Friday Finishes: Beach Pillows!

I finally sat down and made some pillows. I wanted to try the denim materials I have been saving and do something simple, with raw edge.

On the ship pillow, I used a think base fabric and laid the denim strips on top. I sew them down on one edge, over lapping each edge. The sail and ship are also old pant material.

The anchor, I did not use a base material. I sewed one strip to the first strip, then the one below. The anchor was some old ticking, I had.

The pillows are 18" and 16". They will ravel more as they get used. Next I need to start a quilt, I have lots of jeans and I just cut some more, today. The ship I drew out on paper to make templates, the anchor I got from a coloring page.

Since I used pillow forms, I didn't want to leave an opening, since it would have to be wide. I decided it was time to try an envelope back and I didn't do too bad, considering I have no idea what I was doing and just figured it out.

The material was from my friend Karen, I thought it was a fun print for these.

I hope everyone has a nice weekend. We have some decent weather so hoping to get out for some walks.

Weekend finish and finds!

We were supposed to be camping this weekend, but it was windy and cold yesterday and today we got rain and wind, so I cancelled this trip. Hopefully the next one will bring us better weather, not fun to camp if I am stuck in the trailer all day.

I wanted to try some wool starfish and I love how they came out, but I couldn't get a decent photo, you can never get the look with wool and floss, especially with flash. I modeled them after real starfish and the actually colors, and I had the perfect lime green in my thrift stash.

I added a little stuffing and used a colored blanket stitch to mimic the border color on the starfish. They are easy to do and would make fun bowl fillers too. You can just draw out the starfish by hand or use a coloring book template, then have fun with the colors or look at real starfish online.

On Saturday we took advantage of the beautiful weather. I was surprised that there weren't that many people at the beach, but that means more glass for me, lol. We hit the tide just right and even when it goes out, the waves come up at different heights and crash against the slopes, and drop glass off. I was able to walk up and down a section and catch glass as it was swept up, so I got a nice haul this time. Bill was too lazy to bend, so he sat in the rock piles and dug for glass, he found me the pink heart. Some of the larger pieces are around 3", so you can tell what sizes they are.

My big find was the round one in front, that is a cobalt blue glass, a rarer find. We also did some shopping and I got a plastic container with compartments, so I am putting some glass by types, then I can bring it upstairs and play with design ideas. Another great find this week was a large white, rusty pail, with a blue lip, the perfect garbage can for my beach room.

Summer Ornies!

This weekend, I got bored. So, I decided to make something new to decorate my seasonal tree. Spring still seems like winter, so I went with a summer theme and my favorite subject, the beach.

I made the designs simple to make it easier for making into ornaments and can be machine sewed. I like how they came out and I did them over the weekend, so they work up quick. I also made them so  you can do the sailboats or pails in different colors, a great stash buster, for those floss boxes.

I am getting a lot of requests for a pattern, so I will work on that this week, hopefully I can get them done in a  few days. I always like to make things first, then I make the pattern and adjust things to make them better, where needed.

I put them together for the photo, but I am thinking of adding some starfish lights and maybe some wool starfish, and maybe a nautical flag for the top.

The weather has been too cold to get out, but today I just wanted to walk the beach. It was cool but nice and I was able to find a few nice pieces of glass. This weekend we were supposed to go camping, but now they are talking about a rain storm coming in, so we may stay home and enjoy one good day before it comes in. Hopefully it will hold off long enough to get out in the morning on Sunday, but Monday will be the worst, so I don't think it is worth the trouble of packing up and preparing for a short trip. I have another at the end of the month, so I can add an extra day to that.