make sure you get a medium strength magnet for a project like this.

Step three. Create your magnet board.

I'm in love with the fact that it's adorably blue like the water of an aquarium.

That's it, folks! Now we've got a handy, dandy felt magnet aquarium board!

She's ready for some close up shots.

The star fish is David's favorite. I think the jelly fish holds a special place in my heart. But the best part is that HDawg loves it. This was his reaction when we gave him the board to play with for the first time.

Nope, you can't even see his arms he's flapping them with so much excitement! : ) So far, the magnets have stood up to lots of slobber, gumming and rough housing. Hopefully they stay that way! He also loves to sit on the board... maybe he thinks he's on a boat? It's adorable. I'm so glad I made this for him.

Today I’m excited to share with y’all a fun tutorial for a fabric project I created with HGTV’s new fabric line. You can find out more about the fabric (and get a coupon for it!) right here.



Boom. A fakesies roman shade.

As you guys saw in the tour of my kitchen at our rental house, we’re working with a bright, neutral box. David and I decided not to paint the room, so I had to use my noggin when it came to figuring out a way to inject color into the space. One of my ideas was to add curtains to the window over the sink, the window over the stove and the door that leads outside. Lots of spaces that are the perfect candidates for… (drumroll please)… roman shades! Duh. You can read the title of this post.

Because I’m not a normal human, I decided to make my own curtains instead of buying some. I loosely followed Sherry’s tutorial on creating a faux roman shade.

Here are my quick four steps on how to create a fakesies roman shade curtain.

First step. Measure the fabric. Oy. If you remember my DIY black-out nursery curtain escapades, you’ll know that measuring fabric is literally my worst nightmare. Me and a tape measure and exact measurements don’t get along. I’m more of an approximate kind of girl, which doesn’t always work when it comes to sewing! Luckily, David’s grandfather passed on to me his grandmother’s sewing measuring board, so this thing makes my life a whoooole lot easier!

Measure your window and then add two inches to the width (for hemming) and about twelve inches to the length (two inches for hemming and ten inches for adding two five inch loops).

Step two. Hem them suckers. If you’re fancy, use your sewing machine. If you’re me, use hem tape. Hem all four sides of your fabric panel with a one inch hem.

Step three. Cut a 1x2 piece of wood to match the width of your hemmed panel. I picked up some wood at Home Depot and had it cut there. Easy peasy. Then I used heavy-duty double stick tape to attach the wood to the fabric. Hopefully that will hold… only time will tell. It’s still hanging now, so far, so good!

Step four. Pin your fabric back in five inch loops. I was pretty happy I was working with a geometric fabric because that made this step so much easier for me. But even with the ability to line up the patterned fabric to ensure it was matching as I pinned the fold, it was tough. So don’t get discouraged if this step takes you awhile. Them loops gotta be looking right? Right?!

And that’s it, friends. Pretty simple, right? Like Sherry, I didn’t see any need to sew the loops up. In fact, it kind of scared me that thread might pucker the fabric and mess up the whole look. You really can’t see the pins from the front of the curtain, so it works for me.

I attached the wooden piece to the wall with the same double-sided tape that I used to attach the wood to the fabric. Again, hopefully that holds. And hopefully it doesn’t peel the paint off the wall…! Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it, shall we? : )

Before the roman shade…

…and after the roman shade.

As you can see, these pictures are a little wonky. It poured rain all day Sunday, so I never had a good opportunity to snap some daylight pictures of the new shade. And I need to show you the other roman shades that I created for the kitchen, as well as a few other tweaks I’ve made to the room. I'’ll get on that as soon as the weather clears up. Geez, doesn’t Mother Nature know she needs to cooperate when it comes time to get some blogging done?!

Have you ever made fakesies roman shades before? Any additional tips?!

Guess who popped out another nursery project this weekend?! Hm, maybe "popped out" isn't the best phrase I should be using with less than four weeks to go until my due date ; ) Let's try this again... guess who created another nursery project this weekend?!

I knew I wanted a cute patterned footstool for the nursery glider, but never could find exactly what I was looking for. So, I decided to make one on my own! Here's the how-to. 

This is a bad iPhone pic, but I found this round footstool on sale at Bed, Bath & Beyond for a measly $29.99. Plus I had a 20% off coupon... can't beat less than $25 with tax. But of course, black patent leather isn't exactly the look David and I are going for in our pea pod's nursery. Time to cover it!

I whipped out some scrap fabric from my fabric pile... a few scraps of linen and a pattern you'll recognize- the navy blue gingham print I used to make the blackout panel curtains in the room!

I started off with the base of the cover. Simply measure around your footstool for the length and height you'll need and cut a rectangular piece of fabric to match those measurements. Add about two inches to the length and about six inches around the height to give you room to hem the edges. 

Then I simply hemmed the bottom about two inches (fold up one inch - iron into place - fold up another inch - iron into place - pin - straight stitch) of the base piece.

This is sort of what you're working with at this point.

 

I decided to make things more complicated and add some piping around the top. Piping just gives everything a very finished look, if you ask me. I think your best bet is to use a zipper foot on your sewing machine, so that you can get the needle very close to the edge of the piping. I couldn't figure out how to get the zipper foot on my machine (let's call it pregnancy brain and not sewing ignorance) so I used my regular presser foot. 

Either way, it's a pretty easy process. In the picture above, I measured from the bottom of my hem to the top edge of the footstool (and since I left about four inches of fabric at the top like I described above, I had plenty of extra room!). Then I simply stitched on the pre-made piping onto the front of the cover.

Next, I ironed down the excess fabric (you could cut if you wanted) for a cleaner look.

So here I am, all hunky dory and happy with my little project. But then I get to the top of the slipcover. Ugh. Sewing project fail. Times about six tries. I got so frustrated with this part that I didn't take a ton of pictures and I'm not sure I'll be able to formulate the steps for you well... but hey, I finished it! So let's dive in.

Start by cutting a circle to match the top of your footstool.

This is actually where I failed miserably. I left too much excess fabric (and you can see, it's not an exact circle) because I was paranoid I'd cut the circle too small. Oh and by the way, this is two layers of fabric because the linen is thin, so I doubled up the layers. Just pin the top circle to the bottom piece so you are sure your measurements line up.

You should be able to simply stitch the round top onto the bottom piece. 

You flip your circle piece upside down and stitch in the circle right under the piping.

But if you're like me, you made too big of a circle and ended up with a bunch of loose, excess fabric by the time you got to the end of the circle. Wop wop.

Let's just say I had to go back and cut and restitch this area a few times. Me and the seam ripper are BFF.

But once you've got most of your circle sewed on, it's time to close this guy up. Another toughie for me. I had pinned the heck out of it so it wouldn't move while I was attaching the top piece, but I had a really hard time getting the piping closed (and looking decent). Eventually, I realized that stitching it up by hand would be the easiest (too much fabric, etc. for the machine), so I did a simple stitch or twelve back and forth across the two ends of the piping to connect them together. Make sense?

So here's what that area looked like in the end. A little Frankenstein-ish, but it works.

 

Then comes another easy part- simply hem and stitch the sides of the rectangular bottom piece together. Just close her on up! And you're done!

 Oops, let me get that out of the way for you ; )

I love the slip covered footstool in the room!

And it's pretty comfy if I do say so myself.

David was really sweet after I was so frustrated about this dang slipcover, so it was all worth it in the end. We're both pretty proud that we can DIY our way through our little guy's nursery and it's been a lot of fun for us to watch it coming together! It doesn't hurt that this entire project ran us about $25. And now we have a sweet place to prop our feet up to relax and enjoy our little guy : )

Like what you see? Read about more of our nursery projects here and more of my sewing projects here!