I got a package in the mail today. Several pieces of voile, ordered on a great sale.
Two are designed by Amy Butler, the rest by Anna Maria Horner. The patterns are lovely, but my first thought upon handling them was “they are slippery!” I’m comfortable sewing with cottons and opening this box made me realize that I need to get comfortable sewing with other fabric weights and weaves as well. Because I’m a perfectionist, I fret over the learning process because I don’t want to mess anything up. I’m trying to overcome this, and just dive in. I’m thinking I need to do something soon with these lovely fabrics so I don’t get intimidated by them!
Some of these pieces will become quilt backs, but I’d like to use them in other ways as well. What would you do with them?
It is pretty much the exact same design except I didn’t have enough squares to make it quite as big so I just ended up adding a border around instead. What do you think?
To paint my drapes I first ironed well, and hemmed the drapes. I just bought 2 sets of plain white drapes from IKEA for $25 for each set. It’s hard to beat IKEA’s price on drapes. I then layed out a panel on my kitchen floor, on top of plastic in case the paint would bleed through (although I don’t think any of it actually went through.) I then used a piece of cardstock to draw a line from the bottom hem of the panel. I did it all the way across the panel hopefully creating a straight line. I used green frog tape (it’s the best I promise. I have used everything else under the sun and nothing compares) and lined it up with the line I just drew using the card stock and taped all the way across the curtain, making sure it was flat all the way and that the tape was bonded well to the fabric.
I used an envelope as my next unit of measurement. I did the same thing with the envelope, lining it up with the line I just made with the tape and drawing a line all the way across. Tape again, and do this until you have the desired amount of stripes. I didn’t want my stripes to go all the way up, so I just did 4 stripes. You really could use anything to do your measurements with. I thought later that something that extended all the way across the panel, like a piece of wood, would have been an easier way to make the lines. But that would have taken me a trip to the garage, and the paper and letter happened to be handy at the time.
This is what it looked like with all my stripes taped off. I used some extra masking tape on where the white was going to be so I didn’t accidentally paint outside the lines. I suppose wider tape would be a better idea. It all comes to me once the project is over. I then used a foam roller to paint with, and Martha Stewart metallic paint in Gold pearl I think.
