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Sewing

All Things Home

how to sew custom piping | slipcover series part 1

I finally did it.  I’ve been promising to do it for years and I have, at long last, made good. Years ago, I made a six part video slipcover series on how to make a slipcover.  I tried to write posts about it and I always fumbled over the wording and the posts were confusing and long.  Imagine paragraph after paragraph of “with right-sides together, insert piping between pieces of fabric and pin into place along edge of the chair blah-blah-blah-blah…”  It was just way too much to try to explain in words and pictures alone, so I decided to make videos. They were filmed in my crowded craft room, poorly lit and I know it was sometimes hard to see what I was doing.  You can also hear my kiddos in the background.  While those videos have their charm and I will keep the live on my YouTube channel,

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All Things Home

how to sew a zipper closure on a box cushion

We’ve been chatting about sewing lately and I have something to confess.  Zippers terrified me for years.  Well, maybe not terrified, but I thought they were too complicated and I avoided and side-stepped them.  I just made envelope closures on the underside of cushions.  And they’re usually held together by safety pins. Yeah.  If you flip over the cushions of my pretty French bergere chairs in the living room? And I’m saying this in a whisper.  Maybe even just mouthing it… …safety pins.   The French wing chairs in the dining room? Yep. As I’ve said before, I’m not about perfection.  I’m about getting something done.  If a chair needing a zipper is going to prevent me from getting something done, then I’ll figure out another way. I did face my fear of zippers a few years ago and they were surprisingly simple.  Almost to the point of embarrassment. It’s sort of like

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All Things Home

dear reader | to the one who is scared to sew

This time of reassessing my business and blog has been so rejuvenating for me.  I find myself flooded with ideas, anxious to create, bubbling to write…almost to the point of being overwhelmed by it.  It’s like my ideas are little children who keep interrupting one another and I have to tell them to pipe down and wait their turn.  So, I’m making lots of lists and trying to shape them into a plan of action that does involve time to eat and sleep.  I’m working on it. One of the ideas that keeps surfacing is doing more series on my blog.  Not just individual blog posts, but ones that are strung together by a common topic or tell a story that arcs over several posts.  I have three blog series currently underway – how my business began, the evolution of my house (we’re almost done with that one) and Megan’s

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All Things Home

hemp sheet slipcovers

One project that’s been on my to-do list for a couple of years was making new slipcovers for the wing chairs in the family room.  When things linger on a list that long, it’s because I don’t really want to do them.  I know how to make slipcovers and I love the results, but I make them out of thriftiness, not out of a zest for making slipcovers.  I usually do my slipcovering and upholstery in spurts, but between Lucketts and getting my house ready for this shoot, I’ve been on a sewing/stapling marathon.  I think I’ve done 20 chairs in the last 2 months.  Whew! These wing chairs might be in an important shot, so I really wanted them to look their best.  The drop cloth slipcovers have held up well for about 8 years, but they are examples of my “early work”and they were starting to look a little slouchy

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All Things Home

design ramblings | mixing fabric patterns

Once Lucketts was over, Kriste and I turned our attention to the finishing details of my house.   We have a big shoot coming up and I really wanted all of the half-done and 3/4-done and almost-done projects to finally be DONE.  I’m really enjoying having my house as just my house (now that we have the studio) and it’s helped me settle down a bit.  I’m not changing things up or moving furniture around so much, so I’m now ready to look at a room and call it finished.  Seriously.  (Well, ask me that again in a year and we’ll see how I’m doing!) So, a part of finishing has been sewing a bunch of pillows out of fabrics I picked especially for the rooms they are going in.  The pillows I’ve been using have been fine, but they weren’t intentional.  Now, they are intentional and I think that can

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All Things Home

the chairs with the ticking skirts

Sewing slipcovers is not my very favorite thing to do, so I saved these until the very end.  I kept looking at them, debating if I should just upholster them, which would be much faster or if I should push through and sew the slipcovers.  I had a vision for them from the very beginning…ticking slipcovers with ties and ruffled skirts.  I knew if I did anything different than that, they would look “off” to me and I would be disappointed that I didn’t just get it done the way I planned.   So, I pinned myself down on Thursday and worked on making that vision happen. Here’s how they started…  They were sturdy, the wood is gorgeous and the upholstery was in good shape.  Of course, I needed to add my touch, though! I made the slipcovers out of a ticking duvet cover that was dated 1913, so both

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All Things Home

Sailrite Sewing Machine Giveaway

I have a really, really awesome giveaway today…just so you know. But, let me start from the beginning.  A couple of years ago, I was upholstering a channel back chair and I found the end of my rope with my $150 run-of-the-mill sewing machine.  Don’t get me wrong.  That inexpensive machine has served me so well (and it still does), but I was just asking too much of it and it was starting to choke on 6 to 8 layers of hemp grain sack fabric.  Understandably.  So, I started shopping for a proper machine for upholstery. If you’ve ever looked around for one of those, you know that it’s pretty overwhelming.  Most of the upholstery machines I came across were over $1000 and were HUGE!  It would definitely not be mobile or easy to camouflage in a room, which was important to me, since it would be in my house and

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All Things Home

wing chair drop cloth slipcovers

I try not to get too engrossed in my blog analytics and all of the numbers, but it’s interesting sometimes to check them out…see what’s popular and what is most often pinned.  One trend I’ve noticed is that my readers loved my drop cloth projects.  I still get questions about which ones I use and how I bleached them.  Well, I thought I would give an update on drop cloth slipcovers I made for a pair of wing chairs about five years ago…  These chairs have a great story.  This is what they (and my family room) looked like when we first moved in… Yes, they are the blue checked wing chairs.  (Ha!  I just noticed a bagel sandwich on the back of the sofa!)  Anyway, the chairs were put up for sale by some friends at a yard sale and, believe it or not, they didn’t sell!  So, I

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I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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