Rolled hems - lets do this

Here we are my lovelies, its Friday again. Today I have locked myself away in my sewing room to try and get my head space in order! So there's been lots of coffee and some biscuits of the chocolate variety (I'm treating myself today as I think its more than needed. I still cant get my head round how fast the weeks are going by and I know I keep saying it but I cant work it out. Maybe I should stop trying to. 

Anyway still playing catch up with blog posts, now if you do follow over on Instagram you will have seen some of these photos quite a while ago. I bought a scarf for a friend from a lovely lady on Etsy, I have to put it out there first that I have bought many scarves and they are beautiful, the prints are gorgeous, they are well made, the packaging is so lovely and her customer service is second to non. 

So I made the purchase, it arrived in the post, I opened it to have a good look at the beautiful print and to my horror there was a hole about the size of an egg cup and some smaller ones......crikes!! It was for a birthday present and I didn't have time to re-order :( After a very lovely and apologetic email from the lady, we decided that I would have a think about it over night and I'd be in touch with my decision (refund, replacement etc).

Isn't it gorgeous!!!!!! 

So after thinking about it for a couple of hours, I thought I'm being really silly here, I can sew, I have a machine, it has a rolled hem foot, I've sewed a rolled hem before (given it was about 15 years ago lol)....maybe I could fix this??????

No, I couldn't possibly try?? Could I? Cut off the damaged piece and re-hem it.....are you CRAZY woman!!!

Well I bloody well had a go and this is how it turned out!!!!!!! I know I couldn't believe it either :D 

Now I'm not gonna lie to you, I was absolutely errrrmmmmm, well lets just say I held my breath for most of the time I was sewing it!!!!! 

How pleased was I with myself? Well I might have been a little bit smug about my efforts but when I emailed the lady I bought it from I was very modest about it all. She was so impressed and we came to an agreement about some discount and free postage on my next order....because there will be a next time, Oh yes! Don't you know I'm addicted to scarves?  They are my adults version of a comfort blanket lol

Here I am sewing the hem.......

And this is the finished scarf. My friend loved it and I was honest and told her what had happened and that I had modified it. She said that made it even better, that I had put so much effort into it. So big pat on the back for me. I love giving gifts, even more so when its something that I have sewn, even if it were just a tiny tiny rolled hem :)

thanks for stopping by my lovelies, have a fabulous weekend,
Emma xxx

Felt ball push pins - tute

Hello my lovelies, another week is flying by, I cant believe its Friday again! I seriously have no idea where the days go. Maybe its because I have so many projects on my To Do list, its keeping me so busy I don't notice the days passing by. 

After such a long time of being out of 'mojo' for blogging I'm finding 

it much easier these days. I'm not sure if its because I'm making stuff again or what but I'm not going to question it, it feels right and that's good enough for me. 

 So this weeks post is to show you how I made the felt ball push pins for my new pin board. I found this gorgeous pin board on ebay, it comes in different colours but I bought it in white with the idea that I would paint it myself. 

I bought a selection of felt balls from Blooming Felt, the chrome push pins also came from ebay and my little mini glue gun came from Hobbycraft which I bought last year. I have to admit, I've had so much fun with that little glue gun :)

I would suggest buying some decent quality push/drawing pins, you want them nice and sturdy for pushing into your cork board. I bought chrome coloured ones as I wanted them to look nice and shiny.

I chose a selection of 1.5cm balls which match the colours of my 'Follow your dreams' cushion that you can see in this post.

I did make a little video of how to make them but it didn't turn out too well and I couldn't figure out how to rotate it so that you could actually watch it the right way up.....if you have any tips or tricks please do let me know.

OK, its pretty simple so I'll just bullet point the process:

You will need:

Hot glue gun, glue sticks

felt balls (1.5cm)

Metal push/drawing pins

Instructions:

1. Heat up your glue gun

2. Take a push/drawing pin, hold it by the pin so that the head is facing you

3. Apply a pea sized amount of glue to the head of the pin

4. Take a felt ball and press it onto the head of the glued pin, hold it for a few seconds to make sure that the glue starts to dry

5. Leave them to one side to dry thoroughly

6. Snip off any excess glue with a pair of scissors

And there you go you should end up with felt ball push pins just like these :)

How can these not make you smile!!!!! 

They look fab on my pin board.

I love the fact they look like they are floating on the board. Each pin cost about 19p to make which I think is a bargain!!!

Thanks for stopping by and reading, I'd love to hear if you try it out, you could use different shapes, heart or pebble or even buttons, cabochons or anything else you find......what about Lego pieces???

Have fun,

Emma xxx

Sewing room tour....the reveal!

Hello my lovelies, I hope you're all excited as I am to show you my completely finished sewing room. Seriosuly I could burst every time I walk into it.....I absolutely love it! If you want to see it before, then have a look at this post.

If you follow me over on Instagram then would have already seen this little sneaky picture. I felt like I was teasing you all way too much so before I had a chance to sit down and write a blog post I thought it was only fair. 

So how did I choose the colour scheme? My lovely bloggy friend Rachel (*waves*) bought me a candle (quite a loooonnnng time ago) which I thought was the most gorgeous shade of mint green. I then snuck into Mr.B's office and borrowed his paint chart and tried to colour match the candle with a shade brighter and that was the colour I chose for the wall. I do think though that I have been slightly obsessed with this colour for longer than I initially thought, as since painting was complete and I started re-organising everything I found more and more things that I had either bought or been given that were almost the same colour. 

Any way I'm digressing, so this photo is of the main wall in my room, its the only wall that I painted with the mint green colour. I felt that the furniture was taking up too much of the wall and if I had put it back in the same place you wouldn't have seen as much of the colour as I would have liked. So we spent an hour or so jiggling it all about until I was happy. I also added an IKEA Lack shelf to the wall and painted it the same colour. I wanted some more space to display my favourite things. The hanging plant you can see, I've had for a while but didn't quite know where to put it, until we had moved the furniture around, then I knew exactly where it needed to go. I think the pot and hanging net came from Homebase and was only about £5 the plants I bought from our local garden centre. And you can also see that 'Sophia' my vintage Singer has pride of place in the middle of my shelving unit (also from IKEA, in fact all of my furniture, apart from the chairs is from the famous Danish store).

On the opposite wall is my desk (and the door to the room), I decided to keep my desk in the same place because this is where the best natural light is in the room. I know you're probably all thinking it would look a lot better without the TV on the wall, and I totally agree, but I do use it for listening to the radio and sometimes I sit in the other chair hand sewing whilst watching a movie. So for me, I just live with the fact its black and ugly on a pretty wall :D 

One thing you may have noticed is that there are two machines on my desk!!!! Yes I bought a new Janome!!!! I know how exciting!!!!! More about that in another post.

I pretty much re-organised everything in the room, trying to keep it all as maintenance free as possible. This has meant scaling down some of the crafty things I have stashed away :( I know how sad. Don't worry most of it has gone into a sealed box in the garage, just in case I need it lol.

My fabric drawers have moved into the corner, with my fabric boxes which hold all of my bobbins of thread. All of these drawers you see here will be sorted through in the coming weeks so if there are any of you out there that would be interested in giving some of it a new home, watch this space. I have since moved the iron after taking this photo, its an iron, who wants to see a bloody iron. Not me!! I want to see pretty, colourful and if possible fluffy or floral things.

And this is my chair in the corner, I know if doesn't look very comfortable but believe me its the perfect position for relaxing. I have sat in it many times with a tea/coffee/hot chocolate either hand sewing or watching a film or chatting on the phone....its perfect and its orange!

On the wall you might have noticed my new pin board, I decided to paint that in the wall colour too. Was it possible I could love it more? Yes, paint it mint green......YES.

Last year whilst shopping in Matalan, I saw this....in fact it wasn't long after I bought the paint, actually I'm totally lying there as we bought the paint back in Aug 2013, yes that would be a ridiculously long time to wait to paint my room, now do you understand why I was so excited to show you???? 

I thought it was destiny, a B, in mint green, with a floral pattern, surely it was made for me and me only? That's what I told myself anyway when I strode up to the checkout to pay £3.50, total bargain!

Sorry I couldnt resist showing you another shot, its just sooooooooooooooooo bloody gorgeous.

And here's my arty farty shot of my hanging plant.

So there you go, my before and after shot of the same room (sorry the image is a little distorted, far too excited whilst trying to take a panoramic shot on my iphone).

Hope my post didn't dissapoint? I'm sat in here now writing this and I have to keep glancing up just to take another look. Dont think thats gonna wear off any time soon.

Emma xxx

Creative Space : part 2

I cant tell you all how excited I am to show you my sewing room!!!! I'm almost there but there are still a few tweaks to be made before I can show you the whole thing. 

No matter how big or small a space you can always make it feel like your very own 'special place' you go to create. I have coveted this book for such a long time and have lost count of the hours I've spent on Pinterest checking out other peoples studios/sewing rooms, dreaming of what mine could look like.

Whenever we buy any kind of paint Mr.B always writes the date we bought it and what its for, an ever increasing part of his OCD. When I eventually got the tin out for my room I couldn't believe the writing said August 2013!!! Was it really that long ago that I planned to decorate???

I guess time just runs away with you. I half expected to open the tin and think, "I've changed my mind", but as soon as I saw it I remembered why I'd chose the colour in the first place. Its fresh, vibrant, calming, motivating, fun and one of my favourite colours rolled into one.

So after I'd glossed all the skirting and door architrave, I gave the whole room a new coat of Egyptian cotton (our whole house is painted this colour as a base). Already it was starting to look refreshed and clean.

I almost burst when I started the first coat, I just love the colour so much. Its more minty than in the photo and less turquoise. I must be the only weird person who loves to 'cut in', it takes me a little while as I'm a bit of a perfectionist but I love to see neat, crisp edges.

I'm saving the finished photos until I can get the room semi tidy, but I have started sorting out all my books and sewing bits and bobs.

As I was stating to Mr.B that I had some pictures I wanted to mount on the wall he suggested getting a shelf for extra places to showcase my pictures and nik-nacks (everyone has nik-nacks right?). So off we trekked to IKEA on a Sunday!!! I just want to say, if you are ever planning a trip to the very famous Danish stores, please do whatever you can to avoid a weekend, particularly a Sunday! It was ridiculous!!! 

After a lot, a lot of swearing under my breath and slaloming through the isles dodging trolleys and families, we made it to the check outs, shelf tucked firmly under Mr.B's arm and we were free!!!!! :D

Its a day off from the day job for me tomorrow so it'll be coffee in hand and full steam ahead to get everything back into the room and get re-organising.