Day 80: Watching
Day 81: Garden Walk
Day 82: Home ahead of the snow.
Day 83: Last day of spring break.
Day 85: Yum
Day 85: New washer.
Day 86: Talking to Mom. Ignoring the dishes.
(Sheesh, get a little out of the normal routine and look what happens. Now, back to the regularly scheduled program.)
Day 72: Sunshine at 6 p.m. A welcome change.
Day 73: Green.
Day 74: Coldest St. Patrick’s Day run morning ever?
Day 76: My happy place.
Day 77: Photo shooter.
Day 78: DSM Art Center
Day 79: Spring? Break.
Day 65: Stalling.
Day 66: Bath time.
Day 67: Oops…no photo taken
Day 68: Rain + Snow. Tis the indecisive weather season in Iowa.
Day 69: Crochet practice.
Day 70: 1st grade conference.
Day 71: Game break.
(ALMOST caught up!)
We are coming to the end of day 5 of spring break. It would seem that without the bother of going to work for 8 hours of my day, I could sneak in a few extra posts here. Not the case because I’ve been too busy playin’!
Playin’ with a new baby.
Playin’ with fabric and thread.
Playin’ with yarn and HOOKS. (It’s been a long time since I last picked up a crochet to make something. Usually it’s only to pick up a dropped knit stitch.)
Playin’ with my camera and that aforementioned new baby.
Playin’ with my kiddos exploring DSM.
For the next several days I will be playin’ with my whole family as my hubby took a few days off to play with us.
Playin’ is hard work. Exhausting, time consuming, wonderfully fun, hard work. Catch ya when our play date comes to an end.
happy creating ~ Jenn
Day 58: Behind the back, through the legs.
Day 59: Ready for a new view.
Day 60: Silly socks for Dr. Seuss
Day 61: Comparing
Day 62: Claiming a new creating space.
Day 63: New Yoga Friends
Day 64: Screw the weather, it’s my birthday and I’ll wear my new skirt if I want to!
For Christmas this year my oldest daughter asked for a new down duvet. Well, technically she asked for a “puffy comforter”. Santa chose to bring her a down duvet. Santa does Christmas on a tight budget around here, so he suggested that maybe Mom could help dress up a plain white duvet. He’s a smart guy that Santa.
The starting point for the cover was a flannel sheet set bought on clearance at Target for $18. The flannel is good quality and one would be hard pressed to buy enough yardage to equal the amount of fabric in a full set of sheets for $18. Plus, being a full-sized set, we have 2 matching pillow cases without any additional cost or effort.
(Note: The duvet is twin sized, but I’m glad I opted to get the full sized sheet set for the extra fabric yardage. Plus, there wasn’t any difference in price and the second pillow case is a welcome addition to the ensemble.)
My oldest daughter, age 11, is into blue at the moment. She is also not overly girly, so this soft plaid, with a subtle lime green highlight, is a perfect fit for her. It may be a bit unconventional, but I quite often pull the extendable metal tape measure out of the hardware drawer when laying out larger projects. My sewing tapes don’t measure beyond 60″, nor do they stay put like a metal hardware tape.
The fussiest part of this project was piecing together the back of the cover from the fitted sheet because of the boxed corners. I started by cutting off the elastic to relax the normal fitted sheet gather and strategically trimmed the short ends of the fitted sheet to remove the boxed shape while leaving as large of piece of intact fabric as possible. Since I used a full sized sheet set there was extra width from the flat sheet that could be reassigned (along with the boxed end trimmings) to create the needed length for the back of the cover.
The opening in the cover was created by cutting the flat sheet about 1/3 of the distance down from the top finished end. The fabric was then flipped so that the two factory finished ends could be overlapped a couple of inches to create slit for feeding the duvet in and out of the cover. Another bonus of using sheets, being about to take advantage of pre-finished hems! With the opening created, finishing was as easy as layering right sides together, pinning, sewing, trimming raw edges as needed, and flipping the whole thing right side out.
I hadn’t planned on needing to use any closure on the cover, but with a slit as long as the width of the cover, and only about 6 inches of fabric overlap to work with, we had some gap issues. A quick search through the button jar yielded 3 similar buttons perfect for adding a little detail, and utility, to the cover. I haven’t done many projects that require buttons, so it still excites me when I get to use that function on my sewing machine. Our whole family of 4 stood around and watched the process. We are kinda geeky like that. Once button holes were in place, I showed my daughter how to sew on the buttons so that she could put the finishing touches on herself!
I’m thankful that both of my girls enjoy being involved in the creative process. I hope one day (far, far from now) to get the pleasure of chatting with them about their projects in progress, much like I have with my own Mom over the years.
The total investment (including Santa’s initial expense in December) for what has proven to be a very much-loved “fluffy comforter” was about $65 and a couple of hours of construction. Such a small cost given the constructive family time we shared on a cold, snowy winter afternoon. Even our crazy pooch Tilde agrees!
happy creating ~ Jenn
Day 51: Wine
Day 52: Inclement weather early dismissal…
Day 53: Movie Night
Day 54: Smokey Row Coffee
Day 55: Oops…no photo taken.
Day 56: Little Details
Day 57: 1-2 inches…or 2-4…or 4-6…take your guess.
