Design Inspiration

Lately, I've been considering updating the painting in my house. I've lived here for over 11 years now, so it's just time for some changes, and paint is definitely going to be cheaper than finishing the basement (though that's on the "To Do" list for sure).

Jess had mentioned once that she looked for colour palettes on Pinterest for card making, so I had a look. Some had links to looking for inspiration from other fabrics or things you have, so I'll probably head in that direction. I already used my kitchen chairs (some of the seat pictured above) as inspiration for some accent paint around my pantry door, so I'll now probably use some of the neutrals in it to have some continuity throughout the house.
*Note: The two paint sample strips on the chair were to figure out the best colour to use and my design friends said I could actually use any of those colours. I went with the top left for the wall as I thought it was a little more vibrant than the bottom row.

Aaaanywho, I ended up pinning quite a few colour palettes as I figured I'd need them at some point anyway in my crafting. And I discovered that I had quite a few from Design Seeds (http://design-seeds.com/), so I explored that site more and thought I'd share.

http://design-seeds.com/home/entry/petaled-hues5

What I liked about that site is that it gives you an image and pulls colours from it. Then if you like a particular one, you can click on it on the right side under "see similar colours" and it will take you to other colour palettes that use similar colours. For example, I clicked on the top-right greenish colour and got to eight different palettes that might work, depending on what overall feeling your going for. http://design-seeds.com/search?hex=cfccb0

So this is all well and good, great for card making, maybe some clothing design, inspiration for choosing colour options, but this doesn't really help you buy the paint for the walls.

But wait! I found another website that will help with that. EasyRBG http://www.easyrgb.com/?X=SEEK

This will take computer colours and turn them into the paint colour names from different companies. You'll need either the RGB values or the hex code of the colour. The beauty of the Design Seeds site is that if you hover your mouse over the colour, the hex code will pop up. It's also the end code of the webpage you follow if you click to see the similar colours. So for the greenish colour noted above you can see the end string is "cfccb0".

I know my local paint store sells Benjamin Moore paint, so I entered "cfccb0" in the colour code, chose the "Benjamin Moore Color Preview" as my color collection, and voilà! It gives me the names of four optional matches that Benjamin Moore produces. The centre block is the colour I entered and the four smaller ones around it are the options. In this case, it came up with Guillford Green, Soft Fern, Abingdon Putty, and Carrington Beige.

So now just head to the store, grab those colour samples and decide where your project is headed.

Translating computer screen colour to real life may take a little trial and error, but here's some help to getting the ideas from your head onto the walls!

~Lisa

Mala Beads

Do you need a bit of calm in your life? Ya... I know you do. Try meditation.

No. I mean it. Seriously, give it a try.

At times being a mother, wife, nurse, friend, sister, and everything else can feel overwhelming. Sometimes a quite moment of reflection is needed to bring you back to your best self.

These mala bead necklaces can be used to guide you through a simple meditation. And the making of your own mala necklace is a meditation practice in itself.

You will need 108 beads of your choice in any sort of combination you wish. Pick colours and shapes that you enjoy. These can be made of wood, seeds, stones, semi-precious stones, glass, whatever you find that seems to speak to you.

And choose one special bead, or series of beads, this is the intention or guru bead that acts like a pendant, centering your mala bead necklace.

To string it all together I used embroidery floss, but you could use any kind of thread, yarn, or string.

Tie a knot (or two) at the end of the string, leaving about 4 inches of a "tail" so you'll have lots to work with when tying the two ends together.

I found it useful to lay out the beads in place and see the result before I strung them together. This way you can see the pattern and it's easy to adjust or change as you like. Then, once you are satisfied with your design, start stringing them together.  

When all the beads are on the string, tie a knot (or 2 again) to secure them. Now tie the two "tails" together creating a circle necklace. Thread both tails through the special bead(s) and tie a knot to secure it onto the necklace.

I added a tassel to the end, this is a pretty addition and serves as a gentle reminder of the infinite connections in the universe. It helps to keep you grounded!

You can use your mala bead necklace as a piece of jewelry, as an ornament, or as an aid to your meditation practice. 

~Jess

T-Shirt Tutu

Every little girl needs a tutu....or two!

I made this t-shirt tutu dress for a little friend celebrating her Italian heritage.

 Here's is an easy way to sew a t-shirt tutu dress perfect for any event or even just playing dress up. 

Start with a t-shirt to fit your little girl and some tulle in your chosen colours. I picked a 2T toddler shirt in white and one meter of each green, red, and white tulle. 

Measure where you want the "waist" of the skirt to start and put a mark there. I marked at 5 inches from the bottom with a pin.

Now to make the tutu skirt, just measure how long you want the layers to be, making the underskirts longer than those on top. 

I cut the green at 15 inches. 

The white at 12 inches.

And the red at 9 inches. 

Now there are many ways to make the ruffles in the tulle for the skirt, you can do a long basting stitch and gather it together, or you can used a "ruffler" foot on your sewing machine, or you can do the easy way like I did. Just find the middle of the tulle and pin it to the middle of the t-shirt. Then pin each side of the tulle to each side of the shirt. 

Now you can find the middle of that section of tulle and pin it to the shirt in the middle of those pins. 

See how it's starting to ruffle up and look like a tutu skirt?

Now just sew it the t-shirt using a simple straight stitch. Sorry, I didn't capture an image of the green getting sewed on, but here is the same thing repeated with the white layer. 

Now you have two layers on, just repeat with the red. Pin in place and sew the ruffles down. 

I know you're not supposed to sew over pins, but sometimes I'm wild like that. If you are going to rebel like I did and sew over them, just go slow and be careful, it's not worth losing an eye over!

Now you have a puffed-out-fully-layered-and-ruffled-up tutu skirt sewed to the t-shirt!

Cute hey? Now you can add some additional flare...

A red ribbon bow in the middle and some tulle puffs on the sleeves. 

Maxi dress

With maxi dresses being so "on trend" now, I thought I should jump on the bandwagon, but I wasn't quite willing to pay the store prices. Soooooo, I'll just make one!

It started with a trip to the fabric store where Jess and I ended up buying way too much fabric. You'd think that we'd have it figured out by now, but we usually go there with only a vague idea in mind so we always err on the side of too much fabric than not enough. Which usually means we have lots left over. Good thing Mom has agreed that we can store all fabric at her house :) We bought a few different options that day, and I chose to start with this striped one. It's pushing me out of my comfort zone for sure.

The fabric is completely man-made (not a natural fibre in it!) and is the magic kind that will travel well as it's resistant to wrinkling. It has a good amount of stretch to it, so I used a stretch stitch on the sewing machine. It does two stitches forward and one back, so that when you pull on the fabric it doesn't break the thread. It does take a lot of thread to sew this way (so take that into consideration when purchasing notions) and is horrible! if you need to rip stitches out.

This was a bit of a "Project Runway" experiment in that I wasn't working from a pattern. The original plan was to basically make a tank-top dress, but as we were draping the fabric it looked pretty good with a cowl neckline and then we thought it should have the diagonal skirt. Already we were way off the "long tank" idea and we hadn't even started! But I still used a t-shirt I have as the starting point for size. Folded the fabric, folded the shirt, and did a best-guess cut around the outside for the back of the shirt.

For the front, I draped it about where I wanted the cowl to be with the salvage edge, held it at the point of the inside of the shoulder seam (where the neckline would start to fall) and laid that on the back already cut out. Pinned it together along the shoulder seams and stretched it out along the waistline so those would be the same front and back. I cut it out and sewed it together while it was still pinned.

You can see here that I needed to take in a lot in the side seams. I guessed too generously!

I wanted the dress to have the waistline up at my actual waist, so I needed to cut off about 5 inches of material off the bottom to shorten it up. Again, I didn't consider this part when I was originally cutting the top. Good thing we did buy all the extra material!

Since I had used the salvage edge for the front of the neckline, I only needed to do a small fold-over along the back of the neck to make that a smooth edge.

For the skirt, I used one that I already had as a guide. I wanted it to be as wide as the current skirt at the bottom, so I laid it out on the material and measured 42 inches up from there for the length. This was more than ample as I'm no where near that tall, but I knew I would need some extra for the seam allowance at the waist and would hate to end up with a skirt that's too short. Once I had the one side of the skirt cut out, I just folded it in half so I could match up the angle for cutting along the top.

To cut the second skirt piece, I just overlaid the first one over the second so that I would be sure to match up the angle on the lines. Pinned it, cut it and sewed it.

You can see that I had a lot of skirt as I look like the "after" picture for a weigh loss ad, though I'm not quite there yet :)

Since I had so much skirt, I used several small tucks to get it to match the size of the top.

And.... it ends up that I have a giant sack with no shape to it.

I took it in by 2 inches on each side. Basically eased it in from the arm hole down to the hips.

I'm not sure you can quite see it in this picture unless you can zoom in, but there are several lines of sewing there as I make my various attempts at getting this to fit.

Then Jess suggested that it looked more finished with sleeves, so time to add those. I used more tucks along the top of the sleeve to ease that fabric in and to have it match the skirt.

Once it was all done was when I was able to cut it off to the final length. I cut it at 37 inches. You can see from the image that I didn't end up with a straight hemline even though I had cut them the same along both sides. When I asked Mom about this later, she said it can happen when using a stretch stitch if you don't sew the two seams the same way (i.e. start sewing both seams at the waistline). Something to keep in mind!

And tada! Finally finished. It took much longer than anticipated as I had to do so many adjustments. I would guess 12-14 hours total.

I took a self-portrait in my back yard so you don't just see the finished product in the basement.

When I see it now, it looks more formal (can you say that about a striped maxi dress made of stretch fabric?) than I had originally envisioned, so time to experiment with the other fabric I bought!
~Lisa