Monday, November 10, 2008

Coming Soon!

The following projects may well be appearing on this blog in the near future:

slipcovering a fainting couch for $10
home made granola
Building a spice rack, and other kitchen projects
Make your own potholders
Antique daybed
Desk refinishing project
Built in Magazine rack/toilet paper holder
Fixing the Telephone nook
Outdoor fire pit
Record jalapeno harvest
Planting trees and shrubs
Growing chard

...and much, much more!
...or nothing at all, it kind of depends.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Hello again!

Well, dear internet, you are not as fickle as you sometimes seem. After not having published a word in over three months, I find I still have readers.
So, I feel obligated to bring you up to speed. I have bought a house.

So, while there will be no end to the new realms of making stuff I am about to uncover, we will see what kind of time there is to blog about it.

There is no photo with this post, as it is about making a shower curtain. Shower curtains, no matter how amazing, don't photograph all that well.

You see, the house I bought was built in 1951, and as such the bathroom is done entirely in "fifties" green tile, walls and floor. I have decided to embrace this as "retro fun" instead of viewing it, as a always viewed the tile in an elderly relatives house, as "hideously unacceptable".

However, my current shower curtain, which was carefully selected for its quality and durability (its real cotton, and soft enough to use as a blanket) is unfortunately a blue and yellow plaid. It was nice in my white apartment bathroom, but, it clearly would not get along well with the green.

So, I found a white sheet I was not using, turned it so the top edge was down, and left that as a finished edge. I then put my current shower curtain down on top of it, to get the size. (Don't ask what size that is, I didn't bother to check). I hemmed up the unfinished edge I had cut, and left the other edge of the sheet alone as it was a selvage edge.

I then cut a strip about 4 inches wide from the original bottom edge of the sheet.... well, that isn't true, I took the bottom edge of the sheet and pressed its finished edge over, then folded and pressed that twice more so that I had a strip a little more than an inch deep to put the button holes in for the curtain rings.

I think button holes work fine for shower curtains, sure they are not as sturdy as a grommet, but, in my thinking, a shower curtain really shouldn't be taking a lot of wear and tear or abuse.

I wanted it a little dressier, since the curtain was all white, and originally I was going to put in box pleats, but then I remembered that I had some crocheted lace that my great grandmother had made to edge pillowcases with. As it turns out, two pillowcases worth of crocheted lace is just enough to run along a shower curtain.

I sewed the lace to the top edge of the curtain first, then attached the piece that would have the button holes (I want to call that a placket, does anyone know if that is right?). Again, to space the buttonholes I simply put my shower curtain over the new one, and used tailors chalk to mark the correct placement.

If you come visit, please don't examine my buttonholes too closely, my machine does them with the three step method, and I have not really mastered getting them even.