Better than MJ?

For your viewing pleasure:

Best Rock a Gal Could Ask For

Today, my early anniversary gift arrived.


via




Haha! JK! Did I have you fooled? My nails aren't nearly that nice.

This is my real anniversary gift (or really, our gift to each other):


Guess what I'm gonna be doing tomorrow?

Grow Grow Little Garden

This year I haven't exactly done a super job of posting garden growth updates. 

I haven't posted an update in over a month. As you can see from the before:

And after:

Seriously out of control.

Climbing wall made by Michael for the peas:

Cute little tomats:

The squash are seriously about to take over.

I would say the move to the sunny spot by the road was a good call.

Weekend Recap

As is common form, this weekend was spent away. It was a great one though.

Thursday night after work, we drove up to Lake James. Friday, I got to 'work from home'. If you've gotta work, LKJ is not a bad place to do it.

Saturday involved fishing.

And more fishing.

Sunday involved a drive to Clemmons, NC for a beautiful wedding.

Monday involved some delicious food, family time and jealousy that we were not invited aboard the ultimate party barge: 

Next weekend, we were supposed to head to Atlanta for a friend's lake party. Due to no weekends at home in almost 2 months and a week of work travel coming up, we decided to stay home. Ole! Get excited for some home improvement posts soon (if i remember how to do them, that is).

Just One More

Last one for a while, I promise (only because I'm out of fabric):

Office progress...

Before cornice & pillow:

Before pillow:

And today:

Fish Run Sew Repeat

A photo story of the weekend.

Friday evening fishing trip and boat picnic w. the hubs:

Saturday morning 10k sponsored by work:

 Got my best time, was pretty pumped

Trip to Blowing Rock for the night:

A little Sunday afternoon pillow project:

 I guess you could say I'm slightly obsessed with the new hobby.

And now it's a new week. Can you believe it's nearly June? Craziness.

Making Piping via the Bias

Yesterday's post was getting a bit photo-heavy, so I thought I better split the piping (also known as cording or welting) construction into a separate entry. As noted yesterday, you don't have to cut on the bias (which is just a fancy way to say cut at a 45 degree angle), but it makes the piping easier to turn around the corners of the fabric. It is also the more 'professional' way to create piping. Alternatively, you can just cut fabric straight across, which is much easier. I did this for the last cornice I made and it worked out fine.

1. Cut the cording you are going to use to length. For each pillow I used 76" of 9/23" cording, which was more than enough.

2. Using a cutting mat, line up your fabric with the 45 degree angle mark on the mat and mark with fabric marker, using a long ruler to guide you. Cut a line down the 45 degree angle mark with your rotary cutter, protecting your little fingers with a sturdy long ruler. If you don't have a cutting mat or rotary cutter, you can just measure a 45 degree angle by hand and carefully mark with a fabric marker, then cut with scissors. For the first cornice I made, I didn't have a rotary cutter and didn't realize we owned a cutting mat and this method worked fine (its just a bit more time consuming).

3. For the remaining strips, measure each to be 2" wide and cut again on a 45 degree angle. I used 2" width for my piping for my pillows, but probably could've gotten away with 1 3/4". The end goal is to have 1/2" from the piping stitching line to the rough edge. I had a little over 1/2" and was too burnt out to cut it down to 1/2", but it worked out fine.

All of the strips should be parallelograms (i.e. each end facing the same direction) as pictured above. If not (if it turns out to be a trapezium), just cut the end that isn't facing the correct direction at a 45 degree angle. This happened to a couple of my strips and it is super easy to fix. Not 100% sure why that happens. 

Continue cutting strips until you have enough for your project. For mine, this meant 76" combined length for each pillow, which equated to about 6 strips.

4. Line up the edges of two pieces, front sides together. Crease with your fingers once you have lined them up so that they will meet on top and bottom when sewn together and flipped over.

5. Flip over the top piece for a double check. You want to make sure the top and bottom edges will line-up when sewn together. This step is clearly optional, but if you are a beginner sewer like me, you will probably do it about 10 times.

6. Once you are sure the two pieces will make straight lines on top and bottom, flip top piece back over and mark crease line with a fabric marker. Pin in place, being careful to not move the fabric as you do so.

7. Sew together.

8. Flip back over to make sure top and bottom line-up (doesn't have to be 100% exact, but should be close). If they don't line-up, take out stitching and try again.

The above obviously isn't perfect, but it was close enough for me.

9. Repeat steps 4-8 until you have enough attached fabric for your project. Again, for my project, this was 76" of fabric for each pillow, which meant attaching about 3 strips.

10. Now it is time to encase the cording. You want to put the cording in the middle of the fabric then fold the fabric on top of itself. The edges of the fabric should meet (this is important). Pin in place.

10. Switch to zipper foot on your sewing macine. Sew as close as possible to the cording. I guide the edges with my fingers to ensure they stay together as closely as possible.

11. The end!