This past Spring, one of my friends asked if I would help her surprise her neighbor with a little home makeover. The Gardener and I were delighted to help. My friends church came in tore out the carpet in the lower level revealing amazing hardwood floors that got shined up. They painted the walls too with a bright clean white and one accent wall in a Tiffany blue that was amazing.
The stars aligned for this project. I wish I could show you ALL of it but we were so busy working I only got a few pictures. I can tell you this...Mostly what we learned from this project is that a little spray paint does wonders! But you probably already knew that!
Another set of friends of ours had recently gotten married, combined households and were unloading some furniture. We were able to snag some pieces to put into the house and give the neighbor a few new items. Ok...maybe more than a few. What a blessing! The best part was we added a dining room table into the kids play room to give them a crafting / homework station that didn't exist before.
Giving furniture new life is so much fun! One of the old desk chairs got a facelift...some new blue paint and a new seat cushion. She looks just lovely at the neighbors new computer desk, don't you agree? The desk was one of those dorm room laminated style desks which is like a plastic coating. Great for a college kid but we added some plastic appropriate spray paint in white and blue. It refreshed that old desk for a perfect spot the kids can sit to work on the computer.
By far, my favorite piece of the day was the old lamp table. My husbands best buddy owned this lamp, big chunky wood and it had these...kind of awful... looking coasters on each corner that were adhered into the table. As soon as I saw it, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. I LOVED how it turned out and I was so excited to hear that this was the neighbors favorite part of the house makeover. Swoon! The bright yellow and zebra shade were perfect together.
I was given the task to redo / create new pillows for the living room. Here are a few of my favorites. The first one here, I used some home dec fabric from Anna Maria Horner and added felt leaves that trailed across the pillow along with a felt flower. I sewed a bunch of buttons to the center of the flower. Each pillow I made, I rounded the corners and also made an envelope style closure back. (envelope style is the fastest / easiest style and since I had a stack of pillows to make...that made my job go by with ease). Round your corners? Yes...otherwise you end up with these dog ears that don't fill out. Just a tiny rounding of the corner will resolve that problem.
A familiar and much loved style...a pennant banner with the added word LOVE stitched into it. Using a disappearing ink pen, I drew the lines for my banner and the word LOVE. I stitched using a stitch length of about 3.5 with black thread and went over each line at least twice. I raw edge appliqued the banner flags - stitching a straight stitch just along the edge. I made the pillow a little bit large and then using a decorative topstitch, went all along the outer edge.
This Sis Boom print paired so well with the bright red poppies. Layering felt circles on top of one another and adding a black button center plus a line of stitching for the stem created this field of poppies on this pillow. So bright and cheery!
We worked really hard for about 3 days on this project. Sewing. Painting. Cleaning. Moving. Blessing a sweet family with some sunshine. I can't wait to make a few of these pillows for my own house...maybe this "crafternoon".
Weekend Crafternoon is a new feature I'll be sharing regularly on my blog. Sharing some fun weekend crafternoon projects to inspire you and I hope you'll join me. I'll be opening it up as a linky list so that you can share your crafternoon projects too.
Now...I'm off to sew! (4H judging this week! The peas STILL haven't finished their dresses! Wish us luck this week!)