Sunday, January 4, 2015

How to sew round bolster pillow cover.


Today I am in the mood for sewing a cover for my round bolster pillow that I always usually cuddle in the bedtime. When I was young I never had even one night without it in my arms and of course, in the middle of my 2 long legs. Loooooooove to have it and cuddle it during the sleeping time.

I only have this size of the bolster pillow at home but nothing could stop me from sewing the cover today. Let start from the beginning then. Come on in....



Picture was taken by Ms. Joanna Ainscough and it belongs to her.

As I said I only had one size at home at the moment. But the sewing method would be the same way beside the size that you have to adjust according to your bolster pillow.





First of all, let measure the size of your bolster pillow to get the dimension for your pieces of fabric. You need the dimension of the 2 ends and 1 triangle piece for the main part of the bolster.

Simply surround your bolster pillow by the measure tape to get the length of the bolster pillow. I used a bowl in the kitchen to be the pattern of the 2 ends. How simple is that?






Picture was taken by Ms. Joanna Ainscough and it belongs to her.


 Mark around the edges of the bowl to be your seam and DO NOT forget the seam allowance when you cut the pieces of the fabric.I used 3/4 inch to get easy while I am sewing the main piece and the 2 ends together. Because you will have the sewing foot to be the guide right the way once you press the sewing down on.







Picture was taken by Ms. Joanna Ainscough and it belongs to her.

My design today was a little patchwork so I needed to sew the stripes together in order to get the design done. But you could use just one main piece of fabric which is ready to go and skip this section. Secured your project pieces together before you start to sew them together.



Picture was taken by Ms. Joanna Ainscough and it belongs to her.

Sew all the pieces as your design together to be your main piece of the bolster pillow cover. Then you will have 3 pieces which are the main piece and 2 ends.




Picture was taken by Ms. Joanna Ainscough and it belongs to her.

My bolster pillow is 16 inches long but I only 1 beige invisible zipper in my hands. Unfortunately, it was only 8 inches long which I would prefer to have the zipper at least around 12 inches. Longer of the zipper is the easier insert you would have when you slip the cover into your bolster.




 Picture was taken by Ms. Joanna Ainscough and it belongs to her.

Install the invisible zipper into the main piece and iron press to check your seam with the zipper. I am sure you'd prefer to have the zipper invisible. So please make sure to sew very very close to the zipper once you install it.


 Picture was taken by Ms. Joanna Ainscough and it belongs to her.

Now you have 3 pieces which are the main piece that have invisible zipper installed, 2 ends that I already surged all around the edges. Now we are ready to go for the finishing up.



Picture was taken by Ms. Joanna Ainscough and it belongs to her.

Match the end and the main piece together by secure them with flat pins. Push the fabric along while you are secure the pin into both pieces. Ensure you won't pin more than 2 pieces around the end. 

While you are piecing the end and the main cover together. Straight the project to be as same as the picture below. That way you will sew them easier and have the straight seam all around the end.


 Picture was taken by Ms. Joanna Ainscough and it belongs to her.

Sew another end to the piece that you have just done. Finally you will only have to flip the cover out and slip into your bolster pillow.



Picture was taken by Ms. Joanna Ainscough and it belongs to her.


It is not so hard but actually I also have another way that I used with the same pillow. My another cover looks like a wrapped candy and that kind was super easy to sew. Let me find sometime to design another of that candy pillow cover. I will show you how easy is that and we enjoy sewing together.









Friday, January 2, 2015

How to build a sturdy sewing and craft table with storage.

I like to sew and craft and it's been that way since I was a little girl. But when I was working in Thailand I worked pretty hard and super busy with all the appointments from customers. I am the one who usually never refused the customers either weekends, holidays, or long continuously holiday. So I did not have much time to do what I really love since then.

Once I got married and moved to USA I still could not continue my passion for sewing and crafting. Last year was the very good year for me to organize and prioritize my time form everything just a little bit. I finally started to learn again one step at a time with sewing and crafting.

Even better when my dream came true like this. December 2014, I decided to go back to be that little girl and wrote a letter to Santa asking for some Christmas gifts.





Picture was taken and belongs to Ms. Joanna Ainscough



Certainly, I have been a good girl for all year long, why would Santa punish me and does not give me more, huh? Santa dropped off some desired stuff that I requested on the letter which I got the happy chance to open them pretty early in the morning Christmas day.

Would you believe if I tell you that I went off from bed in the middle of the night to check on him if he would come by for real. Aaaaaaaw... such a little girl story today,haha...

Of course not, I did not forget to pampers my Santa at all even I did not cookies nor milk at home as a lactose intolerant person. But I left something that Santa might enjoy more after gets pretty full from cookies and milks from the other houses before coming by my house.

May be next year I should bring a whole bar with a bucket of ice to get ready in the better way that, should I ? It's gonna more convenience and could be served promptly.




Picture was taken and belongs to Ms. Joanna Ainscough



Hopefully he liked it that night. But I got some proves that he must enjoyed the drinks somehow because I got a few boxes to open in the morning of Christmas day. Can you see how much I enjoyed Christmas? I am about the big girl who like to wake up in the morning of the Christmas day and run to the tree finding out which are my boxes and what are in side the boxes.

Here is how my tree looked like in the morning and of course, they were some other areas around the tree that got the boxes.



Picture was taken and belongs to Ms. Joanna Ainscough


Ta daaaaaaaa.... I finally occupied his workshop in the sunny room and modified about a little more than half of it to be my sewing and crafting room. 





Picture was taken and belongs to Ms. Joanna Ainscough



He sneaked to IKEA Tampa when I went out for an errand with my friend just right before Christmas to get all of these parts. Imagine he kept them all in the garage where I needed to walk through to get into the house but I did not notice anything? I did not see anything even the day I cleaned the house.




Picture was taken and belongs to Ms. Joanna Ainscough



What I could help with all of the processes he went through to assembly my table were holding the pieces, handling the screws, pushing the draws to show him they were all fit right. I wish I could help more than that but I am not that kind of girl YET.


Picture was taken and belongs to Ms. Joanna Ainscough



You could go to choose and pick up all the parts that you are seeing in this post at IKEA and this is the model of my table.  http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10192824/ Do not forget to buy 2 of them once you get there.

After getting your draws assembled, here is another thing you must have to finish a whole project. This part is only the idea follow mine. You could get a bigger, wider, thicker piece of the topper as you may. And here is the link of the topper.  http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10251352/#/20251356





Picture was taken and belongs to Ms. Joanna Ainscough



This is how my sunny room looked like before having a new fantastic table to do all sorts of thing. I only used the foldable plastic table which could shake like crazy when I sew the leather. My boyfriend teased me that I was enjoy shooting the machine gun in the house with all of the noises and shakings.

Therefor he came up with the idea to prevent the noises and shaking while I am sewing anything again. By having the extra leg in the middle of the long table to support and gives the table extra strength as you would see above in the first picture of my sewing and crafting table.




Picture was taken and belongs to Ms. Joanna Ainscough



Not only giving the table an extra support but you also need some stuffing thing like this little rubber dot to keep your top of the table stick with the other 2 draws. My boyfriend told me that he got 2 pairs of them came with the draws. Simply place the dots at the corner once you measure the length of the top on the draw to finish the table. Then your table top would be supported and kept it on top of the 2 draws that got a job as the legs of your sewing and crafting table.

Then you are pretty much lay the table top on draws that also have the rubber bumpers in place. If you are gonna sew or do something pretty heavy or need a lot of support at the middle of your table. My boyfriend is really thoughtful as I mentioned before about the machine gun. So he got another strong and firm support to my table.




Picture was taken and belongs to Ms. Joanna Ainscough



I am so happy about this table that I got. I should have started some projects on this table to make my boyfriend feel like it is really useful as it supposes to be. But right now I am busy with reading a lot about how tos. Yes, " How To " for my other machines that make me nervous that I would only break them just like I broke mom's old serger recently.  



Picture was taken and belongs to Ms. Joanna Ainscough



Here is my sewing and crafting room right now. Perhaps one day I could decorate it to be the pretty room just like when I searched on Google or Pinterest. But this is the real function room, WHaha.... at least it is not messy though.