Barn Quilt Update

Soooo . . .

Is it really almost the end of summer?

It looks like the last time I posted, I was thinking about barn quilt designs.  And no, it didn't take me five months to do it, just to write about it.

So here goes.

I found a website that explains the meaning behind some common barn quilt designs here.  I made one for our barn, and then another one for our Realtor, who actually just lives up the road from us on a chicken farm.  I chose "Hen and Chicks" (see below, left) for hers, and "Prosperity" (see below, right) as our pattern.

So I went to Lowe's and bought a 4x8 sheet of 3/4" thick plywood and cut it in half, so that I had two 4' x 4' pieces.  I started by priming them with two coats of white primer, so that I had a nice primed surface to paint on.  Since these are made to be hung outside, I wanted to make sure that the paint would adhere well.  I also coated them with a clear, UV-resistant and waterproof acrylic sealant to keep the colors from fading over time, and to keep the wood from getting wet in the rain.

I laid my patterns out in AutoCAD and then measured how long each line or section would be.  Then I got out my pencil, T-square, and ruler and make my marks on the boards for where each line would be.  I just used acrylic craft paint to fill in the colors for each section, with two coats total, to cut down on seeing the brush strokes and get even color.

So here is how ours turned out:

We did have to put it slightly off-center on the front of the barn, since we wanted to still be able to open the loft door (just to the left in the photo above).  Although we don't go up there much, we didn't want to block it in case we needed to use it sometime in the future.

Patrick climbed up the ladder and steadied it on the top step, while I backed up and made sure it looked straight from the end of the driveway.  I think I was more nervous than he was!  That puppy's heavy.  He mounted it by just driving some long nails right through it - we didn't bother with adding a hanger on the back or mounting a cleat to the barn to hang it on.  You can't see the nails at all, since it's up so high.

We've had several of our neighbors stop and ask about it, and have received lovely compliments from them.  I'm so glad that they like it as much as we do!  It makes our house easier for people to find, since we can just say, "Look for the big white barn with the blue, green, white and magenta barn quilt!"

Welcome Back!

Sweet baby Jesus, I didn't realize it's been since November that I've posted.  Don't think we've been spending all that time just laying around though.  No sir, not us.

So where did I leave off?  Did I even post about building the farmhouse table?  I don't think I did.  Click the link for Patrick's how-to tutorial on Instructables.com and go make yourself one!

So here's the table around Thanksgiving time when we finished it.

 

 

And here's another shot with the big cow.  Everybody seems to like the big cow.  In case you missed it, I posted a tutorial here on how I did it.

 

 

 

So that gets us up to Thanksgiving.  Between Turkey Day and Christmas, we didn't get much done.  Except shopping.  We always do all of our shopping starting on Black Friday.  It gets expensive, but I'd just rather not worry about it the other 11 months out of the year.

 

So we were trying to decide what to do with our long New Year's weekend and I was all, "Hey, let's finish remodeling the dining room finally."  So we did.

 

And here it is:

 

 

We used the same non-beaded beadboard we put on the chalkboard wall in the kitchen. 

 

HOLD UP!  I never even posted finished photos of said chalkboard wall.  Let's back it up a bit.

 

Before I disappeared for a few months, we left off with the chalkboard wall painted, but not conditioned.  Okay, so here's the chalkboard wall progress:

 

Patrick adding the non-beady beadboard

 

And here's a link to the wainscot we used from Home Depot.  I picked this over the traditional-looking beadboard because it doesn't have the center bead between the wider planky-looking parts.  Sorry that's a terrible explanation, but I like what I like and I know it when I see it.

 

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And here's a photo of it finished up with the chair rail and baseboard added.  This is pre-paint on the trim, and once we added 3 coats of paint, you totally can see any of the seams where the 3 pieces of beadboard meet.  (Can you find the 2 seams in the photo below?  I can!)

 

 

 

 

 

And months later, I still love that light fixture.  Such a good choice.

 

We did put a new outlet and plate cover on the wall - don't worry.  And we painted everything.

 

We've had fun doodling on the new wall.  Bob likes to admire our handiwork.

 

 

 

I even doodled our family.

 

 

 

And here's the whole wall, with the trim painted.

 

 

 

So anyway, we decided to work on the dining room over the New Year's weekend.

 

Downward dog

We used the same Martha Stewart Sharkey Grey paint from Home Depot for the walls and the same Behr Silky White for all the trim.  In the photo below, you can still see the original triple bead wood trim in the living room and the brass spotlight.  Don't worry, those are gone now.

 

 

And here's what it looks like after we added the furniture back in.

 

 

We built a side table to match the farmhouse table so we could get rid of the old desk we had in there.  Here's a link to the Instructable on how we did it.

 

We also built shelves and stained them to match so we could display my collection of antique ironstone I started over the summer.

 

Shelves with simple black arc brackets

 

 

But wait!  Wasn't the big cow on that wall?  Don't worry - it's been relocated.  More on that in the next post.

 

Farmhouse style console table

 

In case you're wondering, the big photo of the stone lion is one I took during a trip to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC a few years back.  The white blob in the bottom of the photo is Bob Barker's tail.

 

Tiny Greenhouse

The tiny greenhouse, the plants and plant pots are all from Ikea.

 

 

 

 

And I finally got around to hot gluing some picture hangers to Patrick's antlers, so those got hung in the big antique frames.  The bench that I bought for the kitchen remodel in the Jasper house now lives in the dining room.

 

I used Ook brand hangers since we have plaster walls, and these are the only thing I've found that don't make hanging things a complete nightmare.  These are basically just an angled tack on one end with a blunt nail-type part that sticks out so you can hang things on it on the other end.

 

 

 

 

Then I hot glued a sawtooth picture hanger across the back of the antlers on the flat side.

And now they hang out (up).

 

 

 

Whew!  I think that's it for today.  At least I'm caught up to the last week of January.

 

We did get to the living room over the last couple of weeks.  I'll post on that sometime soon.  Like, not 8 weeks from now.

 

 



(Super) Easy Burlap Stockings

If you're like me, you keep seeing all these cute things you'd like to have, but just can't bring yourself to actually fork over the cash to buy them.  In recent times of thrift (like saving for a house), I find myself putting off things I'd like to have more than ever. 

Now, I haven't always been the penny-pinching type, but we didn't always have the money available growing up for some of the things we wanted (i.e. a dress).  So, my mom gave me one of the best gifts she could have: she taught me how to sew.  This opened a whole new outlet to me - a way to get what I really wanted but couldn't always afford, and allowed me to customize whatever it was that I was sewing for myself.  So, when I graduated high school (10 years ago already!) I went to college for Fashion Design.  Even though I didn't end up with a degree and a career as a fashion designer, I don't regret taking a whole year of sewing classes one bit (especially since it turned out I'd need those credits later when I got my Interior Design degree!).  It's a skill I'll have (and utilize) for the rest of my life.

And that all leads us up to today's post.

I was scoping around online this morning and checking out the new Christmas decorations, and saw this stocking on the Ballard Designs website.

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Burlap stockings.  Too cute.  They go with the whole Modern Rustic Vintage theme I've been going for at the new house.  The problem?  They're *on sale* for $55 a pop.  Dang.

I already needed to go to JoAnn Fabric for some upholstery tacks and another yard of brown fabric for an ongoing re-upholstery job we're doing on a chair, so while I was there, I picked up 2 yards each of ivory muslin and tan burlap for $2.99 a yard.

I was able to make four stockings out of my four yards of fabric for around $15 (including the thread I bought).  And I have enough leftover burlap for another project.  I see these pillows in my future.

So here's a quick tutorial on how I made mine.

1.  Lay out the ivory muslin on the floor, folded.  Lay a stocking you already have on top and cut around it to make a template.

2.  Lay out the burlap in a single layer and cut around the ivory template you just made.  You'll have 2 ivory fabric pieces and 1 burlap piece.

3.  For the cuff, I did a 5" thick band the same width as the ivory stocking piece.  You'll only need 1 for the front.  You could do another one for the back so that it's cuffed on both sides, but I didn't really see the point.

4.  Press under 1/2" - 5/8" for a seam on the bottom part of the cuff.  If you use an iron, you won't need to pin the seam - it's way easier, trust me.

5.  Sew the seam so that you'll have a finished edge.  The above photo shows the cuff with the finished edge already sewn.  (You're seeing the inside of the fabric, not the outside finished side).

6.  Take one of the ivory muslin pieces and the burlap piece and line them up on top of each other.  Luckily, there's no "right" or "wrong" side to either of these fabrics, so that makes things easier.  If you're using a fabric that has a definite right and wrong, you'll want to have the "wrong" sides facing each other.  These two pieces are going to make up the front piece of the stocking.  Since the burlap is holey and see-though, the second piece of ivory muslin is going to act as a lining for the burlap.

7.  Put the raw (not sewn) edge of the cuff (with the sewn under hem on the outside facing up) on top of the other 2 pieces.  See below.  So you have the table, the burlap piece, the ivory piece, then the ivory cuff on top. 

8.  Pin the top so that you can sew the 3 pieces of fabric straight along the edge.  You're only sewing the top edge of the stocking at this point.

 

9.  After you've got the top edge sewn, you'll want to trim that seam down by half, so that you'll eliminate the bulk along the top.

10.  Flip the cuff over so that it's on top of the burlap side, and the finished hem is facing up.  Press with the iron along the top seam so that it lays flat.  This is where that whole seam-trimming step will help you out. 

Now when you lay it on your table, you'll have the cuff (with the good side facing up, toward you), the burlap piece, then the ivory piece on bottom. 






11.  Take the other ivory muslin piece you haven't used yet and follow the same process used in Steps 4 & 5 to make a finished edge for the back piece of the stocking.

12. Make a little loop to hang your stocking. I used some upholstery binding / edging that I had from another project, but you could use ribbon if you wanted. Make the loop and place a pin so that the raw edges of the ribbon line up with the raw edges of the stocking.

13. Take the piece you just did the finished edge for and place it with the finished edge facing down, so that you see the raw edge that you sewed under, on top of the other two pieces.  Pin around all of the edges, with the heads of the pins facing the center of the stocking.  This will keep you from having to scoot the pin heads out of the way of your presser foot as you sew.

This is what you should see if you look into the stocking.  All the "good" sides of the fabric facing the inside, with your pretty finished seam at the top.

14.  I started sewing on the right side, where the loop is, working my way around the stocking, turning as I went, and ending up with the top left of stocking.

15.  Once you're done sewing, you can take your pins out and trim your seam down by half.

16.  Flip 'er right side out and press flat.  I only used the iron on the muslin side, since I'd never ironed burlap before and didn't want to risk starting a fire or scorching it.  Below is a closeup of what the loop will look like when you turn the stocking inside out.  All nice and finished.

And here's the finished stocking!

After I finished these, I realized that you could do the cuff an alternate way.  To do that, you can skip the step where you sew the bottom hem of the cuff, and just press it under with the iron.  Follow the same steps to attach the cuff to the one piece of ivory muslin and burlap, still trimming the seam and folding over.  Before you sew the back piece, top stitch straight across the 3 layers of fabric along the ironed-under edge.  This will leave you with a finished edge on the bottom of the cuff, but it will be sewn to the front of the stocking.

I'm going to get a silver paint pen and write all of our names on the cuff before we hang them up after Thanksgiving.  I know, a little ahead of schedule, but when you have the time, you take advantage of it.

Happy sewing!

DIY Paint-By-Number

Back in the good ol' days of college, during my junior year at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (go Dawgs!) I was the undergraduate assistant to the Advanced Painting professor, Najjar Abdul-Mussawir.  When the students decided they didn't want to keep their work, he would bring them back to the studio and I would prime over them and he would re-use them for his own work.

I expressed an interest in keeping one of the pieces - a large 46" x 46" oil painting of green peppers.  It wasn't particularly good, but it was big, and when you have literally no money to decorate your apartment and can get a big piece like that for free, you take it anyway.

That painting made it from my house in Carbondale, to our apartment in Murphysboro, to our apartment in Huntingburg, Indiana to our house in Jasper, to our apartment in Loveland, Ohio and is now at our current rental house here in Milford.  Knowing that we would be buying a house (and moving yet again!) in a couple of months, I couldn't stand the thought of moving those ugly peppers one more time.

The resurgence of vintage paint by numbers is everywhere.  I had been stalking some animal portraits on Etsy, and finding that none of them would have the big impact of a large painting for the price I wanted to pay, I decided to do one of my own.

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I'm a sucker for anything with an animal on it, and according to Flea Market Style magazine, animals are one of the top trends in collectible items for 2012.  Over on my Pinterest Color Inspiration board, I've had a photo of this Swiss Brown cow pinned for several weeks, because I love the colors in it (and just look at how beautiful she is!)

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So this is the photo I used to create my own paint-by-number inspired work of art.

This is how it turned out.

And here's how I did it:

1.  Print out the photo you want to use at full 8.5" x 11" size.

2.  Print a piece of grid paper to use as a guide.  I did mine with 1" grid squares.  Print the image below at 100% and they should come out to be 1" apart on a full size sheet of paper.  Standard grid paper that you buy is at 1/4" squares, so if you use purchased grid paper, mark every fourth line and you'll have 1".

3.  Lay the grid paper on top of your photo and tape together with tape that you can easily remove, like non-permanent satin gift wrap tape.

4.  Tape both pieces of paper onto a sunny window and trace over the image, ignoring the grid lines.  Follow the lines of the photo where two colors meet to give a rough shape to the image.  Remember, paint-by-numbers are just simple outlines of color boundaries that are painted in with one solid color.  Because your photo may have gradual changes in shades, rather than hard edges, you'll have to take a little bit of artistic liberty so that you have clear lines.  Don't forget to incorporate the highlights in the photo - that's what gives an image its dimension.  You will now have the outline of your photo with the grid going through it, dividing it up into squares.

5.  When you have your photo outlined on the graph paper, you can start to make a corresponding grid on your canvas.  To blow my image up from 8.5" x 11" to 46"x46", I multiplied my dimensions by 5.75, so each 1" square on my paper would correspond to 5 3/4" on my canvas.  Because I started with a rectangular photo and I was putting it onto a square canvas, I knew that I was only going to use 8" x 8" of the original photo, so part of the top and bottom was cut off.

6.  Take a tape measure and a carpentry square or a T square and measure out your new grid on the canvas.  Starting in the upper left corner, use a pencil to make a light mark every 5.75" from left to right along the top edge of the canvas. Repeat along the bottom edge of the canvas, using the square to make sure the lines are perpendicular to the edge.  Connect the marks to create the vertical grid lines.

7.  Repeat this step for the horizontal grid lines, starting at the top left corner of the canvas and marking down the edge, then moving to the right side of the canvas and start measuring from the top, marking every 5.75" down to the bottom corner.  Connect the marks to create the horizontal grid lines.

8.  Now you should have a grid that corresponds to your photo on the canvas.  Starting along the top of the piece of paper, label each horizontal space from left to right with a letter (A, B, C etc).  Label each vertical space along the left edge with a number, going down the canvas.  Do the same on the canvas.

9.  You will now have a way of quickly referencing a particular area of the photo and matching it to where it corresponds on your canvas.

10.  Use a pencil to fill in the squares on the canvas with the lines from the grid paper.  It doesn't have to be perfect, just use the grid as a guide.  The lines should flow from one square to the other, so don't worry about getting each individual square exactly as it is on the paper.

11.  Once the image is sketched in on the canvas, you need to select 6-10 colors that you're going to use to fill in the painting.  I used 8.  The goal of paint-by-numbers is a flat, folk-art look where the paint is consistent from one area to the other, so I used pre-mixed acrylic paints from Hobby Lobby, matching them in the store to my photo as best I could.  You will probably only need one of the little bottles per color, but I bought 2 of each since I had such a big canvas.

12.  Label the areas of the painting with a specific number for each of the colors you're using.  I labeled the tops of all my bottles with the corresponding number so I could look quickly and see which color I needed.

13.  Begin by filling in all the areas that are labeled 1, then 2, then so on.  Pay particular attention to the edges of the color area, and use a fine, tapered tip brush for accuracy.  You can fill the larger areas in with a 1/2 - 1" flat edge brush.

14.  Depending on the color, you may need to go back in and put a second (or a third for white) coat once it's all dry.  Acrylics dry quickly, so you will probably be able to start the second coat on color #1 by time you've worked your way through all the other colors.

I'm going to do another one, not quite as big though.  I'll be sure to photograph the progress as I'm doing it and post everything when it's done.  I think I'm going to do a sheep next time.