A Handmade Childhood: Hipster Wall Art

I know I said I was taking a break from the sewing projects while we painted the nursery, but I did want to share this project that I originally did ages ago and for some reason can't find as a blog post.

Since we live in Asheville I felt it was more than appropriate to add some hipster art to the baby's nursery. The plan is to eventually have a wall devoted to appliqued, embroidered etc. art in embroidery hoops of different sizes. I think it will look fun and hopefully will be visually stimulating for the little sprout.

This applique project is made easy by the fusible bonding that keeps the shape in place. If you are not much of an artist, then look for some silhouette clip art that you can print and trace. These would also make very cool patchwork blocks. Look for retro background fabric for a true vintage loving hipster effect.

I chose to make this tutorial as a video as an experiment on a snow day earlier this year.
You Will Need:
 - Embroidery hoops
- Fusible bonding
- Plain cotton
- Patterned background fabric
- Thread in either plain color of cotton or color of background (see photos for the different effect)
-Iron
-Needles or sewing machine
Get everything you need here

Retro Applique Curtains

If you have been following the process of us decorating our house, you will know we are inspired by retro designs. These curtains really bring that side of the room out and I am pretty proud of them. I appliquéd the pattern onto the ecru curtains as the fabric itself is quite dark, and anyway the pieces were too short for the windows. I did them by hand and each curtain took a day to make. I played around with design a little bit first so I had my pieces in a pattern that I liked.

I simply drew a circle around each pattern with tailors chalk, cut them out at least a ¼ inch away from the outline, snipped the shape all the way around up to the chalk line, pinned the shape to the curtain, folded under the sections and sewed together with a running stitch in thread that matches the curtain. The curtains were then hung using my safety pin method.

Save the world, buy a ktichy bag

This is my new listing on Etsy, a vintage style shopper made from oganic cotton that's fairtrade. I love these bags and have lots of them myself. They fold up nice and small so you can carry them around and look so much nicer than plastic bags.

I also use mine to carry packed lunches to work.

Tension

I finally got around to testing out my sewing machine, that's been passed down by my mum. It took most of the afternoon to work out the tension and even when I did get it right, it still has a few hiccups. Nevertheless I persevered - finally I was able to turn a piece of fabric I bought off Ebay months ago, into a rather groovey cushion cover.

As I didn't have a zip and I am an impatient person, I decided to create a zipless cover like the ones for pillows. I managed it though it is far from perfect - nonetheless I feel this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship... If I could just get the tension sorted!

Below are pictures of the assembling process.