When I went out to the studio this morning, I pulled these three fabrics from my stash
the first job of the day was to make a table cloth for the little round table that we took over to the flat. It is being used temporarily as a bedside table, but the dark wood doesn't look right against the pale wood of the bed. Ths is a piece of embroidered silk that I found in a charity shop. It was a half width, so the first job was to cut it in half lengthways and trim the ends
the sew the two pieces together. Then I folded the resulting piece on the diagonal to give me a square
having trimmed away the extra fabric, I folded it in half, then in half again to give me a square. For the next stage I needed a map pin, a marking pen and a piece of string
I tied the string to the pin and pushed it through the corner into the floor (don't worry, it's just wooden flooring underneath, not wonderful floorboards that would be marked by the pin!)
I tied the pen to the other end of the string
and drew a quarter circle
I then cut out my circle
it took longer to pin and stitch the hem than the first stages took!
the next job was to run up a quick curtain for our bedroom in the flat. It faces east, so on sunny mornings we have been woken up very early as the sun streams through the thin blind. As we haven't decided on a colour scheme for when we decorate the bedroom, I don't want to spend a lot of money making curtains at the moment. The fabrics I used were sample curtains which I bought for 25p each! I started by cutting the patterned fabric into three strips (the sun decided to suddenly shine through the velux as I took the photo, causing a deep shadow on either side of the fabric)
I used the strips to put a border along the bottom and on one side of the main fabric
I added some recycled curtain tape, and that was my curtain made - it will be tied back to one side during the day
as all that hadn't taken as long as I thought it would, I decided to make some cushion covers, using the beach hut fabric I bought several weeks ago. I had already cut the fabric into three pieces before I remembered to take a photo! The next stage was to trim the ends
I hemmed both the short ends of each of the three pieces
then with the wrong side out, I folded and overlapped the fabric to give me almost a square - the width was an inch more, because of the seam allowance
having stitched the two side seams I turned the cover through to the right side and pressed the seams
the last stage was to topstitch round the cover, half an inch from the edge
the first one, finished except for the ends of the topstitching threads to be darned in
but alas the other two didn't get finished. I only had the topstitching to do, but the machine threw a wobbly and the bobbin thread tension went haywire. Usually this means one of two things - the machine needs cleaned, or the needle needs changed. As by this time it was late in the afternoon and dinner would soon be ready (we eat early), I decided to leave finishing the other two to another day!