Saying it with hearts and boxed pleats.

It's been a while and Valentines day has come and gone and yesterday my daffodils opened in the tub in the front garden. It must be spring!!
Speaking of Valentine's Day, I shan't bore you with the history of same but I have posted some

images of some handmade hearts I made. I even gave one to my sweetheart. As per usual I throw away very little and so I was able to use the filling of an old cheap cushion to fill the hearts. The inspiration was a comment overheard about someone sending a flight of kisses to a partner, hence the wings. I did make a pattern for these and I have kept them for future reference which is very unusual for me.












This month, March, saw me actually complete a project begun the same week, namely a removable cover for the footstool sitting in front of my husband's chair. Once again I surprised myself by measuring everything, the seperate cushion, the sides of the footstool, the width and depth and drop, etc etc. and marked the measurements out on the underside of the fabric in pencil before cutting. I had decided on the national flag theme having seen a few examples on some sites and like those examples decided not to stick to the traditional colour scheme but went with what I had at hand.


These colours of course are to be found within the curtains and armchair throw. You'll see that I made the top cushion a little too large, but it still works for all that. I re-discovered how to do box pleats and yes, found the very instructions when I googled for them LOL. Here's a link for inverted box pleats : http://www.burdastyle.com/techniques/make-box-and-inverted-box-pleats In retrospect I think it would have been better to have gone with the 'reverted' pleat, I think it would have looked better on the footstool. I thought box pleating on four corners would be amazingly complicated, having to sew on a curved corner, but I pinned and tacked at each stage before finally sewing in place and of course when the whole footstool skirt was finished I steam pressed the pleats and they looked ok.


Naturally it is worth noting that the original footstool was purchased at a charity shop for as little as £4 a year or more ago. The original fabric covering it was truly awful and I had removed that long before and just thrown a spare square of fabric over it. It was certainly in need of refurbishment LOL Anyway, the overall effect was how I wanted it so I am really pleased.

N.B Please bear with me as I familiarise myself with this 'editing' and 'layout' malarky. Things are not as uncomplicated as the appear on here and I am sure with a little more experience the final layout on my blog pages will look a little more professional :)