A patchwork bedspread

Life has just been a tad hectic over the past couple of weeks.  I made a big decision at the beginning of the month to change my career path, and I've been swamped with job searches, applications and the rest of it. Plus handing over my research to my colleagues. Hence the blog silence. I'm hoping to fit in some more blogging in my spare time, along with some more job applications. Woot! 

So here I am, finally, sharing a bedspread that I made a few weeks ago. I like to have the bed made each morning, even if nothing else is tidy. Things just don't feel right otherwise! 

We needed to get rid of a few bedding sets when we moved in, because who on earth needs 5 doubles and another 6 singles just for two people? However, because I can't bear to ditch anything made of cotton (since I discovered patchwork), I managed to hold onto it with the promise that I would make something out of it soon. 

Inspiration came from here, long before I made it. I didn't have this particular design in mind; instead, I came up with my own, just taking the idea of cutting lots of squares from fabric. I started out with a grid, and made a few geometric patterns before I settled on one I liked:

I settled on number 3. I liked the way the colours progressively get darker from the middle and then go back to light. I did the grid in Excel in the end (Paint was too much effort), and calculated the number of squares I'd need taking into account seam allowances, based on a total size of 225cmx225cm. I decided that I wanted 10 inch squares, and worked out that I would need a 9x9 grid.


This project was a hiccup project. Plenty of "oh cr**" moments where I thought I'd ruined it. I'll explain those as I go along. But all the same, I'm happy with the result. It's not the most beautiful bedspread there ever was, but I like the mismatched seams and the wonky squares. The colours suit the room and my intended colour scheme for our bedroom. 

I used the grid as a reference to make the patchwork. First I did each row, according to the colours on the grid (my final grid was also 9x9 squares but I don't have a picture of it to show you). So I ended up with 9 rows of fabric. 

First hiccup: I'd calculated the size of the squares including a 1/4 inch seam allowance. Ahemm. The fabric was basically rubbish, especially the beige one. It was so wonky and biased (I'm not a fabric wizz) that I did not end up with straight rows AT ALL. Nor did I have rows of equal length. So at various points I just had to go with a bigger seam allowance, up to 2 inches, because otherwise there would have been holes everywhere! 


Second hiccup: Once I'd put all the rows together, to make the completed bedspread top, I discovered that due to hiccup #1, it totally wasn't 225x225cm, and not long enough, but too wide instead. It just didn't fit the bed. Oops. But the aha moment followed: I rotated it 90 degrees and now it *just about* fits perfectly! Phew. The picture above shows the spread once I'd rotated it. Thankfully, because I chose a symmetrical pattern, it doesn't matter which way round it goes :D




In the spirit of using up old fabric, I took the reverse side of the duvet cover for the backing, and then came hiccup #3. The reverse side wasn't big enough, so I added a strip at the top from the leftovers:











 

To attach the back to the front of the bedspread, I laid both down, right sides together, and stitched all the way round (on a machine), except the last corner, so I could turn it back the right way round through the hole. I didn't use any batting, because I wanted this to be light and manageable for both of us in the morning.








 
Once I'd turned it the right way round, I just used the machine to stitch as close to the edge as possible. To make it look flawless, you'd need to handstitch it, but I'm impatient, and I don't know how! 

I did plan to quilt it, and iron it, but it works just fine like it is (it gets crumpled every night anyway!), and I've never machine quilted anything before, so I didn't want to risk ruining it completely, after all the hiccups! 



I kinda like the rough edges, not-so-square squares and mismatched seams. For me, it adds to the charm of patchwork. Using up scraps of any fabric to make something else. 

Here is the final product again:

As a little extra, I want to draw your attention to the two bedside tables. These I got for free on Freecycle before we moved. I love the prospect of restoring furniture so that is firmly on the project list.


See the wonky drawers:

Yeah. They don't work so well. That would be because all of the drawer runners are broken. So off I went online (ebay) and found these:

And I really must do something about this lamp:

It's an eyesore to say the least! 



I'll save those for another time, but I just wanted to give you a sneak peek of what I have on my project list!

-Linda


Anyone have any clever ideas for lamp re-do's or bedside tables? I'd love to hear your ideas! 


I'm linking up to: 

 

 And taking part in:

Thrifty little storage boxes

You know the piles of stuff that gather around the house, especially on the surfaces?  Dining table or kitchen counter perhaps? These are most frequently paper in my flat. Mail, junk mail, notebooks, receipts, you name it.  

As Laura says on her blog, here and here, piles of stuff occur either when stuff doesn't have a home, or in the landing zones - the places we put stuff when we come in the house.   

I have one such pile in particular; receipts, because I just don't know where to put them.  I need them to keep a budget of what we spend, but I'm not the type to enter a single expense into the spreadsheet every time I buy something. This means that I need somewhere to keep the receipts in the meantime! I think the pile of receipts has the tendency to be moved around the room because I don't have a fixed place for them.....

UNTIL NOW! :) 

My ethos is to reuse wherever possible (read more about my ethos here).  I put a sturdy but small cardboard box from my hairdryer in the recycling, because I couldn't think of a use for it (after all I'm also trying to declutter my flat!). I managed to rescue it from impending recycling lorry death just in time when I thought of what I could use it for: little boxes to store receipts and other small items.  Yay :)

This is the box I started with:

I wanted it chopped in half so I could have two smaller boxes, so I drew a line around the centre:

And then cut along the line with a craft knife and scissors (you could use just one)

 

I found some cute (FREE) scrapbooking papers to print out, here (they come as pdf's). Another place for free papers is here.

I used some card to spread my PVA glue onto the box. A glue stick would be fine too (and perhaps better to stop the paper getting soggy)

I covered the box in white paper first to help hide the picture of my hairdryer.  I cut it diagonally to make it easier to fold over the edge.

Then I cut the scrapbook paper to size and folded it over the edge too. I left the red sides because I quite liked the colour, but it does leave the edges a bit untidy. 

I covered the second small box in a different scrapbook paper and went all the way round this time, because the hairdryer image was on this half.

Then onto LABELS!! Fun labels are great because you know exactly what is supposed to be in the box! 

I made these labels with Ribbet. You can use this tutorial here to read how to make labels in Picnik (which got shut down and replaced).  Everything in Ribbet is identical to Picnik except the background/logo and the name. 

I printed out the labels and stuck them on with a glue stick.

The boxes are done!

I named the other box "stickies" because it has all my post-its, adhesive labels, and stickers in it, i.e. anything that sticks!  I like it. 

Before and after shot:

My life will be that little bit more organised now I have a fixed place for my receipts! Small steps! 

Anyone else been coming up with thrifty storage solutions?

I'm linking up to:

Quick post: A Snickers Experiment

So I fancied doing some baking - we had Snickers bars in the house and I found a recipe in my notebook called "Snickers cookies".  Ideal! 

I've never tried the recipe before, and I have no idea where it came from.  I get slightly dubious when a recipe calls for mugs of something, in this case flour.  It's not the american cup I imagine, or any other standard measurement, so what is it? I just chose my favourite mug and used that.  

I had no idea what to expect with these; the dough was quite tough and they made a bit of a mess in the oven because the chocolate melted and spread.  The result tastes like a scone, and I have no idea why. But all the same, they are yummy!! 

Anyone else been conducting experiments in the kitchen?

Making my blog beautiful

Ever since I've had this blog, I've not enjoyed looking at it, because I didn't have a design that I liked.  I knew this required some thought, so over the past couple of weeks I've been thinking what I'd like to change. 

I bought Robin Haughton's new book, Blogging for Creatives which is a brand new book and totally worth a read (btw, I haven't been endorsed in any way to write that) because it sets out the main things to consider when you're starting out blogging. There are also hundreds of tutorials and pages out there to look at. 

So off I went to my hidden blog (or now test blog!) to test my ideas out.  I started with the banner, and found loads of great advice.  

Here are some places for info:

Songbird  

Sneaky Momma 

In fact, Sneaky Momma has oodles of info for beginners to experts on blog design.  I looked at Scrapblog, but I think it's been shut down or moved.  I read that Picnik got shut down, but thankfully replaced with Ribbet which is identical in every way, and just plain amazing! 

I made my banner by making a collage, selecting a 1x4 grid, and editing the background colour. Once you click Done, then you can do all sorts with the menus at the top, add text etc. It allows you to upload photos onto your design, so I made my own flowers in Paint (tedious, but worth it) and superimposed them onto the banner.  I recommend having a go - it's really fun! 

Onto the colour scheme.  Remember I told you about the interior design class I took back in May? There we picked photos from magazines that we liked, and matched paint colours to the ones in the photo to develop a "colour eye".  Then we had to choose 1-2 colours to go with it, and decide what type of colour scheme it was.  In the absence of my own house to make over and paint, I realised that the blog would be the perfect place to implement my colour scheme! 

Oh my there are some cool things on the internet. This nifty page lets you browse colour schemes, upload your own photo or link to a photo on the internet, and it picks out the colours in it and gives the hex colour value for the main colours.  If you type the hex value into this awesome page you can convert that to rgb values.  Armed with those hex and rgb values you can go crazy in Paint, or Ribbet and specify the exact colours. SWEET!  

Long story short, you can upload any photo you like, and make the colours on your computer.  So clever! Doing this meant I could copy my colour scheme from a photo and add it to various elements in the blog.  I'm so glad I made the change!

Anyone else been re-designing their blog, or newbies like me figuring out a design they like?