The Sweatshop of Love Blog

At the beginning of December I shared some vague quilting shots. All of those presents have now been given out and (hopefully!) are being used by all of the lucky recipients.

These are SIX sets of the Quilted Tea Cozy from Purl Bee, with pot holders.

A Set for ME!

As soon as I saw the tutorial I knew I needed a quilted tea cozy! So I went to JoAnn and got all the materials I needed. I had never quilted before, so I followed the directions to a T. It was really fun! I queued up a ton of episodes of The Office and just powered through it. After I made my quilt sandwich and cut out the pieces for the tea cozy I had a lot of quilt sandwich left that I didn’t want to waste, so I cut out three squares that I could easily turn into matching pot holders. Fun right?!

Pot Holders!

I loved mine so much that I just knew that a lot of ladies in my life would love a set, too, so I went back to the store and went crazy buying material and matching quilt binding and thread. It took me a good week to finish all the sewing. There is even some hand sewing in there! It was a PAIN to make six sets of these bad boys. But so lovely! I hope my gifted sets are getting as much use as mine has been!

My Mom’s

My second favorite set has to be the one I gave to my mom! This fabric I found at an estate sale in Portland. It’s got a special place in my heart, and I’m so glad it is now a tea cozy! Found fabric is fun that way, isn’t it?

I’ve been working on a huge project over the past couple weeks that is finally nearing the end!

Quilt Binding and LOTS of Sewing!

What I like to do for holiday presents is get an awesome idea that will work for multiple people, and make a bunch of them in different patterns or sizes or whatever, and then assembly-line them all out.

Sneak Peek!

And, of course, make one for myself. That way we all have this same project, and no matter where we are in the world, we have the same handmade ___________. Cute right?

Even Some Hand Sewing

This is my first stab at quilting, something I’ve hesitated trying out because my mom is so amazing at it. She hand quilts, and these I did on my machine for the most part, so I think it’s ok. I’m not too interested right now in putting together an actual quilt, but quilting other things seems more my speed. And it’s fun! There are lots of steps, and I like projects where I’m up moving around, as opposed to knitting, the most sedentary craft ever.

Fabric and Quilt Binding

Since Stefanie died I’ve been thinking a lot about what we leave behind, and what we do with the time we have, and how we show each other love while we can. I’m a maker, and I make things with my hands, and I give those things to the people I love. FO shots after I give these all away!

Last week I showed off my tufted bench pillow, and today I’ve got more tufted pillow action!

Tufted Square Pillow

Much more like the original inspiration, this square pillow is perfect for the top of an unused square end table that is pushed up against the window. It’s a great place for a kitty that likes to lay around and look out the window all day.

Comfy Kitty!

Complete with piping along both edges and a 2″ thickness of side cushion all the way around, Pudge fell in love with this pillow as soon as I put it in its place.

Fun, Quilted Look!

I used the same material I used for the tufted bench, just moved it around a little to make it similar but not too matchy-matchy. They look great together, and the cats couldn’t be happier. And neither could I! Can you believe how great that pillow looks?! I nailed it!

It’s no surprise to anyone that I love my cats. One of the prerequisites for our new apartment was that it had big window sills because both my kitties love sitting in the windows and watching the birds. So when our new apartment had kinda skimpy window sills but a gigantic radiator cover in front of our bayish windows, I knew one of my first craft projects would be to make a radiator cover pillow for kitty sleeping.

Radiator Cover Cushion!

And do it up I did! I found this Square Tufted Floor Pillow tutorial on pinterest and used the general idea of it to make this cushion happen! I knew I wanted it to be tufted, and I wanted to use piping along the edges, so I read the tutorial, then spent a long time deciphering the tutorial. I’m not the best sewer, and I don’t know a lot of terminology and materials that go into sewing, so I had a really hard time trying to figure out what Don was saying! And freaking ONE picture? Give me a break!

Tufts!

So I did what I do best – mostly wing it. I dug out all my fabric and picked out 5 different mostly matching prints – one for the bottom and four for the top – and one solid for the buttons and piping. My bench is 60″ long and 14″ wide, so I cut out a 61″ x 15″ strip of fabric for the bottom, and four 15″ by 16″ almost squares for the top. Then I cut a LOT of 3″ wide strips of fabric for the piping.

Velma Loves It!

I followed the piping instructions exactly. There was a diagram so that made it really easy! I found a package of 10 yards of cable cord at JoAnns for like $4, and that worked perfectly. I ended up getting a queen sized quilts worth of polyester batting and cutting it into layers of 60″ x 14″ strips instead of the foam since it was crazy expensive. I assembled the top of the cushion, pinned my piping on it, sewed it, then attached the top to the bottom on 3 sides. I laid in my layers of batting and hand sewed along the entire back of the cushion. I made my fabric covered buttons in the same fabric as my piping and attached them together with yarn and a tapestry needle through the center of each of the four squares.

Perfect!

And it worked brilliantly! The cushion has that perfect balance of country crafty that I was going for with the quilted look, and professional craftsmanship with the nice piping and matching tufted buttons. And when we have people over it’s adds more seating to the room. Yay me!

Last week I showed you the bright yellow curtains I made for my craft room, and today I’m showing off the dip dyed curtains I made for the bedroom!

Dip Dyed Teal Curtains!

These guys were so hard to take pictures of! I wanted to show off how the sun shows through them, but then I couldn’t get the bottom fabric to look right, but hopefully you’ll get an idea of how they look. They are cute!

Teal Dye, Gold Fabric

I got the idea for dip dyeing the muslin because I wanted as much light into the room as possible, but also wanted it a little dark and not quite so see-through at the bottom where people could actually see into the room. There are two windows in the bedroom and both of them are 70″, which left a lot of space in the curtains to play with. PT and I are both early risers, so needing a ton of darkness was never important. Keeping creepers eyes out, and letting in a lot of light was, so I figured dip dying the fabric would be a fun way to play with the light and bring in color to the room.

Dip Dyed!

I sewed up 4 muslin curtains, then made a cold water bath and a dye bath with my teal RIT dye. I folded all 4 curtains together lengthwise and pinned them with wooden clothes pins. I found this beautiful dip dye project tutorial on pinterest that I thought I’d loosely follow, but I quickly discovered that because of the scope of my project it was not going to work. In retrospect I wish I would have just stuck to my original plan – dip the curtains into the cold water 2/3 of the way up, then dip the wet portion of the curtains into the dye bath for a few minutes, then pull it out and leave the bottom 1/3 of the curtains in the dye bath for an hour. BUT it all worked out, and I even got a lot of fun designs on the inner curtains that look like trees and leaves shining through!

Gold Fabric Bottom

I wanted the curtains to have the same feel as the curtains I made for the craft room, so I pulled out some gold fabric I found at a garage sale and added a gold fabric hem to the bottoms. The gold and the teal look amazing together, and I love the horizontal stripes!

Curtains done! Next up on my craftcation? Needlepoint projects!