Mapping things out

Once again, Sherry and Katie are hosting the Pinterest Challenge, this time along with Sarah and Carmel. The whole point to the challenge is to motivate you take a look at your pins and actually use them for inspiration to do something, you know, besides just pinning. Every time I've joined in challenge in the past, I've really been glad for the extra motivation to do some fun DIY. So far I've made a fun painting for my brother, a new headboard for the master bedroom, and some neat personalized letter art.

This time, instead of inspiring me to do a project, the Challenge is inspiring me to share a project that I finished a few weeks ago. We've actually been really busy with all kinds of DIY projects around our house in the past couple of months that I've been meaning to blog about, so hopefully this will get me kick-started on blogging all changes that have been afoot here.

This project was inspired by this pin, which I actually pinned during the Pinterest Challenges last fall.

Source: accordingtoboyle.wordpress.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Emily at According to Boyle decoupaged this chair with maps, and I thought it was a really cool way to revamp a tired piece of furniture. The piece of furniture I had which was desperately in need of a revamp wasn't a chair. It was this particle board TV cabinet that my husband has had since his childhood.  When I was  pondering what piece of furniture I had that I could cover with maps, it immediately sprang to mind.

Probably most people would just have disposed of this beauty, but I hate throwing out things that are still useable, and I figured it would be a great place for my computer tower and printer.  Earlier this year when I got a new car, I spent a whole lot of time with my insurance agent. In addition to the good interest rate on my car loan, I got a couple of  "free" atlases out of the deal. James thought "Great, one for each car." I thought "Perfect, just what I need for that furniture decoupage project I pinned."  Who needs an atlas in their car when we've got GPS?

Since I didn't have blogging on my brain when I worked on this project, I didn't take any "during" pictures. You'll have to use your imaginations. I decided not to cover every square inch of the cabinet in maps. I wanted to give some places for the eye to rest, since the cabinet is a lot more flat map surface than a chair. So first I cleaned off the cabinet and spray painted the parts I wasn't planning on covering with maps. I happened to have this spray paint on hand already.  It's kind of a khaki color, and it conveniently matched the maps really well.  I painted the inside of the cabinet, the trim, and the lovely plastic "brass" handles, as well as the exposed screw heads on the cabinet. It should have taken only one can of spray paint, but I foolishly tried to spray the backing board as well. It soaked up the paint like crazy, and never did cover evenly.  I had to buy another can of paint to finish the other areas. Since spray paint didn't cover the backing board well at all, I ended up decoupaging it, too. That wasn't part of my original plan, and it added to the project time, but it looks pretty cute.

Believe it or not, I waited until morning to take the pictures so I'd have natural light. #wasteoftime It's very windy and cloudy outside, thanks to Sandy. Even with all the lights on I had to use the flash.  That's a pretty small thing to worry about, though. We're barely being brushed by the edge of the storm here. I'm thinking of and praying for those affected by the hurricane.

Once the cabinet was painted and dried, I started the decoupage work. Actually, that might have been a few weeks later.  This project was in the works for quite a while.  I started with the doors, since I figured they'd be a focal point. This project could have gone much more quickly if I had just cut up the maps and randomly decoupaged them, but I decided to "fussy cut" in order to highlight places that are special to my husband and me. I even decoupaged our native cities onto each of the handles.  The whole process was pretty simple. I just cut up the maps, re-arranged the pieces until I liked the lay-out, and Mod-podged them on. I gave it a few coats of Mod-Podge to make sure things were well sealed. It would probably be smart to give it a final seal with some poly-acrylic, but I don't really expect this piece to be subject to hard wear. Plus it would be easy to fix any dings by slapping on another piece of map.

The doors took a few hours to do. I probably watched couple discs worth of TV episodes while I did them. That sapped my Mod-Podging strength for a while. It was probably a month before I worked on the rest of the cabinet. The cabinet body was three movies worth of work, if I recall correctly. This was an easy, almost free project, but it was not quick.  All in all I'm really pleased with how this project turned out. Instead of an eyesore that we kept tucked in the closet, I think the cabinet a now quirky piece for our office/library. As a bonus, my printer is no longer on the floor with cords snaking all around the room.

If you want to see all the other Pinterest Challenge projects, check them out at:

Young House Love
Bower Power
Our Fifth House
The Ugly Duckling House

Church Groundbreaking

Exciting things have been happening at my church this month. Four weeks ago we had the groundbreaking ceremony for our new building, and this week the construction began.

His Grace Bishop Anthony of Toledo presided over the service. Here you can see the foundation stone being laid:



This longer video includes the foundation stone being laid and extends on to show the site being sprinkled with holy water and prayers for foundation of the church.



If you have heavy-equipment loving children, they may enjoy seeing this video of the beginning of construction this week.

Cover Up

I've got another one of my incremental improvements to the master bedroom to share. We got a new duvet cover, thanks to a Crate and Barrel gift card from an aunt and uncle. The pattern is called Lindsey. It's no longer available, because we actually got it quite a while ago. It took me a long time to get it on the bed, because it didn't fit the down comforter. Our comforter is a queen/full size, and the duvet cover was a queen size. There is no standardization for these things, and the cover was way too big, so I needed to do a little work on it before we could use it.

You can see the naked down comforter in this picture from last year.  But mostly I'm showing this picture because I like to compare the before/after pictures. I think it's fun to see the progress we've made in the room since then. :-)

In January, (You know, back when we could use a down comforter, unlike right now with the 100ºF weather we're having.) I re-tailored the duvet to fit our comforter. I am not a particularly experienced or accomplished sewist, so I wanted to make this task as easy for myself as I could. A duvet cover is basically a giant pillow case for your blanket.  Three sides are sewn shut and one end is open with some kind of closure, in this case, buttons. The buttons on mine don't go end to end, but are inset with a placket. I decided to just cut off the end of the duvet cover opposite the buttons, and re-hem it.  I just left the sides a bit wider than my comforter, rather than have to sew any more seams. I liked the additional width it gave the comforter, anyway. Here's a diagram to show what I did. It is not to scale.

The grey box is the comforter. The blue box is the duvet cover, and the dashed line shows where I cut it.  After I cut that part off, all I should have needed to do was sew up a new seam for that end. I wanted it to be well finished so that it would hold up to use and washing, so I decided to do a French seam, which I learned from this tutorial. But just sewing up the seam would have been too easy, right?

I've had duvet covers before, and I know that the comforter has a tendency to slide around inside and get bunched up, especially if the cover's too big. I solved that problem by adding tabs with buttonholes inside each of the four corners of the cover. The cream colored rectangles on the diagram indicate the tabs. It turned out to be easier to do than I expected. I cut four rectangles from some cream colored fabric, folded them in half, and sewed the sides closed. I turned them inside out and then added buttonholes. Here's one of the rectangles and what the tabs looked like before the buttonholes.

I had never done buttonholes with my sewing machine before, but I just followed the directions in the sewing machine manual. It was pretty cool to see how it worked. You can see the buttonhole foot in the picture above. Two of the tabs I just sewed into my seam, like the one below.

The other end of the cover with the buttons had a serged edge. (I don't have a serger, so I couldn't do the same kind of finishing, and I think the French seam is nicer anyway.) I picked apart enough of the serged edge to insert my tabs, and then sewed the edge shut again. That part was kind of a pain, but I didn't want the stitching for the tabs to be visible from the outside.  Here you can see the picked apart serging. I pinned my tabs between the two edges of the fabric I'm holding apart here, and then I sewed them shut again.

I just straight stitched across the tabs, though it's a bit hard to tell that in the picture below. This is one of the tabs inserted into the serged edge. Here it is buttoned to the comforter. The tabs and buttons have worked out really well. The comforter stays put inside the duvet cover, despite the cover being a bit wide

I really like the cover a lot, too. I think it pulls together the greens, blues and browns we have have going on in our room pretty well. It has both the green from the headboard and the darker blue from the wall. One would almost think I had chosen the headboard fabric and wall colors based on the the duvet cover, but I just lucked out in finding one that was a good match.

Chicago

We have a lot of things going on this summer. We're hoping that won't keep us from getting a few projects done around the house, but we will be spending quite a bit of time on the road and out and about. This past weekend we took a very quick trip up to Chicago to meet up with my best friend from college. She lives in D.C. and was in Chicago for her sister's medical school graduation.  Despite the fact that James and I have lived in Indiana or Illinois for the nearly 9 years we've been married, we had never taken a trip to Chicago together. We had fun this weekend playing tourist and catching up with my friend. We would resolve to go back soon, except we already have reservations to go back with my family in July for my brother's 30th birthday. Funny how that works out.

We had a room with a fantastic view. We spent quite a bit of time on Navy Pier. They have fireworks every Wednesday and Saturday night in the summer. (My phone wasn't charged for that.) They also have a free Stained Glass museum. We took a short boat tour on Lake Michigan, and ate at a few yummy restaurants. But mostly my old roomie and I talked each other's ear off while James tagged along. I've just started using Instagram, so I enjoyed the chance to play around with the app (My user name is verduresarah).

Spring Things

2010 notwithstanding, Lent and the Paschal season just don't seem to lend themselves to blogging for me. Maybe next winter I should write some posts and schedule them so I don't fall off the face of the internet during that very full time of the year. But perhaps you can just expect me to go on hiatus, and know that I'll likely show up again in June, we'll see. :) So what have I been up to? A lot of the same things as last year.

• Once again, I took some weekend trips to see friends and family. The second week in Lent, I headed down to Evansville for a surprise 65th birthday party for one of my aunts. I got my own surprise on my way back from church when my car (the one we bought less than a year ago) was totaled in a hit and run accident. Thankfully, although I was quite shaken up, I came out of it with only a small scratch on one arm and sore muscles. 
• Once again, we found ourselves unexpectedly in the market for a new car. After doing some research and looking at some used ones, we decided to buy a truly new car, not just new to us. My first ever. We realized that since we didn't have a trade-in to consider, a low-mileage compact used car like the one we had was actually pretty comparable in price to a new one, once you figured in the warranty. So we bought a new Hyundai Accent. It's green. It suits me down to the ground.

• Once again, we journeyed through Lent and Holy Week to the Feast of Feasts. And as always, I was slightly sad to see Ascension come along, bringing the end of singing Christ is Risen. And so, I say to you all: Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen! 
• Once again, I celebrated my birthday. 34 on Friday the 13th, but not just any Friday the 13th. It fell on Holy Friday. Somehow that always seems to be the case when my birthday falls on a Friday. With a birthday like that, I just consider it a moveable feast and celebrate during Bright Week. Actually this year I kind of dragged it out. We spent a weekend with my parents a few weeks later and celebrated with two Cincinnati favorites, dinner at the Grand Finale one night and Graeter's ice cream the next. Yummmm...
• Once again, I attended the Evergreen International Conference the last week in April. Last year I very much enjoyed traveling to Georgia for the conference. This year it was a bit closer to home, in Indianapolis. Not quite as much of an adventure, but it led James and me to play tourist in our hometown that week, which was fun. 
• Once again, I have been delighted by fresh vegetables with the start of the summer farmer's market season. 
• Once again, I've found a word game to play on my phone. This spring I've thrown over Word Feud in favor of Scramble with Friends. If you play, my user name is SarahinIndy. If you don't play, and you like Boggle, and need another time suck in your life, you can download the app for Android phones or iPhones. I think you can play it on Facebook as well.  
• Once again, we enjoyed some time with family over Memorial Day weekend. This year we stayed home, working and playing around the house, but my brother stopped in on his way back from a business trip in St. Louis. 
• Once again, we have spent some time working in the yard. Just a lot of clean-up so far, though. I have yet to get anything planted! Although the last month has been sorely lacking in precipitation, which doesn't bode well for the summer. Maybe I'll wait and plant some things in the fall.
• Once again, I squeezed in a few other things here and there...
• And continued to attempt to live a Christian life, again, with mixed success.