Liberty of London Fabrics

I received a surprise package from my mom this week. It was filled with Japanese candies and treats for the kids. As you can easily guess from the title, I received more Liberty of London fabrics.

The reason why I didn't put "!!!" after the last sentence is, I have mixed feeling about this. L of L fabrics are not cheap; I would rather that she spend that money on extra food, drinking water and other supplies for them to prepare for the earthquake, since they are saying that a big one might be coming. I told her that several times on the phone, but she always tells me that she loves going to the fabric store and looking at the beautiful flower prints and it is very therapeutic for her. (By the way, she is not a sewer...). Then, she can't help herself from buying some for me.

After I thanked her and hung up the phone I kept looking at these beautiful fabrics...

My mom thought that this would make a beautiful summer dress for me. So, she sent 3 meters of this one.


They are all so pretty, but my favorite is the top one.


Then, this last one... When I opened it, it literally took my breath away. It contains 17cm X 18cm of 96 different prints! It has been a couple days but I can't stop staring at it and admiring each of the prints. I am so tempted to pull them out and open each fabric, but then I don't think I can put them back in to the case like before. I am contemplating to either use the whole fabric to make one quilt, or use them little by little over time. There are some big decisions to make. :)


I am grateful that my mom cares about me so much that she wants to do something to make me smile even from far away.

Psst... I am designing a special quilt for her birthday this year, and she has no clue. I will write a post about it when I am done making the quilt, just thinking about her reaction makes me giggle.

Simple Fix

Sometimes I really love a project that doesn't require a lot!

Case in point: this vanity bench, which was given to me.

The upholstery was nasty and dirty...

But the legs were actually quite lovely.
They were loose, but nothing a little glue couldn't fix!
I chose not to paint them, but I cleaned them up with Walnut Restore-A-Finish.

I bought a piece of 3" foam for the seat (just over $6) and
sewed a cover with fabric leftover from my living room curtains.

Voila!

So much better!

One more day to enter the giveway! Leave a comment here for a chance to win. Ends May 2.

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Custom Memo Board

My friend "D" wanted a BIG memo board to organize some of her office stuff--and make it pretty. Censational Girl posted some great instructions on how to make one here, so off I went!

"D" wanted her memo board to be 3 ft x 4 ft. I chose to use a thin sheet of Lauan, mostly so it wouldn't be enormously heavy! I covered the board in a thin batting, and then with a brown twill. The ribbon is a cream-colored grograin, and it took almost 15 YARDS of the stuff!

Buttons for decoration were going to be expensive--but then I was inspired. In the jewelry-making section of JoAnn's, I found two strings of flat beads that would work instead! I used exactly two strings, and they were buy-one-get-one-free. You can't see it in the picture, but they aren't just plain brown, they look like stone with all the pretty variations and colors.


I like this one so much, I think I need one for myself now, above MY computer! I'm thinking something big...and bright...with flowers!

Benches

When I got to re-decorate (can you call it re-decorating when it's never been decorated before?), I knew I wanted a bench of some sort at the end of the bed. I couldn't BELIEVE how expensive benches were at furniture stores! $250 would have been cheap!

Thanks to the Internet, I found some transformations of coffee tables into benches. I found a coffee table on KSL.com that had pretty legs, and I talked the seller down from $30 to $15. At first I was going to paint it (that's always easier), but I had a serious paint mishap that meant I had to strip the whole thing anyway! After going through all that work, I decided to stain it the same as the tops of my dresser and chest of drawers. The fabric was a red-tag clearance from JoAnn's. The most expensive part was the green foam for the top!



A couple of months later, I found this coffee table for FREE on KSL.com. It was long and narrow, like the first one, and it had pretty details on the legs. I painted it white and distressed it. The handle is purely decorative. I painted it with ORB spray paint, followed by a light spray of silver--I think it gives an aged-pewter type look. I didn't splurge in as heavy of foam for this one, and the fabric came from a tablecloth I found at Savers.



Of course, the easiest benches to transform are the ones that start out as benches! This one I found for $5 at a garage sale. The legs needed to be tightened, but there was nothing much else wrong with it. I used a $2 can of "oops" paint on it, followed by a black glaze. Someday I would like to have benches at my table--it just seems simpler than trying to keep 3 chairs on each side neat. Unfortunately, I need something longer than 48". Maybe someday I will try to build my own!


Benches. Gotta love 'em!