Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Pillow talk

My current sanity list consists of one productive thing a day (folding a giant mound of laundry counts), plus one crafty thing for the cottage every week, because the house is too messy to do a crafty thing justice.

In compensation for the Herculean effort involved in last week's project of Picture Window Curtains, this week is all about:


fresh covers for the old pillows in the living room.

(can you tell which is the before and which is the after?)

Market Survey

Now, as it happens, I have been looking at a lot of storebought show-pillows lately.  The current trend is big and puffy, down filled (even if it means the stabby part of the feather sticking out at you), and/or heavily textured/embroidered.  Indoor/outdoor fabrics are also popular, though not at my local decorating store which is disappointing since I'd really prefer not to have to sew for that.

The trouble with big and puffy?

You can't stuff big and puffy away from the mice when winter comes.  Not without a lot of vacuum storage and/or giant plastic tubs, and who wants to store those all summer?

Nope, the old style of pillow - the 14" square and pretty-flat ones that have been up at the cottage for ages - those are the ones I want to slip behind my back when I spin yarn, or collapse onto when I come in from bobbing around in the lake, or look at when I want to see the new curtains tied in somehow with the new furniture that really doesn't match yet. 

Fabric Love

Another reason I was anxious to recover the current cushions was that in looking over some fabric I succumbed to not long ago, thinking of spontaneous home-sewn small-child birthday gifts because
I have oh so much time for that...

Digression Alert

I was in a hospital gift shop yesterday and do you know how much it costs to buy a beautifully handknit baby sweater and send your proceeds to hospital programs?

FIFTEEN DOLLARS.

and for this I am storing acrylic yarn for the baby sweater I still haven't cast on?

End of Digression

... I realized that this little print of heavy traffic is the perfect choice for cottage cushions.  Not just because of the cute contrast of Busy City with Lakeside Forest, or because these little cars perfectly echo the past and present colours of the cottage's decor, but because

they are adorable!


Closer look, maybe?


I just love them, can't get enough.  They are my superfast homesewn version of Connievan crochet (see Attic24, frequently, for this reference.)

More Fabric Love

Becoming committed to using the traffic fabric for the living room made me think of some other fabric I liked.  Last week when I was hoping to use some lovely drapey white linen for the curtains in my cottage bedroom and unable to find suitable lining for it, I tried to make do with the heavy red upholstery cotton way up there in the top picture.  BLEH.  The linen's drapeyness was lost and it was just depressing.

Then I remembered this fabric, of which I bought not enough for anything really, but which looks pretty good with the white linen:


Isn't it cute?


Really, really cute?

Like, so cute you can't believe that it not only recalls those innocent 1970s childhood road trips to campgrounds (and this very cottage), and matches perfectly the closet curtain-from-striped sheet that my aunt sewed for my cottage bedroom 35 years ago, but also has in it salmon cars that match the salmon dresser in said bedroom?  Salmon cars that look pretty darned cool?

The little rolling roads make me so happy, and I don't even like driving.  Fortunately I was able to buy some more of this fabric - how much more I will not know until it arrives - and with luck those curtains can be next week's cottage project.  And when I show you those, I should also be able to show you how cute the traffic pillows look on the new sofa because Yay, I finished them after I took the pictures in this post.

And they are truly fab.

Plus: done this week's cottage project with two days to go.

Go me!

and go you! hope you're having a productive week too.

(fabrics from Alewives, in the 'children's fabrics' section. sorry, I think I bought out both prints, but there are some other pretty great choices there that I haven't managed to do that to. yet. ahem.)

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