Ikea AGEN Children's Armchair Cover

The AGEN children's armchair from IKEA looks great in the photos on their website so I made a special trip to IKEA to purchase it.

Because of the 'special trip' I bought it, otherwise I may have passed. It didn't look very comfortable and was in desperate need of a cushion or cover.

It took a couple of goes to get the pattern right. The first was hideous and I binned it straight away. This was the final result:

...and possibly after all my hard work its still not very comfortable because Alyssa spends no time sitting in it. It looks cute in her room however...

Love Love Wall Art!

I needed a quick easy project to give me a bit of a boost this week. I have been working on a made by RAE Baby Sunsuit and its been very frustrating to say the least. I know I have to keep persevering with this sewing thing...

Embroidery hoop wall art is so easy to do. I was very pleased with my first attempt.

It also gave me a chance to experiment with appliqué. Firstly I tried appliquéing some of the birds onto the plain fabric using a dark grey cotton. It looked messy. I put it down for a day while I though about what else to try. Eventually I figured out that using shapes to make an object (a bird house) as well as using a lighter cotton produced a much neater and satisfactory result. Sewing finished!

Some lessons:
1. I ironed on some interfacing to the birdhouse before I appliquéd it to the main fabric. I also used a tacking stitch to hold it in place instead of pins. (I feel so stupid that I haven't utilised the tacking stitch more before now!)
2. I used double sided tape to stick the excess fabric to the inside of the hoop. This was super easy and much better than fiddling around with glue.

The first thing I made for my baby's room...

About 3 weeks after I found out I was pregnant I went out shopping for baby girls clothes. Apparently that is quite common... to shop for your baby even before you know the sex. I didn't have to sell them but I did have to keep the fact that we were having a girl a secret from my partner. I lasted only 3 months. It was supposed to be the whole time but I let it slip. I credit myself for being able to keep secrets, but that one was WAY too big. Plus, I didn't want everything while and yellow and I wanted to start sewing...

I found a second hand sewing machine on Gumtree, bought some fabric squares from Spotlight and made a bib, burnt myself (still have the scar on my knee) & decided not to count that one. I put the sewing machine away and it didn't come back out for three months.

In that time I found a beautiful birdy mobile on madeit.com.au. It was expensive. I decided to copy it. The one I made is a complete copy, not to the exact detail - I didn't have a pattern - but if you find one similar then that's probably where I sourced my inspiration. Two weeks later & a change of fabric half way through it was complete.

I still didn't particularly like the fabric choice. They were the squares left over from the bib-fabric-shopping. But it was made and I wasn't making another one.

This was the first item for Alyssa's room and influenced everything that happened after that.