Ways you will use Math after school–Making a slipcover

At first I thought I could just use a picture and take measurements on my chair and come up with a perfect slipcover on my own.

Then McCall’s patterns were 70 cents, and they happened to have a slipcover pattern that I could modify for my own use.  I was sold.

I didn’t think it would be a walk in the park, but I thought it would be manageable.  I spent hours and hours taking measurements and modifying the pattern pieces, then cutting out the fabric itself.  I followed the directions and kept trying on the slipcover as I went.  Even with taking measurements, I was having to adjust quite a few things as I sewed, especially around curves.  I was also finding that I didn’t really make all of my adjustments correctly.

But in the end here is what I came up with.

From the front it actually looks quite good.  From the back…it’s a disaster.

Notice the weird gaping part in the middle back.  That is were common sense comes in.  I cut all the pieces exact to fit.  When I went to slip the cover on, I realized one huge fatal flaw.  I could not get the skinner bottom piece of the upper chair back over the wider upper portion of the chair back.

So I had to cut a slit in the slipcover and sew in some extra fabric.  Eventually I plan to sew on some buttons so I can close it up and it will look better.

Another problem is that the back must have taller proportions that the front, because if you look closely the skirt slopes up towards the back.

That would be an easy fix by adjusting the bottom hem, but I just don’t feel like taking it all apart and sewing it up again.  So for now I will live with it.

The pleats turned out pretty good.  I should probably go back and iron it, but again, I just want to be done with it!

The one slipcovered chair has made its way down to the kitchen.  Only 3 more to go, and I am really hoping they go smoother and that I have fixed all the kinks.

It will definitely be a bold pattern to break up our boring brown kitchen.

Stress

I’ve been a little down on myself lately.

I’ve been super busy at work, on what turned out to be a pretty stressful project.  In my life stress means I don’t take care of myself, I’m tired, and I don’t want to do anything.

My days consist of getting the kids ready in the morning, working all day, and then taking care of the kids again around 4pm when they are done with school/sitters, etc.  Once the kids are in bed at 8:30pm, I’ll admit I often just head straight to bed myself, that is how tired I am.  In fact my husband and I have hardly had any time to speak to each other lately.  We usually eat dinner together, but besides that we have the divide and conquer theory of taking care of the kids, since they like to do such different things.  And if we are both going to sleep as soon as the kids are asleep, well we don’t have any alone time together either.

I also haven’t really been concentrating on eating good.  Whatever is easy, fast, and minimal clean up is what has been going on the table around here.  I noticed on our last months budget we had almost tripled the amount of money spent on going out to eat.  That directly affects how I have been feeling about myself, how my clothes have become tighter in the past month.  I also have been so tired that the thought of doing any physical exercise makes me want to curl up and ignore the world.

I was so excited for the school year to start.  To have both kids taken care of and doing exciting activities on their own for the majority of the day – 5 days a week.  Except after being at school for only 2 days, both kids got sick.  And then a few days later, I caught their same cold.  More miserableness for our household ensued.

We are finally at the tail end of our colds.  My stressful project at work is finally over.  Both kids are loving school.  I am finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.  One that I hope stays bright for quite awhile before the next thing hits us…because it always does.

I have been itching to be creative again, to eat better/prepare more meals, and yes to even get in more exercise.

So I have jumped off and am tackling a huge daunting project.

We have this kitchen table and chair set that we bought off craigslist a couple of years ago.  It was ugly when we bought it, and I always had plans to change it.  Here is an old picture (Oct. ‘12) showing the set with it’s usual mess on top.

My plan was the re-stain the table a deeper color like the photo below and to make a slipcover for the chairs.

I may have talked about these plans before, but I have actually started working on it.

And now that I have started the project I am asking myself if having fabric chairs around young children is really a smart thing to do?  I will just have to hope that the stain guard I spray on them really works, and that if needed since the fabric will slip off, I can wash it and not ruin it. 

Anyone else have fabric kitchen chairs and young children?

Blue Ribbon Cherry Pie

I sewed up a little outfit for Bella the other day.

It’s becoming apparent that I will soon be sewing a lot of her clothes.  Her situation might be a little unique, but a lot of people can probably relate when their kids are not the normal size for clothes.  Bella has a really long waist, so her tops need to be long in length.  Her legs are really short.  Now to complicate matters she has a spine brace.  This makes her chest really wide.  Which I guess means she just needs larger tops, so they fit around her chest/waist, and are long enough.  But then the neck is super wide open, and the sleeves are huge.

Like I said, it looks like I will be making a lot of her clothes from now on.

So here is her new look “Blue Ribbon Cherry Pie”.

I’m Still Here

I’m still here.  I just haven’t had time to do anything creative.  Too many hours logged at work, and getting things ready behind the scenes for the kids to start school next week.

Plus I am completely over summer and ready for Fall.

I still have one item I wanted to finish up from my summer pinterest challenge.

It should be a super simple piece of artwork to create for the dinning room.  I believe canvas is on sale this weekend at JoAnn’s, so I need to make time to run over there and pick some up.

The next goal is to finish sewing up some new school clothes for both kids.

Then maybe I can allow myself to pick out some new inspiration for fall.

Of course to get all that done, I need to find time, and I’m not sure that is going to happen.

Wardrobe Redo

Digging back into my closet I located 3 pieces of clothing that I didn’t really wear because they didn’t fit me correctly.

All three pieces were probably bought back in 2008, and have each been worn about 2 times.

It took me about 30 minutes total time to take in the shirt and to hem the skirt so it fit me better.

The change is pretty slight, but overall it’s tailored a little better.

With the cropped jacket, I actually ended up turning it into a vest.  Here the back gives you a better idea of what I did.

After making all the changes I decided I probably wouldn’t wear all three pieces together.  So for fun, here is how I would wear the pieces.