This one could possibly save your marriage.

So a big pet peeve of mine, that my husband tests daily, is the kitchen towels. I am lucky enough to have a double oven.  I love everything about it except it causes a huge problem of where to hang your kitchen towels.  If you hang them from the top oven's handle, then it will get caught in the door when you open the bottom oven.  So I put them on the handle on the lower oven.  That works out all well and good until my husband comes to wash his hands(when he is home that is ALL the time).  He grabs the towel and dries his hands and plops it on the counter or he half folds it and puts it on the top oven handle. Then I get stuck when I try to open the door to the oven.  Not to mention it bothers my OCD nature.

So here comes our marriage saver. I found this on pinterest yesterday.  The stay put towel.  I have made and embroidered hand towels for people for years.  I love to find new ideas.  So here it is:

 I love it!!!  It matches my kitchen beautifully!!!

 The ribbon tie details on the side.  Hopefully my husband won't figure out he can untie these.

 More cute ruffle trim detail.

Here is my beautiful oven with the towel(I have to go downstairs now and pull that right side down a smidge.

In defense of my wonderful husband.  He did buy me this oven for Christmas a few years ago.  So maybe he has the right to cause me some stress with the towel issue. hee hee.

Not a sewing project. . . but too cute to pass up!

I know, I know.  This was a no sew project. So what is it doing here on this blog. Well, I couldn't resist. I saw it out there in the blog world and thought it was the cutest Halloween decoration.  It cost me a whopping $4 plus tax. I bought supplies to make another one to give to a friend, but I ran out of hot glue gun sticks.

It was so simple to make.  A ring of flower arranging foam, black crepe paper and a few bags of candy corn. I even hung it up with some of the black crepe paper doubled up.  I will try to look up the blog I found it on and include it here.  The kids even had fun helping me.  They got to experience their first hot glue gun burn.  Don't get me wrong, they never handled the hot glue gun, they were helping me put the candy corn on, and they touched the glue as it was drying.  Don't worry it wasn't too hot. I like to turn the glue gun on briefly, then unplug it. Sometimes my glue gun gets too hot, then the glue practlcally melts off the project. 

Anyway, everyone should try out this cool, easy, and cheap project.

Modern Window Treatments

I was asked to sew window treatments for someone who recently moved into a home.  The window treatments that were installed by the previous owner were extremely dated.  She picked out some awesome modern fabric. She recently bought a blue couch that is the same color as the blue accent.  To add to the modern look she decided to use grommets.  I was so excited to try my hand at them..  It was an extremely wide window, so we opted to use an accent fabric to add to the brown fabric.  This way when you close the panels it will look like a blue panel on the inside.

This picture is of one of the panels on my family room window.  Hopefully I can post a picture of the window treatments installed on her windows.  I love how heavy and substantial these window treatments are.  My neighbor almost claimed them for her own house.

   

I adore how these grommets tuned out.  These were a newer product where the grommets are snap on.  I am interested to see how they hold up.  Just for your information(in case you are picking grommets out for yourself)  these are not able to be dry cleaned.  From a cost perspective, grommets are not cheap.  However, they replace drapery rings or clips, if you are going that route.  They probably end up the same price as the drapery rings or clips though.  They only option that might be cheaper would be if you just sewed a rod pocket.  I think the drapery rings, clips or grommets are way more modern though.  These grommets come in every color imaginable.  These are antiqued bronze.

The corners on the inside of the treatments are mitered,.  You can notice as the blue fabric wraps around the back, I used a blind hem, so you would not see the hem.  She picked out black out lining.  That is the white fabric you see in this picture.

Since the blackout lining is rubbery, it is very heavy. I used drapery weights sewn into the bottom hem to add weight to the front fabric.  This way the window treatments will hang nicely.  This picture was taken before the triple hem was sewn up.

Boutique Style Dress

A friend of mine wanted me to recreate a dress she saw on Etsy.  I think she plans on having her daughter wear this for her birthday party.  I was given a photo of the dress to use and the color scheme, bright blue and hot pink.   

Here were the fabric samples I picked.  I could not find a pattern for this style dress anywhere or anything similar to it that I could alter. So I began from scratch. I created a few patterns myself, and used my daughter as my model.  Let me tell you she was not thrilled with trying on the dress a million times. I started with left over fabric I had on hand and made a pink and black dress for my daughter.  They are different sizes so that was a challenge as well.  After coming up with a pattern that worked, I moved on to my friend's dress.

Here it is!!!  My daughter actually likes this one better than the one I made for her.

 A full length view with all the details.

 A close up of the monogram.

 A close- up of the fun trim at the bottom. This is my current favorite trim to use. I love the pleats. I think it adds nice weight to the bottom of the dress as well.

Here is a peak of the inside seams. I always try to interlock(similar to serging) so that the seams will hold up in the laundry.  Maybe someday I will buy a serger(that is the way store bought seams are done).  It will prevent fraying.

I am so thrilled with this dress. I was thinking of making myself a peasant style blouse similar to this. I think I might leave off the monogram for mine.  What do you think?