Tuesday’s Tutorial Treat – Christmas Edition 2

The second installation of the Christmas themed Tuesday’s Tutorial Treat is all about Christmas Decorations – if you haven’t made any decorations this year, perhaps these might tempt you:

A quirky twist on the typical Christmas stocking – Disney Family Fun (lol, not a website I frequent too often, I found this on Pinterest) show you how to make an Elf style stocking. Love the curly toe! Link HERE.

Isn’t this cushion a stunner?!!! Centsational Girl (if you don’t follow this blog and love home DIY you should!) shows you how to make this beautiful poinsettia cushion. I want this cushion in my life, NOW! Link HERE.

Finally you can’t have a post on Christmas decorations without having a tree ornament. This one comes from Kirsty Fish off That Crafty Fish, via  Bugs and Fishes (two really lovely UK based crafty blogs, do check them out!). Link HERE.

Cushions and Kittens

As I mentioned in a previous post, I don’t have as much time for ‘selfish’ sewing at the moment as my boyfriend and I are hoping to move house and need to dedicate our free time to sprucing up our current house. It’s very frustrating at times because I am longing to get stuck into making the skirts and tops from my Autumn sewing plan. But you have to prioritise I suppose.
Today I have a couple of cushions which I made for our living room recently. It’s ironic, because I hadn’t planned on sewing anything for the living room (the bedrooms need the most work), but when you accidentally put cream cushion covers in the wash with red ones you end up with new cushion covers to sew (unless salmon pink suits your decor)!!

These have been on our couch for about a week, so they are looking a little crumpled now – sorry about that!!!

I whipped these up one evening using a very simple envelope method. The buttons are just there for effect, they aren’t functional! The fabric is from Ikea and the buttons I got on Ebay.


And because I now share my home with two kittens, they were of course desperate to find out what I was doing…

Biscuit investigating the cushion (or the cup of coffee more likely – that’s not for kittens!!!)

And then settles down for a snooze. It’s amazing what different personalities these two sisters have. Biscuit is calm and subdued. Bean…is always up to mischief:

“Hello. What’s this little round thing..haven’s seen this before…”

Naughty Paw in the air…

POW!! Kitten attack! Oi – get off my new cushion!!!

…we have to keep our cushions turned with the buttons hidden when we go out for the day now!

Rethink Waste Workshop

I recently discovered that Belfast City Council has been putting a lot of emphasis on educating people in the three R's - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. As part of this initiative they are currently hosting FREE craft workshops focusing on another three R's - revamp, restyle, repurpose. Anyone can go along to these workshops that are being run across the Belfast area and be educated by lovely crafty ladies in how to reuse various things around the house, rather than throwing them away!

Their website explains it far more eloquently than I could so let's hand over to them:

Participation is FREE and whats more you get to take home your revamped and restyled clothes, cushions and furniture.

You do not have to have any experience in revamping or restyling to enjoy these workshops.
The Fashion Souk’s talented team of experts will share their top tips on restyling and refurbishing textiles and furniture. Working alongside you they will demonstrate just how easy it is to give items already in your home a face lift and create new purposeful items - without the hefty price tag.

All materials are provided from ribbons and thread to jumpers, cushions, sand paper & paint, not forgetting your very own item of revamped furniture. At the close of the workshops you will receive information packs on how to do everything covered by the workshops enabling you to get creative in your home.

The workshops are labelled 1, 2, 3 & 4 each workshop covers:
1 Stitching, mending & embellishing
2 Repurposing textiles (jumpers into cushions, hot water bottle covers and much more)
3 Revamping furniture - breathing new life into dated items of furniture and soft furnishings
4 Finishing off all your work

I missed the first workshop (as to be honest, they really didn't advertise this as well as they could have done - a friend in work told me about them) but managed to get along to number 2: Repurposing textiles. As the blurb suggests, we spent the evening taking old jumpers (which they provided!) and turning them into cushions and embellishing them as we liked. Again, all the buttons, ribbons and other lovely such things were all provided (heaven!)...all we had to do was find inspiration. And I really mean that - we didn't even have to sew the cushions up!

To explain very quickly - turn jumper inside out and position with ribbed edge to top (so neck is to the bottom). Get cushion and place on top of jumper, just below ribbing. Cut jumper to same size as cushion (no need to leave seam allowance as the jumper will stretch and this will give a nice snug fit). Take top layer and slide down so that it's ribbed edge is in line with the lower part of the bottom layers ribbed edge. Cut off excess from top layer. Sew along sides and bottoms.Turn right side round and flip ribbed edge over - this is your envelop-like opening to put your cushion through. Insert cushion and then embellish as you like!

Hopefully that wasn't too confusing!

Anyway, here is my little cushion: