SweetSourMoments

Customized Store Bought Curtain

Published on November 6, 2012 by sweetsourmomentsLeave a comment

Still working on the guest bedroom, now is the window dressing. I saw this nice pair of curtain in clearance section, yes I knew the height is less than what I wanted but I like the fabric very much, it’s sheer fabric with satin strips and its color is just what the room needs, combination between gold and khaki, and the best thing is the price, perfect! To make it works and also to give my own personal touch, I decided to add linen fabric and satin ribbon.

1. The Linen and Satin ribbon.

I think Linen makes a good pair with sheer fabric, it adds texture. The Satin ribbon mimics the Satin strip on the original curtain.

2. Sewing the Ribbon and Linen.

3. Window dressing : check! one more item removed from the list.

Pillow Sham – DIY

Published on November 5, 2012 by sweetsourmoments3 Comments

Since the guest bedroom bed doesn’t have headboard, I put these pillow shams to add the height and also act like a headboard (kind of). As mentioned in previous post, as the result of the wrong color paint I need to work around the gold circle stamp accent wall while decorating this room, so I picked this brown geometric fabric from JoAnn store with 50% + 25% discount, what a great deal! I’ve already had 2 big pillows in 26″x 26″ size, the pillow sham is sewn in 25″x 25″, smaller, for puffiness.

1. The front fabric, the linen back fabric, the back lining fabric (for lining the linen).

2. Cut fabrics, add 4″ overlapping fabric for the back, plus seam allowance ( I used 1/4″). I added another 1/4″ seam allowance for back lining in order the wrap the edge in final step to cover frayed fabric.

3. A. fabric arrangement; B. Sew the back fabric (linen) and lining fabric; C. Sew all the fabrics with right side facing together; D. wrap the edge with lining fabric to avoid fraying.

4. Flip inside out, here is the closer look at the back.

5. Finished! happy with how the looks against the accent wall 🙂

Wall Stamp To Save Wrong Paint Color

Published on October 25, 2012 by sweetsourmoments6 Comments

I am currently decorating the last 2 rooms in the house, hadn’t done anything to them since moved here 4 years ago. For the guest room I was planning a minty green, very light and fresh, I picked the color and had a good feeling about it. Later that day I asked my husband for his opinion, he picked the one that’s 1 shade darker… well, since I asked him first I thought let’s just follow his pick. On the first couple rolls, I could see how dark it is, and after finished I felt like in the kinderganten or daycare room. Totally not what I picture the room would be in my mind. I didn’t want to redo the color, this room has many corners and borders that need detail works and I just didn’t have the energy to repaint.

How to make it elegant and comfortable for the guest ? .. without repaint. So here is what I did. I stamped the wall to get wallpaper effect, the wall where the head of the bed will be, to create a focal point and to distract the eyes from the greens. I used Martha Stewart Gold paint and am planning to add other gold accessories to tie the room together. On the future post I will let you see the finished room, so hope to see you checking my blog again.

1. Draw the pattern in the felt, I drew circle with asymmetric thickness. Cut it and glue to a piece of cardboard with the same shape, then glue a piece of styrofoam for handle.

2. This is the gold paint I used.

3. The stamping process.

4. The gold color really adds richness to the wall, like it!

Honeycomb Blanket – part 2, final

Published on October 22, 2012 by sweetsourmoments10 Comments

Finally I finished the blanket!!! After hours of hours stitching, it’s done 🙂

1. Stitch the fabric to follow paper template shape. I didn’t pierce through the paper, other tutorial suggested it, I think leaving the paper clean will save time when we want to remove it.

2. Stitch link the pieces.

3. Each big piece link.

4. Put the big pieces together as desired.

5. Stitch link all big pieces. This is the picture from the back, you can see the paper templates.

6. Remove the paper templates.

7. I forgot to document the process of putting the cotton batting, the border and back liner, sorry 😦 …

8. Finished.

Honeycomb Blanket – part 1

Published on October 5, 2012 by sweetsourmoments2 Comments

Though popular term for this is hexagon quilt, I prefer name it honeycomb.. to me it sounds much better, less technical. This is my first honeycomb blanket and I don’t think I will make another at a long long period of time, too much work 🙂 Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy making it, but I have so many projects going on this one just takes much more time than I anticipated. At this point I am half way to finish the blanket so stay tune for next post Honeycomb Blanket part 2.

My Ama (my grandmother from mother side) used to make patch blankets from scrap fabrics. Back then, the blanket was made using any kind of left over fabric in any size, it was so irregular, no pattern, totally mismatch. There were sometimes fabrics from old pants, dress, shirt, and mostly polyester. We calls Ama blanket Poor guy blanket because it was so unattractive although it serves its function very well, imagine how warm polyester fabric can be :). Ama always tried to salvage as much fabric as possible, her philosophy was saving! saving! saving! and less spend, similar to recycle, reuse, and reduce … hmmm when I think back of her, she was actually more advance in thinking process then our generation, she’d got this idea! Making my own blanket reminds me a lot of her, all the compassion and values she taught us, my prayer for her always.

I made 2 patch blankets before, both were for presents, so I don’t actually have my own blanket with me… they were not the version of poor guy blanket though, they were in color coordinated soft cotton fabric .. hey, they were presents! had to make sure it’s a nice looking blanket. I learn the term quilting here in US, there are special quilting fabric, quilting book, quilting pattern, quilting class .. wow it amazes me how a simple blanket making that I call patch blanket becomes so fancy. Then I saw this blog about making hexagon quilt, inspired me to make mine, my honeycomb blanket.
Fabric selection.

Cut fabric. I found this blog how to make hexagon quilt without hand stitch each hexagon piece, it’s faster. After comparing several tutorial I decided to go with the traditional method, the one that requires long process but for me it gives puffy look which I like.