Weekend in the sudio

Whilst it has been a little fresh weather wise over the weekend, I still could not resist the lure of my studio.

So armed with a couple of bucket fulls of wood for the fire, some chocolate and some lemon tea, I moved my sewing kit lock stock and barrel into the studio on Saturday morning.

I have been collected fabrics for a while for various ideas I have, but decided to start with the cushion covers I promised Thea a while ago when she changed the colour scheme of her bedroom to black, white and red.

Saturday - after a lovely lunch with friends and some very good medical news - I settled in and got the first two cushion covers cut and one cover sewn together.

All the materials being used are recycled - either from clothing or some left over curtain material or oddments donated from friends and family.

The first cover is all red, in a lovely thick red corduory offcut that was given to me by a neighbour, there was enough to make one complete envelope fold cushion cover, which ties at the back with two black silk strips that came from a pair of trousers.

The second and third covers are variations on a theme. I was given some fabric swatchs which included this gothic veloured tulle in red and black. As this is too thin by itself I backed it with some black underskirt fabric from a skirt I took apart (keeping the outer tweed for another project). The envelope rear is made from another satin underskirt and some fantastic wet look leggings that my mum sent over for Thea to wear.  I won't repeat what Thea thought of them as clothing but they do make for some good soft cushion fabric.  These had to be cut up in strips up the legs and then sewn together in a patchwork in order to create the two halves of the back of the cushion.

 

 

The final cushion is from a dress that I bought at a car boot sale for a euro - thinking that Thea would like it but obviously being a teen she was completely contrary and hated it instead.  This is in a soft black stretch velvet, with a printed grey rose.  I just cut the bottom off the dress and sewed together the two open hems, but to add a bit more decoration I took all the offcuts from the net and satin underskirts, the wet look leggings and made a couple more big layered flowers to add alongside the printed rose.

The little pot was my experiment in circular knitting, just finished off with a bit more of the velvet dress sewn around some cardboard to create a base, that was then sewn to the knitted pot and finished with some beaded trim that I had in my sewing kit from a while ago.

What a lovely weekend.  Can't wait for the next one that I can just spend hidden away with my sewing machine.   I do have another four floor cushions to finish for Thea.  Hopefully she will be more grateful next time, I struggled through the front door earlier with her cushions and got a brief 'thanks' before her attention was drawn back to the PS3 - I guess I just can't compete with Resident Evil 5.