I'm In Love With My Ruffle Attachment For My Sewing Machine.

I always knew I like to sew but once I tried my new ruffle attachment LIKE turned to LOVE. Really, how come I never knew about this wonderful tool?

I went to my local sewing store and they weren't too sure on what type of foot I needed either a low shank or high shank foot, well neither did I.  I then strolled over to Ebay and came upon "Gone Sewin" Ebay store and there she was....... my ruffler.  Gone Sewin listed my Kenmore model number and I knew then it was a fit.

Gone Sewin says about this ruffler

"For sewing small pleats and gathering on a single layer of fabric, as well as
pleated ruffles. The ruffler is adjustable and becomes indispensable when the
amount of gathering needs to be controlled exactly. You can control both the depth
of each pleat and the distance between pleats. It is particularly useful when long
rows of gathering are required such as in Home Dec projects. You can gather or pleat
a single layer of fabric while attaching it to a straight, ungathered layer in one operation. Recommended for light to medium weight fabrics."

So once I started on using the ruffler I just couldn't stop. It was almost magical!

So here are some pictures of pillows I enhanced with ruffles. 

This one I did in the envelope style and just because....... I added the ruffle.

Okay this red and white check are actually two fabric napkins sandwiched together with...... you guessed it some ruffles. 

I went ruffle crazy by adding one ruffle on top of the other mixing different colors.  I'm doing a happy camper dance. 

More things are in the works for me and my ruffler. It's a marriage made in heaven I'm thinking. Okay I'm off to do...... bet you can't guess!  

BTW I've not been paid to endorse this ebay store.

 I'm linking up at these parties

Vintage Inspiration Friday at Common Ground

Feathered Nest Friday at French Country Cottage

Fridays Unfolded at Stuff and Nonsense 

Inspiration Fridays At The Picket Fence

Using Water Slide Decal Paper

After having read some of Carol's of Polka Dot Closet fame tutorials on water slide decals I knew I had to try it. 

She recommended the Papilio.com web site as a source for quality decal paper.

So I figured if Carol loved the Papilio water slide decals, I would to.  

One of the nice things about Papilio site is all the instructions they have.  I purchased the following additional items as they suggested.  

The decal film spray is used to protect the ink when you submerge your paper in water.

"The Papilio Decal Film is simply a superior product to any clear aerosol spray available on the market for arts and crafts use. It is manufactured especially to form flexible film that will work with water slide decal paper, a film that will "never" yellow and stay flexible for years."

I also purchased the rubber decal squeegee.

 "The rubber decal squeegee in an important tool when applying water slide decals to any substrate. Applying a water decal without using this or similar tool will not give optical results."

Plus I purchased their Mounting Fluid. 

 

"The Clear Decal Mounting Fluid is a water based product designed especially for use with our water slide decal paper. This mounting fluid will improve the application process of the water slide decal especially when working with larger decals."

So following the instructions that came with the paper I was all set to go. 

My first project using the decals was the child's chair pictured below.  

Look closely at the top of the chair for the decal

Because I was starting with just one project I didn't want to waste a whole sheet of the decal paper for one image so with my Photoshop elements I loaded the page up with different images that I knew I'd use some day. 

Like with all things there is ALWAYS a learning curve even with the best written directions.  

My first problem was I did not spray enough of the fixative on the paper and the first image I cut from the paper bled all of it's colors.   So resprayed the remaining images with a bit more of the fixative and waited a full day before I used it,  just to be safe.  In the future what I think will work better is to do a few short sprays on the paper letting the fixative dry in between sprays to ensure that all areas are covered with the fixative. Again I'd like to wait 24 hours to mount the decals.

Second problem I had is I used the squeegee a bit to hard and wiped off part of the image. As you can see from my close up photo one side is missing the flowing flowers.   More lessons learned. 

I love these decals and have a few more projects planned. Below are some of the dishes I did using the decals. These dishes were meant for display only. 

Graphics from the Graphicsfairy

Don't you just love The Graphics Fairy French images. This image really looks great on this plate. 

So this dish was so pretty on it's own but I thought I'd mess with a good thing. Jury is out on whether or not I like it. I actually had three of these dishes and did not let one escape my madness. So it's understood the pink flowers were in the original design of the dish I just add the black image. I know .....what the heck was I thinking?
  
 So if you haven't tried water decals I suggest you do, the images look like they are painted on which adds a bit of pizazz to your objects. Just think twice before trying to enhance an already pretty piece like I did.

I'm joining these parties   

WTF Wednesday at Shabby Loco 
Brag Monday at the Graphicsfairy
Vintage Inspiration at Common Ground 

Pillows Made From An Afghan!

I had this afghan sitting in my booth for quite a long time. I like to turn over merchandise in no less than 90 days and if something doesn't sell I either;

1. mark it down
2. do something else to it
3. just bring it home to live with me. 

This afghan won choice number 2

I've seen some wonderful sweater pillows on  Pinterest and blogs and the picture below is just one of many.  The blog Brassy Apple has a simple tutorial on how she made them. You can find that HERE.

Source

So this Pinterest picture was my inspiration to the idea to create some simple pillows with my afghan.

There were some difference in the knit I used, mine was a very loose weave and because of this I decided the pillows needed a liner. I had some Ikea curtains from my other home that didn't make the grade in my new home but was perfect for the lining material. I cut my curtain/liner fabric the size of my pillows which was 12" x 16".   I like a plump pillow and for that reason always use the measurement of my pillow for my fabric pieces.

The afghan with it's loose weave has a lot of give which caused a problem trying to cut the exact size of the pillow . To solve this problem I just cut a piece of the afghan  larger than my lining and then pinned the liner to the cut piece from the afghan. Then following the outer edge line of the liner I zig zag stitched the liner to the afghan. Once that was done I cut off the excess afghan material.  I repeated again for the other side of the pillow.

Then I just placed the two pieces together right sides facing each other and sew them together leaving a bit of space open at the bottom to insert pillow.  After pillow was inserted I then just slip stitched the opening closed.

As you can tell from the picture I varied how the cable lines appeared on the pillows to give each one it's own distinct look.

From the one afghan I got 5 pillows with lots of scrap for something else (?)

These pillows will be sold in my booth at Knot On Main Street for $15. each.

I'm joining these parties   

 Pillows and Cushions Link Party at Threading My Way
Sunday's Best at My 1929 Charmer  
Newbie Link Party at Debbie Doo's

Making Gift / Pricing Tags Look Vintage

Yesterday I showed you how I made my white card stock look vintage.  My goal was to create tags for my items in my booth at Knot On Main Street. This is me paying attention to details.

So first I had to iron the sheets of coffee stained card stock so they would not jam up my printer. To be truthful I tried to skip this step with the result of my printer getting jammed. So out came the iron and a fast once over on each sheet corrected the problem.

QUICK TIP; those sheets I didn't print on but did iron are now stored under a very heavy book to keep them flat so they will be ready to use when I'm ready.

Next I created the images. I used Photoshop Elements to create my tags.

I first started looking at Karen's wonderful vintage images at the Graphics Fairy  and I found this wonderful frame called Fanciful Frame that I just love. With the magic wand tool in Photoshop I removed all the white in this image so I could layer the images of the ladies under it.

Fanciful Frame From Graphics Fairy

Next I picked out some images from my Dover Publications CD of Victorian Women's Fashion Photos .
I used the following three ladies to create 3 similar but different tags.

Such a sad pretty face don't you think?

She's my favorite, with the tilt of her hat

Lots of drama on her face, right?

I then re-sized the ladies images so they would fit nice and snug in the frame. I also set the opacity on the ladies images to 75%. (this actually lightened up the colors so they looked a bit more faded).

I added my booth number on each and also included my blog address. Here's how they looked in Photoshop. 

Next using Word I created a table and inserted the tag images into each box. Then printed on my coffee stained vintage looking paper. Below is how they came out.

My photo skills need sharpening. They look great in person.

The space between the booth number and the web address will be used for me to write a description and price with a fine point black sharpie.

I'm joining these parties 

Brag Monday at The Graphics Fairy 
Nifty Thrifty  Tuesday at Coastal Charm

Making Vintage Looking Paper For Tags

It's all about the details and I know that to be true. So my pricing tags at my booth should look as vintage as my products.

 I've been printing up my pricing tags on white card stock and I realized it would look better if the paper was at least 50 years old or at least look that old.

The tools needed are;

1. Instant coffee
2. Foam brush
3. 2 cups of boiling water
4. White card stock 

 I used my microwave to boil my water. After that was done I added about 3 tablespoons of instant coffee to the boiled water.  I then let it cool down a bit before I started brushing.

I started brushing the rich instant coffee on to the paper. I carefully stroked the coffee onto the paper making sure that the stroke marks showed up on the paper. After I was happy that the paper had enough coffee I then let the sheets dry in the oven at a 200 degree temperature for about 1 minute.

Then after inspecting the dried paper I decided whether to repeat the process again to get a darker stained look.  2 applications of coffee was brushed on each piece of card stock.

Tomorrow I'll print my some images from the Graphic Fairy  onto the vintage looking paper.

Update: you can see the tags I created with this paper HERE