Sewing machine basics or ORC Week 3 Spring 2021

Hello and welcome back to week 3 of the One Room Challenge! Thanks for sticking with me through the ups and downs and hilarity of life! Please be sure to hop over and check out the featured designers and the other guests like me :-)! To start at the beginning of my project; week 1, week 2.

This week has been full of ups and downs, I didn't end up having as much time as I wanted but managed to do a little most days. Isn't that the beauty of deadlines? At least for me, I'm a deadline, challenge, external motivation kinda girl. I used to give myself a hard time about that but now I'm just thankful that I know how to motivate myself!!

So I finished up painting out the base colours of the room and blithely hopped into making the curtain panel. I knew it would have a lot of steps but I've sewed this style before so was oh so confident.....then I couldn't get the sewing machine to work!

Taming the Sewing Machine

I had bought a new machine off FaceBook marketplace (forever after known as FBMP) but I couldn't get it to actually sew anything!

An important feature of a sewing machine after all. It took nearly 3 hours (taking apart an old machine in the house to see if I could use it instead, that machine is in fact broken) and one more google search to discover the previous owner had put in the needle backwards. Cue rolled eyes and mad giggling on my part! I have sewn a fair amount in my day but have never run into that before - always learning over here ;-)!

Making the curtain and allllll the pattern matching!

Once that was done I got moving on to actually sewing, I will write a whole post on the easy curtain panel I made once I actually finish actually hanging them. For the purpose of this post I 'installed' them with thumbtacks on the top of the window moulding....

Because the boys window is so wide, nearly 6.5 feet I needed to seam the fabric together. The beautiful Indian fabric that I used on the front side had a repeat that was right to the edge of the fabric. This made for really easy matching! This fabric is so beautiful and almost certainly printed by hand :-).

The pretty floral palampore fabric I used on the back was NOT an easy repeat to match up - at all. It didn't go right to the edge so required a bit of extra work but I got there in the end, see it pinned up ready to sew below. I love the fabric so much I know it will be showing up either as pillows or on a slipper chair if I have time/inclination to reupholster it. Either way I really, really need to find my staple gun. It made an appearance after we moved into this house so it's somewhere...

The Finished Product

Here's the finished professionally installed curtain - haha. Hope I can get it up properly before the boys remove the thumbtacks!

You'll see in the next photo the full vignette with the slipper chair I am considering re-upholstering. The fabric in the photo is draped with the 'wrong side' up. Funny story, when I first bought this fabric I was intending to use the back side of it for the curtain and then changed my mind a day or so ago. I'm so glad I did!!!

Here's the updated mood board and the to-do list that is left, I'm chipping away at it but there is still lots to keep me busy :-).

If you look at the mood board you get a peek of the curtain when it is down with it's mitred applied ribbon detail :-).

À la prochaine!!!

Still to do;

Properly mount curtain above window

Paint Trim

Paint wall panels

Make and upholster headboards and attach to beds

Upholster/slipcover Lloyd's bed

Find staple gun (That will need to happen pre upholstery!!)

Find/buy new bedside table for Louis

Paint bedside tables

Buy and install reading lights

Make art panels

Decide on bed coverings/duvets

Decide on closet - door or curtain

Make cushions

Upholster Slipper chair??

Make terrarium with boys

Style

Photograph