Little by little, one bite at a time

Some time ago... well really when my husband and I got married and I went from living in an almost entirely white apartment in the city to a small home with property in the country with 4 dogs, a 7 year old (at that time) little boy and a husband who likes muddy motor sports.... I decided that a white sofa wasn't a reasonable item to have in your house. 

Sure, it looks fabulous when the cover is fresh out of the wash and pristine-ly white... but that lasts about 2.3 seconds in my house, so something needed to be done.

After comparing color samples of the little dogs muddy footprints with the shades of Rit Dye available I decided on Dark Brown. To be honest, the color I was looking for was really more of this French Roast, but as this was my first time dying anything, and I was going to have to do it in multiple batches, I really didn't want to mess with measuring and mixing dye.... yet ;-) 

So, I did what any crafty girl who doesn't know how to do something but wants to does... I went to Pinterest. I searched for dying a couch cover and just my luck Laura at Decor to Adore had the same couch I did and had already dyed their cover a lovely shade of blue! This gave me the courage to jump out and do my own!

Ok, so to be clear - I have an Ektorp sofa from IKEA. I love it, LOVE the removable slip cover. I was ready to commit..I was terrified I was going to ruin our washing machine... but I didn't. As a matter of fact, because I was so worried I actually took the time to scrub out the washer after I did the main body of the couch cover and it is cleaner now than it was before I dyed it!

Unfortunately, every place I went only carried 1 bottle of the dark brown dye I was looking for, so I bought a bottle, and did 3 of the cushions... 

That first dye went great! No major problems, the covers did indeed turn out brown... I was elated! I couldn't believe how easy it was! I ended up doing the dye bath as described by Laura, at a medium fill level with super hot water and a cup of salt, 1 bottle for 3 cushion covers. I weighed all of the covers with one of those hand held luggage type scales my hubby had... something like this one if you are interested. All 6 cushions weighed almost 7lbs and the cover itself was almost 6 I believe.

Next I went to two different places and ended up with 2 bottles of dye - enough to do the base of the couch cover... and off I went. You can see how the dye bath accentuated any accumulated grunge I may have had in my washer. Immediately after this dye, I took a Magic Eraser to it and it sparkled cleaner than I had ever seen it!

So, my couch looked like this for a week. I commute a good deal, so during the week isn't the best time ever to try to get just about anything done. My weekends are my warrior times... make that list and kill it all!

My mom acquired the last bottle of dye for me, due to my aforementioned schedule - and yesterday was the day! I dyed those last 3 cushions for a nice warm brown couch that hides little doggy footprints better than the blazing white one.

I still think that I would like to venture into the realm of color mixing and re-dye it that darker, more espresso color, but for right this minute I am very happy with it. 

The other thing I LOVE about this couch is that the white cover is only $50 which means I could buy another white cover and dye it another color to have something to swap out with when I felt like a change. One thing to note, I noticed that the top stitching on the cover didn't take the dye, so I still have some white top stitching around the kick pleats. I think it looks fine so I am not worrying about it, but just something to know if you are planning to dye your cover a dark color. 

To Blog or Not To Blog

Well, it has been an incredibly long time since I last posted... and I had at one point decided that I wasn't going to pick this back up. The problem I face is that I have WAY too many interesting craft projects that I am about to venture into and I don't want to forget the details of how I accomplished them later. So, here I am... getting ready to write again, more for my own chronicling than for anything else.

Ok, so projects that are coming up... HALLOWEEN!!!! My step-son, who is 8 years old, would like to be General Greivous for Halloween.

If you are familiar with General Greivous, you are probably laughing right now saying, "good luck with that!" because that is largely how I feel about the situation, but that is who he wants to be and there is no dissuading him from this decision.

Here is a photo of General Greivous.

As you can see... this will be a challenge. Greivous is a digital character in the movie, so no person has to fit inside of any suit or costume.

My game plan thus far is to use pvc pipe or tubing and cut it lengthwise to give me a 1/2 round, and then drill holes into the edges/corners of the pipe so I can sew it onto a pair of black pants and a black top. I will likely use foam core board for the flat pieces of "armor" on his shins and forearms.

I am working on how to do the chest and shoulder pad pieces as well as the neck collar (those are all hard to see from this picture, but I will post more as I begin working on each section). I have considered buying plastic bins from the dollar store and cutting them into the right shapes and then heating them up in the oven to see if I can remold them at all...but I don't want a burning pile of plastic in my oven, so we will see about that.

Another big thing on my list of projects is my house. My husband and I have been working on remodeling since right before I moved in and thus far we have taken out a wall, painted the kitchen, living room, and bed room, hung new light fixtures in the kitchen, new blinds throughout and ripped out the carpet. So upcoming for the house is painting the floors, dyeing my couch cover (I am going to attempt to washing machine dye it *fingers crossed), painting the bathroom, multiple pieces of wood furniture to refinish and lots of other little projects.

As for the outside of the house, we will be painting it next summer, we have some concrete pathways we want to get laid and the best part.... I AM GETTING A CRAFT SHED!!!!! I am so excited about this last bit that I can hardly stand it. We have a relatively small house and there is just no room for Crafternoon Delight in there, not to mention that I do work from home at least once a week and a nice quiet office space away from The Pack (our 4 dogs... more on this later) would be so nice to work from.

This is a photo of what my shed will look like.... roughly...

It comes primed, so we will trial run the new house color on it when the weather gets nice again. Of course it doesn't come finished inside, so that will be another project to work on :) There will be posts coming with all the details of the finishing of shed.

So those are a few of the things that I am working on and looking to keep track of here. More to come!

Back in the Saddle Again

Life is crazy right now....crazy good, crazy busy, and just plain regular crazy.

Tomorrow I leave to attend the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival (OFFF) and I am super excited! I have a friend riding down with me, and two riding home so the mini road trip should be entertaining. We are meeting several of our friends down there and it will be a great time.

I haven't been doing very well on my one craft project a week quest lately, and I have really had the bug to sew something....so I am going to recommit myself to this pledge. So, that being said I have a few different things I need to work on. I didn't completely finish my costume for the Costume College gala - so I still have the corset cover, the gauntlets and the hair piece that wraps around her braid to do.

I had finished the bustle underneath the skirt, but it got stepped on and ripped so I need to repair it and better secure it....and find a handler to be sure no one steps on me. =)

Also there are a few things about the neck-piece I would like to change, but given that it is such a huge piece and requires so much work, I am not sure I am ready to rip it out and do it again. I just realized I hadn't posted a picture of the finished project.

I am pretty happy with the way it came out in general, but as a perfectionist...it could be better...a closer match. Until I have the will to rip it out though, it will do :)

So those are a few pictures of the basic costume...I wore a purchased corset and had mostly finished gauntlets, but wasn't happy with the way they fit, so ended up taking them off when I sat down to dinner. It was fine though, my costume was recognizable, which is always fun!

Much of Costume College was made up of historical costumers, but there was a very nice selection of Steam Punk costumes thanks to the fact that last year's bonus track was Steam Punk. It is apparently "tradition" that people take what they learned that year at CoCo and work on their costumes in that style when they get home and then wear them for the following year's Ice Cream Social.

This year's theme was medieval and although I didn't get to take many of the classes about medieval dress, it really inspired me to make a Lord of the Rings costume. I am thinking that Arwen would be best for me. So that will be coming some time in the future.

In the in-between time I need some smaller projects to complete each week. There are a few things I have on that list. First...I don't own a pin cushion...I don't know how this happened, but it did...and frankly I am appalled. Well...not really, I have just always used them out of my box of pins...but no longer - one of my little projects is to make myself a wrist pin cushion. I know that this is not a difficult project, but its a fun and practical one.

One project that has been on my to-do list for a long time was to decorate a wrist support I have that I wear while knitting. So last week I decided to complete this task. I had purchased hot-fix crystals that I bought at Shipwreck Beads some time ago. I already had a hot-fix wand from when I made my veil for my wedding.

Unfortunately I wrote the letters too close together so the rhinestones don't fall on the guides and you can see them a bit. These gloves tend to get a little grubby, so I will likely need a new one in not too long, so I will know better how to layout the sparkles =)

I think that does it for tonight. I am going to do my favorite thing in the world...and make a list of the projects I want to work on. =)