The last week or so I’ve been in Southern Illinois visiting my family. Every time I’m back home, I try to squeeze in a trip to my favorite fabric store in the area — Hancock’s of Paducah (in Paducah, KY). I absolutely love fabric and could spend all day in a fabric store. I love all the prints, patterns and possibilities of things to make out of all the prettiness! I had several house projects in mind that I needed fabric for, so I was definitely in need of a trip to the fabric store while I was home! (New Orleans doesn’t have any great fabric stores.)
Hancock’s of Paducah is a completely different store than the Hancock’s chain of fabric stores that are found around the country. This one is so much bigger and better! They have a wonderful selection of cotton and home decor fabrics (I believe their main market is for quilters in the area). This isn’t your place to go for silk or apparel fabrics.
I love that they carry higher quality cotton fabrics, especially many by well-known fabric designers.
Here are some of Sandi Henderson‘s newest “Secret Garden” fabrics:
And by Amy Butler:
So many pretty fabrics to choose from!
I’m especially loving large-scale floral prints right now. I love this blue one below. I actually ended up buying some of the pink version of this fabric! Stay tuned to see where it ends up in my house! I’ve actually already been working with my mom on several fabric projects while I’m here!
Here is what my cart looked like once I had made several trips through the store:
Isn’t that champagne metallic dot fabric neat? I ended up buying some of several of these fabrics in my cart. I can’t wait to get back to New Orleans and get them incorporated into my home!
Speaking of the home, they have a great selection of heavier weight home decor fabrics as well. I would love to buy some of these for my home! It is so hard to choose between them though! I kept envisioning beautiful curtains made out of many of these:
Love this green quatrefoil pattern:
I am really, really in love with the combination of this warm grey floral and this rasperry ikat dot fabric. I think they would be lovely to make into layered curtain panels like in this picture here.
So many great options! I just made new curtains for my office (I still need to share pictures), but seeing all these gorgeous fabrics is making me regret choosing the fabric I did!
They also have a few great bargain bin areas where they have fabric remnants for discounted prices. I found a great white and cream check fabric in that pile, enough to make a throw pillow out of for $2.50. Can’t beat a pretty couch pillow for $2.50!
Of all the wonderful options, this is what I left the store with:
Can’t wait to show you what I end up doing with these!
If you live in the Southern Illinois (IN-KY-MO) area, you should definitely check out Hancock’s of Paducah! I’m always a little sad if I make a trip home and don’t get a chance to go! They even sell a lot of fabrics and quilt kits online as well.
Fabric Covered Photo Mat
Today is an exciting day! It is reveal day of the Summer Pinterest Challenge! If you aren’t in the loop about it — it is a challenge dreamed up by two pretty amazing bloggers, Sherry of Young House Love, and Katie of Bower Power (two of my favorite blogs!) to get people to start creating amazing things based on all the million things we are always pinning on Pinterest. It isn’t sponsored by Pinterest or anything, but it is a pretty cool idea to make yourself get to working on some actual projects from all the inspiration you can find on Pinterest.
Each season, Sherry and Katie host a Pinterest Challenge and team up with a couple other big bloggers to do so. If you want to check out what each of the challenge team created this time around, you can check out Sherry’s project here, Katie’s project here, Michelle from Ten June’s project here, and Kate from Centsational Girl’s project here.
Now on to mine! I decided to play along with the challenge as well! I had the perfect project already in mind. I originally saw this idea on one of the blogs I read, pinned it from there, and it has been sitting open in a tab on my computer waiting for the day when I would actually complete a project like it. Here was my inspiration — a tutorial on fabric covered photo mats from the blog, A Bit of Sunshine.
I had the perfect frame mat in need of a little help:
Please excuse the awkwardness of the current state of this frame gallery. I told you it needed some help! This is in the hallway that runs down almost the entire side of our apartment and we are trying to brighten it up with some of our art in bright white frames. (the rectangle painting on the left side is a painting I did in one of my painting classes in school, the streetcar art is a framed cross-stitch my mother-in-law made, the small square painting on top is a country barn scene painting that was done by my 8th grade math teacher, who is also one of my mother-in-law’s best friends, and the last two frames on the right hold prints by Katie Daisy of The Wheatfield on Etsy.) We still have a few spots that we haven’t filled in yet and a couple of the frames fell down when we were hammering into the other side of this wall to hang things and we haven’t quite gotten them back up yet. Sorry that the lighting is also bad here — this hallway doesn’t receive much natural light!
Anyway, this is the art that I really wanted to address. This print is the only piece of artwork that Drew has shown his own interest in. He bought it online and the day it came in, he was so excited to have picked out something for our house. I like the subject matter of the print, but I wish they had used a brighter color ink for the outline of Louisiana. It is too light, in my opinion. We placed it in this frame (leftover from the frame gallery in the living room) because it was the right size, but I didn’t like how the mat was more of a cream color that didn’t look great with the crisp whites of the frame and the print. It also didn’t help the print to pop any more either. I had tried looking at Michael’s for a pre-cut mat in this size in a brighter color, but I had no luck finding any that I liked or that were this size (it is a 10×13 frame matted to an 8×10).
Then came in this fabric to save the day. I have a huge collection of fabric, so making anything with fabric is a project that I love. This particular fabric I had leftover from an apron I made years ago and it seemed to have the right colors in it to go along with other art in the hallway and it had some greens in it to hopefully pull the green outline out of the Louisiana print a little more. This fabric is by Amy Butler and you can still buy it here.
This project is really easy! These are all the supplies you need — frame mat, fabric, fabric cutting scissors, spray glue adhesive, an iron and ironing board.
I started by laying out my fabric, ironing it, and setting my mat on there to make sure that the fabric scrap would be big enough. You only need an overhang of an inch or so outside the mat.
Once I had made sure that the pattern on my fabric was lined up straight, I trimmed the fabric to about an inch all the way around the outside of the mat.
Then make sure to turn your fabric over, so that the wrong side is facing up. (I forgot this step and totally did it backwards at first! Luckily the spray adhesive wasn’t set yet and it peeled off!) You will spray the spray adhesive on the right side of the mat and place in face down on the wrong side of the fabric and smooth it down. Once you’ve smoothed the mat to the fabric, cut out the center part of the fabric inside the mat like shown above. make a cut into the corners of the mat. Also trim off the outside corners of the fabric like shown above.
Then spray the adhesive on the back side of the mat and neatly fold over and press down the fabric overhang. Be careful when you are working with the spray adhesive, it is super sticky and will get all over your hands and on whatever else is around where you are spraying it. You might want to spray it outside and even use rubber gloves to keep your hands from getting sticky.
Cutting the outside corner of your fabric off and making the cut towards the mat inside the fabric should make your fabric fold over and lay really neatly.
Then you are left with a finished fabric covered mat! Make sure to let the rest of the exposed mat with spray adhesive on the back dry completely before you reassemble it back into your frame.
It makes the print look so much better! Fabric covered mats can really add a lot of interest to a frame. It also helps to showcase some of your favorite fabrics.
All framed back up!
Here it is back in the hallway. Although this frame gallery is far from finished, I think this does really add a lot of interest to the collection of art here.
I love the pretty pop of color this adds! I think it would be great paired with a black and white photo or another colorful print. This would also be great in a kids room. I will definitely be doing this again to show off more of my fabric stash!
To save you from having to scroll up again to see the before and then the after, here is the before again:
And the after:
So that was my first Pinterest Challenge Project! (although I’ve made quite a few recipes and other things inspired from Pinterest pins before). Be sure to check out the original inspiration post this was inspired from, here. You should also make sure to check out the other Pinterest projects going on! It is a big link party so there are lots of projects to check out. See Sherry’s project here, Katie’s project here, Michelle from Ten June’s project here, and Kate from Centsational Girl’s project here. :)
Do you ever have one of those days where you see one little thing and all of a sudden you want to paint/draw/sew/knit/crochet/bake/redecorate, etc? Yeah, well that is totally me on a daily basis. I love being inspired by things and surrounded by pretty things that encourage me to be creative. Today, my inspiration comes from this picture I stumbled upon on Pinterest:
Isn’t it absolutely gorgeous! I love pretty much everything about the room in this picture, but I especially LOVE those curtains! Why did it never occur to me to layer lovely fabrics together to create stunning window treatments!? (especially amazing colors and patterns such as those seen here!) If you know me well, you know I love fabric! I love the texture, the patterns, the colors, the softness it adds to a room. So why should you limit yourself by only choosing one fabric to add loveliness to the windows in a room?
I can’t wait to add multiple layers of beautiful fabric patterns to the windows in my house! :)
image found here.
August Stitch Along
Since I pulled a muscle in my lower back when I was home the other week, I’ve been trying my best to sit up straight and to take breaks from working on the computer (Since I tend to slouch over when I’ve been working on the computer for a while). I’m on the computer a lot– reading blogs, blogging, working on design work or websites for our business, checking e-mails and when school starts I will be on it even more for papers and school work. As much as I love being on the computer, it definitely is nice to take breaks to do other things. Since I only have two more weeks before fall semester starts, I decided to try my best to spend the next two weeks doing something that I enjoy and that I never have time for during the school year.
It was perfect timing when I ran across this August stitch-along on an embroidery blog. (see week 1 & week 2 & the flickr group) I really like hand sewing and I think it is a mindless and relaxing thing to do. (Plus it is easy to sit and sew while watching television, chatting with a friend, etc…) I really like the freestyle type project that they have going on this month, so I decided to jump in and stitch along.
This project is basically to just grab a piece of fabric that you want to embellish and some coordinating thread colors and follow the pattern of the fabric with your embroidery. Pretty simple and mindless.
I chose this green fabric with a basic cream floral pattern. It is some leftover fabric that I had in my fabric stash that I had used for a project and didn’t have any plans to use for anything else. I think it is pretty, but I thought some colored embroidery might spruce it up a little.
Here are my thread colors. I think they will be pretty accents to the petals on the flowers on the fabric.
If you’ve never hand sewn before or don’t know how, no worries! It is never too late to learn! You should join me on my August stitch along. Just grab a small piece of fabric, some embroidery thread in coordinating colors, a needle, scissors, and an embroidery hoop. That’s all you need!
I’m using a 5 inch embroidery hoop, but any will work. Just stretch your fabric in there and you are ready to roll.
Start with a simple back stitch around the outlines of your fabric design and then use other stitches from there for more embellishment.
If you don’t know any stitches or even where to start, here are some embroidery tips/tutorials from the blog, Wild Olive: strands, sewing, stabbing and starting, running and back stitch, stem and split stitches, chain and detached chain stitch, fill stitches part 1, fill stitches part 2.
I only worked on mine for a little bit last night while Drew was watching the first Saints pre-season football game and I got more done than I expected to. I can’t wait to see how it turns out. I like projects like this that you can make up as you go. :)
Join me on the August stitch-along! I’d love to see what pretty things you create!
Weekend in Nashville
I hope you all have had fabulous weekends! Mine has been busy!
I flew into Nashville last week to visit my older sister and my nieces. My nieces and I have been playing with lots of dolls (Barbies, Polly Pockets, Lalaloopsies and various other stuffed animals — to be exact) and having tea parties.
We went to the huge Nashville flea market and I bought a pretty, handmade, wooden, farmhouse type table for our foyer to use as Drew’s desk/larger dining room table if we have guests over. I love it! I can’t wait to see it in our house! (I’m a little worried about how we are going to fit it in Drew’s car to get it home though. The legs come off with bolts and I’m just hoping the top won’t be too big to fit in the back.)
This weekend my mom and my younger sisters came down as well. We did lots and lots of shopping! For clothes and shoes and house goods and back-to-school things. My mom even looked at new cars. The main goal of our weekend though was wedding shopping!
I tried on a wedding dress here in Nashville during spring break that I really loved. I’ve tried on others since then, but none that I liked as much as this one. I really wanted my mom and sisters to see it, so we made sure to stop by and try it on again. Which, speaking of places to try on dresses in the Nashville area, if you are around these parts and are looking for wedding dresses, you should totally stop by The White Room. All the people that work there are so nice and they have beautiful dresses. Anyway, I tried it on again and didn’t want to get out of it! It is the perfect color — a soft, antique, light champagne/off-white/almond/vanilla color with the most delicate lace and the prettiest subtle sparkle and shimmer. The best part is— that it is MINE! We ordered it!!!
Since we ordered it, they did allow us to take pictures of me in the gown, but no one had brought our cameras because we didn’t expect to be ordering it then. I did get a few on my phone, but they don’t really do the dress justice, so I’m weary of posting them. Here is a little sneak peek:
I’m getting more and more excited about the wedding the more things that we get marked off of our wedding to-do list. It is making the whole thing a little less stressful and a little more real. Ordering the dress wasn’t the only thing that we accomplished on the list this weekend either! We also bought the fabric for the bridesmaids dresses!
This picture definitely doesn’t do the bridesmaids’ fabric justice either. It is a creamy/gray linen fabric with a lovely texture. I’m so excited to see the dresses once they are done and paired with bright colored flower bouquets! I can’t wait for the wedding!!!
It is getting closer! We’ve got the date set, the venue booked, the photographer booked, we’ve talked to the caterer, we’ve ordered the dress, bought the fabric for the bridesmaids dresses—we are definitely getting closer! I’m excited to be getting down to the fun little creative details now that we have most of the big stuff out of the way!
If you’d like a better idea of what my overall vision/inspiration is for the wedding, check out my wedding board on Pinterest!
For our final in my painting class, we did a painting completely different than any others that we had done in the class thus far. This one wasn’t strictly from life, we could use photographs and it was up to us to morph multiple things/images into one final image. We were to pick two things, one 2D object and one 3D object, with one being reminiscent of our past and one being related to our lives now. This is what I ended up with:
So what does it represent about me? Well, the background is a fabric pattern. I liked this pattern- a quatrefoil pattern reminiscent of Gothic Architecture and I love art and art history. It is also very graphic and I love graphic design. It is also fabric, which I love and want to design my own collection of one day. Fabric represents a lot in my life. Learning to sew when I was young, my mom sewing all kinds of things, my love of the home and home decorating. I’ve been looking for fabric for curtains for our new apartment and I was drawn to lots of pretty graphic patterns like this one. It just seemed fitting.
The watering can and flowers represents my childhood, home, growing up, my parents. I was always outside in our backyard as a kid, so obviously something related to nature would be perfect for relating to my past. My dad is an avid collector of various old/antique things and I guess my mom mentioned to him sometime how she liked watering cans and that began a period of him collecting all kinds of them for her. Most of them looked really similar to this one. I remember as a kid, filling them up with water from the hose and dragging them around the yard to water all the flower beds. The flowers inside this watering can are the same flowers that my mom would let us pick out at the feed store every summer in little cartons to plant in the yard and help her do the gardening.
Tying the two together in a cohesive way represents the meshing of my past with my present and how they are ever intertwined, but separate in a way as well. But then again, that is kind of obvious.
I’m so thankful for all that I learned in my painting class and I’m kind-of sad to see it end! Although I am happy that I’m done with school for the semester! I’m so ready for this summer! I can’t believe that I’m halfway done with college though. It has gone by so fast!
Weekend Adventures
How was your weekend? They always go by so fast! This week coming up is my last week of school! Whoop Whoop! Then I have a week off, then finals the next week and then it is all SUMMERTIME for me!
This weekend we spent time working on designs for several websites and graphics we are doing, cooking, looking for new furniture for our new house and starting to pack stuff up in my dorm room that I don’t need in the next two weeks. It was pretty productive!
Here are a few snapshots from our weekend:
Saturday breakfast brunch lunch:
Tomato/Mushroom/Green Bell Pepper/Cheddar/Parmesan Quiche. Totally Yummy! (Image Copyright Drew Rowland–he says)
We of course couch shopped on Saturday after that. Then we stopped by JoAnns because I needed some inspiration for my final in my painting class and I had an idea, but I’m not sure if I’ll do it or not. I love looking at fabric! So pretty! I’m really inspired by graphic prints. I really want some curtains somewhere in our house made out of a print like these:
On Sunday since we were in the house decor/furnishing mood, we drove all the way to Denham Springs, Louisiana to look through their many antique/furniture/flea market stores. We saw a lot of stuff that would really work for the new house and all with prices we could afford, but ultimately we were too scared to buy anything else yet. We want to get everything into the new house first and then see what we need where and measure the spaces to see what size pieces we would need, etc.. We found a pretty wood coffee table, but we want to get the couch first and see how long of a coffee table would work in there. I totally should have taken pictures of things we liked, but I completely forgot. I got home with only one picture of a small side table I saw there. I took it in one of the first stores, and although I wouldn’t buy it because it doesn’t go with the scheme of our house, I thought it was pretty. The entire top is a glass and ceramic mosaic.
I spent the rest of the evening working on packing up some of the stuff from my dorm room. I have a lot of stuff that I know I won’t need to use in the next two weeks, so I’m trying to get it all together so that Drew and I can move a little out at a time. We don’t have anyone down here to help us move out and I live on the second floor and there aren’t any elevators in the building. It was quite an ordeal to get everything moved in and then we had not only Drew and I, but my parents as well. We are on our own for move out, so hopefully if we take it a couple boxes every couple days or every week it won’t be so bad. :)
Anyway, I’m sure anyone reading this is completely bored by now from our extremely exciting weekend. Sorry, we’ll try to keep the fun down a little next weekend. We don’t want to get too wild with our cooking and home decorating! ;)
Ohh, and I almost forgot, we just made scones to end our weekend tastefully! When I was in like 5th or 6th grade, my sisters and I would often go over to this lady’s house in my town that had a little gifts and garden place. She hosted tea parties and garden parties for kids and we had signed up for some of her butterfly summer events. We became friends with her and would go over there every so often to run around in her garden, bake bread, and look for and name butterfly species. I had a tea party there one year for my birthday where my friends and I all wore dresses and straw hats and sat in the garden and drank lemonade and tea and ate scones, biscotti, and tea sandwiches and made small flower bouquets from her garden and decorated cupcakes with crushed Oreo cookies and edible flowers.
She made amazing scones and my mom has her recipe and makes them often as well. My mom adds lemon/orange zest and cranberries and walnuts and all sorts of fancy things, and I like them that way, but my favorite are just plain scones. Although I want to think that the garden lady always made some kind of spread that I always put on the plain ones, but I can’t remember what it is now.
For some reason, I really wanted plain classic cream scones tonight. Luckily we had unsalted butter in the freezer and some leftover heavy whipping cream from the Chicken Tetrazzini we made last week. Drew of course wanted something in his, so we split the dough after we mixed it and I made mine plain and he added cinnamon and more sugar to his. I ended up with small, dainty scones and Drew ended up with massive giant glob scones. Regardless of their shapes, they tasted amazing. Mine of course were better, although Drew would disagree.
Hope you all had wonderful weekends!
Stitchery Art for Under $10
Remember the stuff I got the other day to make a stitchery wall hanging? Well I made it yesterday while Drew and I were watching a movie. It didn’t take long at all! This is what I ended up with:
I know, it is kind-of hard to see. It was really hard to get a good picture with good lighting and without a glare. I tried to take it outside for better lighting, but still got a glare. Hence, the reflection of someone’s car in my artwork.
You can see the stitching better here. I just wanted a simple, colorful, but slightly rustic look. I used the linen fabric I got the other day for the background, but you could use any fabric really. I like the grain lines and the color of this linen. The heart was made out of some leftover fabric I had in my fabric stash. Along with leftover buttons and some embroidery floss that is like thirty-something cents a thread color. Pretty simple.
If you look closely at the heart, you will notice it looks pretty similar to the heart I use on my blog–on my favicon, header, and signature. Well, that’s because it is! I just made it the size that I wanted for my stitchery and printed it out to use as a template to cut my fabric. You could do that with any image you wanted!
I originally wanted to put a quote on it, but I couldn’t find one that I particularly liked for this. What better to say than simply, I love you? I just lightly wrote out on the fabric what I wanted it to say to get an idea of where to stitch each letter and used a simple backstitch. If you have little kids that are just learning to write, I think it would be cute to have them write out something and then you could stitch it in their handwriting. My mom did that when I was little on my Christmas stocking. She had me write out my name and then stitched it out. I still use that stocking every Christmas with my little 5-year old handwriting. :)
If you want a quick and easy idea for artwork, this is it! It only took me an hour or so and cost me less than $10 for the entire ensemble! You only need a small amount of fabric, embroidery floss, buttons, lace or whatever you want to put on it. I got the frame today at Michael’s and I think it accents it perfectly! The frame is a 10×13 matted to an 8×10. The frame came with the matte and it was on sale for $4.99! I love the rustic look of the creme colored frame!
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