Bed curtain out of old duvet cover

I have only something "small" to show to you this time. Last week I made a belt and this is another week that I show to you only "something small". The reason is that I have been making something secretive that I can only put here after next week. So for now to that something small - or is it actually?

Our kids share a room at the moment and they both have loft beds. There is no point in having separate rooms now that they are this young, the company of the other gives a feeling of security. But who wouldn't want to have some privacy every now and then? Daughter is preschooler now and wants to be alone every now and then. Also to calm down the bed time I thought that some kind of curtains would be good.

Then I had an idea, then another one, then I asked my kids and had to change all the plans. Then I was looking for a fabric that would suit, found something else and changed everything again. Eventually I had one ready.

First idea was to make a bed curtain out of nice fabric, or maybe just buy curtains, especially when I calculated how much the fabric would cost. It is insane really, you can buy curtains and bed sheets for cheaper than just fabric!

Then I asked what the kids would like and the ideas were so interestingly weird that I decided not to follow them as they were. But that gave me an idea, how about if they could design their own curtains? I found a fabric that would almost ask for drawing! I bought fabric pens but only my daughter wanted to draw anything and as drawing into fabric isn't as easy as on the paper this is what she came up with:

On top left curtain there is a sun, like any drawing should have. Under it grass and worm (that long pink line) and inside the circle small pond with another worm, some grass and a carrot. She said that she will draw other vegetables there as it is a vegetable patch but we will see.

So the drawing wasn't fun and also the pens were quite light, some stronger colours would probably have been good. Then they found my scrap fabric box! And after careful planning the result looked like this:

My daughter chose the pictures, my job was to cut them and sew them, all the positions are hers. If you ask her what there is you will probably get a very long tale with fairies, ponies, pandas and hedgehogs somehow connected to the vegetable patch. It isn't quite what I had in mind but it is what she wanted and that's what matters. Also she coloured one piece:

My idea was that this side would be visible to the room but of course she wanted to see her own story from her bed so we had another problem as the backside wasn't that pretty to look at. I searched my fabric storage and couldn't find any. Then I remembered that there was one duvet cover that used to be her favourite before getting bigger duvet and is now too small.

The duvet cover was a bit too small but being duvet cover it had co-ordinating fabric on the other side that I could use. Now I remembered why I don't like sewing curtains. There simply isn't big enough table to lay the fabric flat and no matter how carefully you measure the result is something that is close enough, not precisely. Even if you cut them along straight grain, you never know if the other side is few centimetres longer than the other. And I had two fabrics to be measured and with the duvet cover I had to think how to cut it to make it cover the other fabric.

I knew I had to put it on the floor but how to make it stay still so I could fit the duvet cover on it? I taped it on the floor:

Now it would stay still and it was much easier to measure it and see what would work and what not. I think I will use that again when working with bigger fabrics...

The other side is "mum-friendly" and the other side designed by the kid herself. Both are happy. :)

The curtain is hanging next to her bed with curtain wire, like this (pic not by me):

I have another one on the making for my son but not ready yet, will show it too once it is ready.

Another small thing that I made is this:

Last week we got info from school that the kids would have photo shooting for school pictures on this Monday. Naturally, there is nothing good enough to wear. I say no to all characters in pictures, so no Frozen or My little pony, thank you very much.

I have had this cat fabric for a while now and good I had, I could make a shirt for the photo shooting as it was the only fabric that was big enough to make a shirt! I used most of my fabric storage for the outfits shown in this post and haven't bought any since. I know many dressmakers have room full of fabrics but I only buy when I know what I'm going to make out of it - or if it is really, really cheap and I can think of something I can use it to. Not very good thing with few day notices...

The shirt covered but how about the pants? Not a chance that anything in the closet would do. Remember the pants in How to patch knees post? Yep, they all look like that. And now some of the patches have holes in them, as have both of the new leggings that I just made for her. Or at least they look very worn out. She likes to play on the floor on her knees and that's the result.

I tried to look for matching fabric but that's easier said than done! I looked all my shirts that were in my to be upcycled - box and everything but nothing would match!

Close, but not enough. Luckily we had business to the city anyway so I could buy new pants for her. Why not use some of the jeans from the closet that are practically unused? She doesn't want to wear them. :D Leggings are the only pants she accepts...

Good thing was that once I started making the shirt, it was smooth sailing. I copied the pattern from old shirt, just roughly draw the parts on pattern paper, measured a bit that it made any sense and all the parts fit so well together that I was actually surprised. I like the collar part, something different. In the single photos most that is showing is usually just the collar (they do group pictures too and that's a different thing, that's why I wanted new pants too) anyway. The model is very easy to sew too, the sleeve is something close to raglan forming part of the collar so no fitting the sleeve on the armhole. I think I will make a pattern with the same collar for my son too. The boys' clothing are seriously lacking the details overall and I'm always happy when I can find something new.

Now having arms crossed that she keeps her clothes clean until the photo shooting... She goes to preschool tomorrow with an advice not to be on her knees before the photo shooting. What do you think, will she remember? :D

Bedside pocket for loft or bunk bed

My kids have loft beds with small tables so the books, water bottles and such aren't a problem but clothes are. Either they are piled up on the other end on the bed - or they are on the floor. I decided to try if bedside pocket helps something. The idea is that the clothes that are still ok to wear the next day would be put in the pocket and the dirty ones (at least in a dream world) would go to the laundry basket. In my dreams this means rather tidy kids room. Yeah right. But you never know, it might work.

I found many beautiful ones with many pockets and I considered that too for a while but then decided that just one big pocket is enough. I made straps with buttons to attach it on the bed and used elastic band for the pocket to keep it in shape. Here is a small how to:

As the theme is, everything is recycled, or at least second hand, except the elastic band. Here is what I started with:

Two old worn out bed sheets and one old crib padding. The sheets are in my opinion almost cheating when it is about upcycling as they are similar to use as new fabric but this project needed quite a lot of fabric and in spite of having many things stored, I didn't have anything else suitable at the moment. The crib padding is my kids' old, I have tried to sell it on second hand stores on a whopping price of 2€ for couple times. It seems that since couple of the ribbons used for attaching it on the crib are loose, it isn't even worth of those 2€. I considere to give it away for charity but then decided to keep it for the fabric. Lucky I did, it helds a nice amount of  foam mat that I could now use to give support for the pockets. Then of course, I needed a seam ripper.

The padding was over 3m long and I thought it might take ages to take it apart but I was in luck. The stitch used was long and quite loose. Also there is a handy way to use in the seams like this. Just put the ripper agains the seam with the small ball under it and push along the seam carefully. Nice and fast. This way you will end up with plenty of bits of thread but you can get rid of those easily with tape roller (or just with tape).

Start with cutting the padding for the size you want and also cut two pieces to cover the padding (add the seam allowance and about 1cm extra if you are using thick padding like I did here). Pin them together with padding in middle and sew around.

I don't use that much pins but here you should. The thick padding makes it hard to keep everything in place without the pins. In this picture you also notice that I have rounded the corners, I did that to make it easier to finish the edges later on. Of course, smart move would have been to attach the straps now as well, talk about planning before hand...

Then prepair the pocket itself. I cut mine a little lower than the background and few centimetres wider to give it nice look and also more space. If you want to attach any decorations, now is the moment to do that.

I decided to decorate these with reverse applique. In reverse applique you sew the pictures on the back side of the fabric so that the right side of the picture is against the wrong side. Like this:

I was rather boring this time and made them circles but the form could be anything. I also sew around each picture twice to highlight the border. The pictures are cut from jersey scrabs that are left from making clothes for kids. I use pretty much every fabric to the last bit, literally. I make clothes by connecting some smaller pieces, even smaller ones I use for appliques and the smallest scrabs go to the basket that will be used as a filling for something and is also almost endless source of material for kids' crafts.

Now take small, sharp scissors and cut the actual fabric covering the pictures:

Cut close to the seam but carefully to avoid cutting the thread. You can live 1-2mm fabric, it will just fray a little bit (until the seam) and I think it gives it a nice look.




Then I decided to make free machine embroidery, just circles and loops around the fabric. Nice and fast I thought. Right. Even the fabric is cotton sheet that isn't elastic, still, this might happen (and I should have known it):

It doesn't look nice and this one here, is the ironed version so it wouldn't get any better than this. So I made myself coffee, took my seam ripper again and started taking the embroidery off. Luckily I had used quite long stitch, but even so, I had sewn twice around to make the embroidery bolder so twice as much work. After few cups of coffee and couple chapters from audio book (I like to listen those while sewing) the job was done and I could continue with the actual work. I then did what I should have done in the beginning, used tear-away stabilizer. I haven't bought any "real" tear-away stabilizer as I use the backgrounds of paper napkins and I happen to have a box full of them because I have bought them for decoupaging. Best of all, this is how to use the backgrounds that are left over from decoupaging and I can save the picture layer for decoupaging. The paper napkins often are made with three layers so just separate the layers:

First layer is the one with the picture and two white layers under it and you just need one layer. So one paper napkin gives you two sheets of tear-away stabilizer and one for decoupaging if you need it. Or of course you can use all three as tear-away stabilizer.

Just put your stabilizer on the back of the fabric and attach few pins to make sure it will stay and sew around (on the right size though, just a picture to show it looks like on the back).

Then you can tear it off.

Much better:

Then finish the pocket, sew elastic band on top edge of the pocket and attach it to its place. Make and attach the straps.

Almost ready! I made this green one first but with the pink one I did it in different order that is faster but also might need a bit more experience. With that one I finished the straps first, prepared the pocket, then pinned everything together and sew just once around it. Much faster.






Also the button holes would have been easier to make before attaching here. Now cut bias binding (45 degrees angle to straight grain) and sew it on place. Try it on its place to determine button places, attach buttons.

Ready!

And the pink one as well so both children have their own with their favourite colours and favourite pictures.

Thanks for reading and welcome to follow me on Pinterest!