FINALLY!

A new post!

We started this blog in a fit of excitement while finding lots of great stuff at Goodwill and flea markets and whatnot, and since then have been slacking on actually doing anything with it. I know, shameful. Oh well. But the good news is, I finally finished a project!
I finally got a hold of a sewing machine, since Manda's is having issues. My grandmother lent me her spare one (the one she uses now is so awesome, it's like it has a mind of its own). Though it was made in the 70's, it worked fine as soon as we figured out the tension. And then i got to work:

Ta-da!

YAY! I've had my eye on this peacock pillow for ages now, it was one of the first projects I saw that drew me into crafting. I found the tutorial here. I changed the colors to match my bedspread set, and I'm so excited about how it turned out.

So now you can see how I made my peacock pillow. I'm not going to give full details, since the tutorial gives detailed instructions, but here's a few steps along the way.

I started with getting the materials (obviously). Once that was finally accomplished, I started with chopping the fabric up. The project began at 7pm. 

Yep, the only scissors I have that are sharp enough are my kitchen shears. Needless to say, my mom was not happy.

Little did I know that it was the beginning of a long journey of pain for my poor thumb. 

Then I moved on to cutting the feather shaped pieces out of the freezer paper. I originally just traced out one and layered 5 square pieces below and tried to cut them all together, but they kept slipping and I got all different shapes and sizes. Eventually, I just traced and individually cut out each one. Then I quick ironed them on, trying to stay as straight as possible.

Ignore the outdated country utensil jar in the background. Our kitchen needs a makeover.

I then took it outside and put a coat of gray on. The color was leftover from a 3D project I did last semester, and was perfect. While that dried, I set to work on cutting out the felt circles. I went with a different color scheme than the tutorial to match my bedspread and room colors, which has scarlet, cigar brown, silver, gold, black, and white (I loveee my room colors). 

Yep, those are nail clippers there.

The tutorial said to print the circle pattern onto freezer paper, then iron it on, then cut them out. But that seemed like alot of work, so i cut out a circle, traced it on to the felt, then cut out that circle and used it to trace the rest with silver sharpie. I cut out all 34 circles- 17 small, 17 large- and the notches in the smaller ones... and my thumb never knew such pain. It is still bruised. 

Oh, and I used the nail clippers to round out the rough edges. They worked surprisingly well, and saved some scissor misery (though not much). The circles weren't perfect, but it was getting towards 11pm and I was starting to not care so much.

Then I had to sew all of the small circles on the big circles. I wasn't sure if I could use the machine and I haven't used one in over 4 years, so I decided to hand sew them.

4 down, 13 to go.

That took SO LONG. It was around 1:30am when I finished. I'm a night owl so it wasn't that late for me, but I still had a looong way to go and I vowed not to rest until it was finished!

Caaarrying on...

6 layers of paint later

Then I retrieved my pillow front from outside and peeled the freezer paper off. The imperfections weren't noticable at all, so I was happy about that.

Time to start sewing the spots on the feathers- by hand, of course. 

4am and watching Mulan- that's Mushu yelling at the Great Stone Dragon hehe

That took even longer than sewing the dots together. It was around 6 or 7am when I finally passed out with four to go.

So close!

I woke up today at 11am and continued, while watching Little Miss Sunshine and then an ANTM marathon. Finally, I was done with the front...

YES. It's all easy from here.

The only thing that bothers me is the middle dot is crooked. So is the one all the way to the left in the same row was off-center. But I was beyond caring.

I also accidentally switched the second and fourth row. Again, by the time I noticed I was beyond caring. I like it this way anyway. =)

My poor dented thumb after all of the cutting. =P

Then it was a matter of quick sewing the back panels on, and voila!

YAAAAAY

I was really happy about how it came out. It involved all of my colors and matched really well with my bedspread. 

My first pillow (Well, since 7th grade sewing class)

I think the patterns go well together without being too busy, since their both circular. I can't wait to make more =)

Posts will be alot more frequent- at least, until school starts. Then probably not so much :P