Projects Over Christmas Break

Having almost 2 weeks off for holiday break, I became quite industrious around the house. I bought my house a little over a year ago, and after the painting, the total reconstruction of the flooring, the remodeling of the bathroom, and installing new windows & lighting were done, it was time to move on to smaller projects.

The first task was to decorate the spare bedroom/office/craft room/exercise room (jury is still out on whether we can keep this last title in the name)!

I went to the fabric store several times over the last year with the hope of finding just the right print to make pillow covers. I finally found this pretty black & white printed fabric and went a little crazy with it!

Project #1: Pillow Covers

Because the printed fabric was $6 a yard, I decided to also buy plain black fabric to cover the back of the pillows (at only $2 a yard) to save some cash and some of the pretty fabric for other projects. The pillow covers were really easy to make (you only need to sew a few straight lines) and only took me an afternoon. I used the "how to" section of this really helpful website.

The only thing I did differently was to use Velcro to fasten the back of the pillows instead of making button holes. A big thank you to Swiss inventor George de Mestral!

Project #2: Fabric Covered FramesWith the leftover fabric from the pillows, I took the plain white mats from these three frames and covered them to match! I used some craft glue and scissors and viola! It will probably take me a lot longer to decide which pictures to put in them!

Project #3: Chair Cushion Cover and Bulletin Board
At this point, the room looks like the Jo-Ann fabric store threw up on everything but still, I think it looks nice! For the chair cushion, I bought a $3 cushion from WalMart and then used the same pillow cover instructions from the website above. The only thing I had to add were the four little ties to secure the cushion to the chair.

I bought the bulletin board about a year ago from WalMart (maybe I should buy stock in this company?) It is just a plain cork board with black trim. I used fabric glue to secure the fabric to the board and then used tacks to put a ribbon in place around the edges.

Project #4: Lamp Shade
This was a tricky project...I have always wanted to cover a lamp shade with pretty fabric (every little girl's dream right?) but wondered how you could do it smoothly since the shade is an awkward shape. Well the trick is to use newspaper to create a pattern for your fabric.

I took newspaper and taped it all around the lamp shade and then cut the top and bottom to fit, leaving some extra because the fabric will need to be folded in and glued on the inside of the shade. Then I laid the newspaper template on the fabric and cut it out. I used plain-old fabric glue to secure it to the shade.

The only other project I am going to do with the fabric is maybe add a little trim to the plain white curtains in the room!