Dressed up Sunflowers

The other day we were out and about and saw some really cute sunflower bunches with a not-so-cute price tag. I thought to myself, I can do that. I say that a lot and then never do it.

So, grab a handful or three of sunflowers from your local dollar store. I paid $1 per bunch and got three. These are kind of blah and don't do much for me. Yet. ;)For this project you need fabric, a sunflower head, needle and thread, and a bit of stuffing.Grab one of your sunflowers and pull it's little head off. Go ahead, it won't hurt. Now, separate the center from the petals.Make a fabric yo-yo. Personally, I'm yo-yo challenged have to use a yo-yo maker. This is an extra large size. It works perfectly.Put a wad of stuffing in the center of your flower middle for an added bit of dimension and stick it inside the partially drawn up yo-yo. Pull the threads to close and tie off. Be sure to clip the threads and be sure the little stem is sticking out.
Take your new flower center and reassemble the sunflower. Sometimes it takes a little maneuvering to get it back together, but it's not too bad.
Tada! A brand new, super cute, sunflower with some personality and a little zing.
You can do them all the same or all different. Either way these sunflowers are dressed up and ready to participate in your fall decor.
The great thing about this is you can use polka dots this year and next year use homespun or what ever tickles your fancy.

Cost:
Flowers - $3
Fabric, thread, etc. - on hand
Time: about 20 minutes for the four I did.

Have fun!

Jazzed-up Shower curtain

I vetoed DH decorating the bathroom in the basement. We've all seen the wonder that is the man-den. I'd have nightmares showering in the same room with an animal mount. Never mind being able to do anything else. The eyes are watching. Ewww!

On that note, redecorating can cost an arm and a leg if you aren't careful or cheap. Personally, I'm cheap and I freely admit it.

I normally love it when people give me stuff. I really do and I appreciate it as well. When my baby sister gave me a black bath set I wasn't sure what I'd ever do with it besides maybe put it in the dog house for Tucker. It's black for Pete's sake!

So, being cheap, I have a black bath-set, but now I need a shower curtain to go with it. The shower stall is already really close to feeling like a cave and so anything dark just won't do. We need white!

Here you have your run-of-the-mill white shower curtain from the local dollar store.

I dug around in the fabric bins and came up with this cute black and white polka dot print and decided to try my hand at prairie points which turned out really well I thought. Once I sewed them all together I used a bit of quilt binding and finished off the edge. I then took my strip of points and sewed it to the shower curtain, just along the factory seam.

While the prairie points are cute, it needed more so I pulled out the button jar and started searching. I found 8 white and 8 red buttons that 'fit' together nicely and sewed those onto each point.

This is how it turned out. Yes, I know it's wrinkled. What more could you ask of 100% polyester. I'll take care of that later.

Now my bathroom is coordinated in black and white with a spot of red.

Total cost:
Shower curtain - $3.00
Fabric - $0.75
Quilt binding - $2.00
Buttons - no charge.

$5.75. A designer shower curtain for cheap!

Dressed up bulletin board

I have this old, yucky looking bulletin board and it needs to be dressed up.
Get a piece of quilt batting and cut it to fit just inside the frame. Like this. Now cut a piece of fabric of your choice just little bit bigger than the batting. You want it big enough you can stick it under the frame.

Take a butter knife, or a case knife as my granny called them, and start pushing the fabric up under the frame. I found it worked best if I started at one end and kind of ran the knife along under the edge of the frame. The fabric just slipped right in.

Just keep pushing fabric under the frame and go all the way around until it looks like this. Doesn't that look better?

Now, go forth and make it as foofy as you want it.
I decided to add green seam binding and a couple of muslin yo-yos because everybody knows seam binding and muslin goes with toile. It's just classy!

I only wish I'd thought to paint the frame first.

Come back later for my adventures with a peeping Tom and Thankful Thursday.

How to thread a Pfaff 130

Nearly everyday somebody lands on this blog that needs to know how to thread a Pfaff 130. I hate to think that some poor lost soul isn't using their machine because they can't thread it.

Be sure to click on the pictures so you can really see what we're talking about.
My only request is that you don't make snarky comments about the amount of fuzz on the tension dial. I honestly didn't see it before I took the pictures.

Here we go!
If this is what your machine looks like then we're in business.


Let's follow the numbers and thread this machine.

Go under 1, around 2 right to left, down to 3 and under, right to left, from the right go into 4, but not through the curl of wire, go under 5 from the right, hold thread straight up and push against machine to slip into 6, through the top hole in 7 from right to left, down to 8, again push thread against machine and it should slide in there.

From 8 go behind 9 and finally through 10, the eye of the needle, from front to back.

All done! I hope this helps. If you have questions just leave a comment.