Quince Cottage: sewing

Showing posts with label sewing. Show all posts

Friday, November 6, 2015

Non-Traditional DIY Autumn Porch Decor

Hey there, welcome back to Quince Cottage!
Today we're talking autumn plaids. Everyone is mad about plaid this year, right? Well, we decided to take a slightly off-the-beaten-path approach.
Maybe we were inspired by some of the brilliant things Nature does in North Carolina this time of year.

Roadside weed © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Toad on Sweet Potato Vine © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Beauty Berry © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet
You can make jam from these, and use their juice as a bug-repellent.

Passion Flower Vine © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

That passion flower was growing in the weeds between our house and the one behind us. It also inspired another project we'll show you in an upcoming post. Pretty amazing flower isn't it?

As we've said before, we like to pinch pennies when we can, and by sewing your own pillow covers, you can too. It's pretty fast and easy if you've got a sewing machine, even if you hate sewing like Rhiann does. This time around we wanted to make a matching throw too. We bought the fabric at Joann Fabrics.

Being able to reverse the pillows by using a different fabric on each side gives even more options in terms of look. You can use snaps or velcro dots or just a basting stitch to close up the open side of your pillow casing.

There's the throw in the photo below. Super easy to make using the leftover fabric from the pillows. On either end of the length of the berry plaid, Rhiann sewed a strip of the green plaid. Then she hemmed all the edges. Ta-daaaah! Done! Now we're not saying this throw will keep you warm on a frosty evening, but it adds a splash of color and continues the theme without breaking the bank.

What do you think? Yes, we know, the porch floor needs to be stained. We're currently debating colors.

Of course it wouldn't be a Quince Cottage blog post without some doggy cuteness, so here you go...

Daisy © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Quince Cottage Style mixes old and new, rustic and opulent. Our goal is to make our new subdivision house look inviting, beautiful, and as though it wasn't born yesterday.

Friday, October 30, 2015

Bathroom Curtain - Sew Quick 'n' Easy!

Welcome to Quince Cottage!
Today we're showing you a super fast, super simple way to add privacy and decorative appeal to your bathroom. Like many new houses, the master bathroom at Quince Cottage has one of those big ugly square windows that doesn't even open. Adds light, but compromises privacy. To keep most of the light, but make us feel better about getting out of the shower unobserved by neighbors, we decided a half curtain was in order.
As you know, we like inexpensive fixes that don't "look" inexpensive. As you may also know, Rhiann dislikes sewing, therefore the simpler, the better.
Shower curtain fabric is ideal for this application because it's made to stand up to steam. A shower curtain cut in half was more than big enough to cover the window amply (in fact we trimmed off about a foot from the side because otherwise we'd have run short of trim). We found this shower curtain at Tuesday Morning for $14.99 along with the fabulous twine fringe for $4.99.

Good Finds from Tuesday Morning! © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Rhiann prefers a little ruffle at the top of the curtain because it's more luxurious looking than a curtain without one.
So, after measuring carefully and cutting the shower curtain to the desired size, join the two halves with a vertical seam. We took the time to match the pattern as you would with wallpaper.
Next turn over the top and sew across (tucking the raw edge under so it won't fray).
Stitch across once more to make a pocket for the rod and a ruffled look above the rod. Then hem, and if you want, add a trim.

Bathroom Curtain © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Unfortunately for Rhiann, the trim was so thick it had to hand-sewn to the fabric, but by using large basting stitches it really didn't take all THAT long. Honestly, if you hate sewing even more than she does, you could use some of that sticky iron-on tape for this project and it would probably work just as well.
We're going for a bit of an Old World Luxe meets Natural Neutrals in this bathroom and so far we think it looks pretty good!

Bath Curtain © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

What's up next on the blog? We've got a post in the works about our bricked kitchen backsplash-the one that's been a pretty big hit on Instagram. More autumn decor ideas are coming too!

Meanwhile, Daisy and Buster are trying to catch up on their sleep. As you can see, they like to "redecorate" too!

After The Morning Walk © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Quince Cottage Style mixes old and new, rustic and opulent.

Our goal is to make our new subdivision house look inviting, beautiful, and as though it wasn't born yesterday.

Friday, August 14, 2015

DIY - Pillow Talk & End o' Summer Decor

Glad to see you here at Quince Cottage!

What's your favorite season? Ours is autumn. Crisp, sunny days, spectacular foliage, pumpkin everything!
It's still August, we know, but with all the stores trotting out their fall goods, who can blame us for wanting to get a head start? It began with an Instagram #mantel challenge. Speaking of Instagram, we'd love you to follow us there.
We're very fond of our mantel and were at risk for committing the sin of "overgramming" it, so we needed to change things up for the challenge. First we did a little home-shopping and then we hit Michael's for some faux-liage to arrange in our milk glass urns. We got those urns at a wonderful consignment shop in Raleigh called Inspirations. If you're in the area, check it out!

Anyway...here's a photo of our summer mantel

Quince Cottage Summer Mantel © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

And here's one of our late summer-early fall mantel

Quince Cottage Fall Mantel © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

A couple of close ups...

Fall Mantel Detail Left © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Fall Mantel Detail Right © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

And then the mantel thing led to a pillow thing. Yes, Rhiann doesn't like sewing, but she was fairly pleased with the way her summer porch pillows turned out, and this encouraged her to tackle living room pillows.
Fall says earthy natural colors, nubby textures, homey coziness. With that in mind, we hit WalMart (ticking fabric at about $7 a yard), Mill Outlet Village Fabric in Raleigh (Jacobean floral and wheaty linen, both on clearance for under $7 a yard), and TJMaxx where we found the black and cream striped dishtowels we used for the smaller pillows ($3.99 for two towels).

Here's a closeup of all the fabrics.

Swatches © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Something learned during the summer pillow-palooza is that by doing front and back in different fabrics, you can get a lot of different looks using the same collection of pillows.

With four different fabrics, we got four different combinations.

Quince Cottage Fall Pillows Combo 1 © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Quince Cottage Fall Pillows Combo 2 © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Quince Cottage Fall Pillows Combo 3 © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Quince Cottage Fall Pillows Combo 4 © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Which combo do you like best? How do you decorate your home for fall? We'd love to hear!

Quince Cottage Style mixes old and new, rustic and opulent.
Our goal is to make our new subdivision house look inviting and beautiful,
and as though it wasn't born yesterday.

Daisy and Buster are ready for some cooler weather, and so are we!

Buster © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Saturday, May 23, 2015

Porch Project #1 Pillows!

Quince Cottage Confession No. 1

We get bored easily. This keeps us in a more or less perpetual state of changing our decor, or at least wanting to. Our house in Maine was a Craftsman-inspired cottage and we decorated the porch accordingly in terms of color: earthy greens and reds with cream and brown. See the photos below.

Those pillows on the floor functioned as dog beds :)

When we moved to North Carolina, we ended up in a Craftsman-inspired home once again, and once again, the color scheme of the exterior was "earthy". Sorry about not sharing a photo of the screen porch there, but we never got around to taking pictures before moving out.

Fast forward to Quince Cottage, the place we now call home. Boy, were we ready for a change! We went in pretty much the complete opposite direction with a creamy exterior accented with soft blue and white.

Now, I don't know if you've ever purchased new pillows for a Lloyd Flanders sofa, but let me tell you, they're not cheap. Moreover, there was nothing actually wrong with our cushions, aside from their fabric covering, so the obvious solution was to recover them (along with the existing toss pillows).

Quince Cottage Confession No. 2

I loathe, loathe, loathe sewing, and I'm really not very good at it. As a result, I did the simple toss pillow covers weeks before I finally tackled the more complicated box pillow covers. In fact, I'm so "not good" at sewing that this post is NOT in any way a tutorial/DIY thing.
Here are my only tips: announce a disclaimer before you even start (as in, "these covers are going to be FAR from perfect, in fact they might look somewhat sucky"), second, do your best to hide the really ugly stuff in the back of the pillow (like how you deal with fasteners etc.), and finally, throws can hide a goof-up under the pretense of providing coziness on a chilly evening. I'm still looking for a pretty throw to cover up that pillow cover on the far left of the sofa, where the stripes didn't line up and the seam puckered...

But, without further ado, here are some photos, and you'll notice we used two different fabrics on some pillows. Two looks for the price (and work) of one!

And here's the sofa, those two large pillows (yep, they're bed pillows) in the middle can each be reversed so you can have two navy blue, two rose, or one of each.

We found the floral fabrics on the "leftovers" table and in the clearance section at The Mill Outlet Village in Raleigh. They have fabulous stuff there, AND they're really nice. The striped fabric we found on clearance at Ballard's Designs online.
Oh, one more thing, if you're not using Sunbrella material, then take the extra step of spraying on Scotchgard™ water-repellent to help stave off mold and mildew when the weather gets hot and humid as it does around here. If you live in Arizona or some place like that, you can probably skip it.

Be sure to spray it on outdoors and not near any surfaces that shouldn't be made water-repellent. Why yes, that is a different sofa - you're so observant! That's the one on our front porch and we'll be talking more about that one in an upcoming post about curb appeal.

Happy Memorial Day to all of you! We hope you get to spend some time taking it easy this weekend, like Buster here. We all love porch life here at Quince Cottage.

Quince Cottage

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