My Etsy Shop

Well, I finally created an Etsy shop for my boxes. I've been a little nervous about all the little details that are involved, but so far everything is falling into place.

My current projects

For the last couple of months I have become a little obsessed with covering boxes in fabric. First, I recovered 2 of the blue boxes I bought at Ikea a while back. Next, I bought 10 really cheap boxes from Ikea to cover. Most recently I started buying boxes online, I received a shipment of 50 boxes that I then had to send back and take a huge financial hit to pay the return shipping. Finally, I bought some (18) nesting boxes on Ebay that have a nice incandescent cellophane on them which doesn't allow glue to stick quite as well. I have been ripping the cellophane off to get the box down to the nice white finish and then gluing fabric on. I fully intend on buying more boxes in the near future. I have about 6 boxes left of the 18 to finish and next I plan on working on some smaller sizes. I would like to skip the Ebay seller and the box importing company and go straight to the Chinese company who makes them. Wish me luck. I have found this to be a wonderful hobby to work on while my husband and I watch TV at night.



You may be able to see in the picture, the cheap boxes I bought from Ikea have a print that shows through some of the fabric. These boxes are the ones on the bottom of each shelf. Stacked on top are the boxes from Ebay that have white underneath so that allows the brightness of the colors of the fabric to show rather than be muddled by a brown and black box underneath.

A Project!

I made something. It is a little bench for the kids to sit on while they read books upstairs. The legs still need to be painted, but otherwise I am happy with it. It is impossible to get 2 kids to sit still for a picture when you really want them to.

A Chair Makeover

Before:



This project came after a trip to the local thrift store, CCA. Lincoln had played a little too rough on one of our dining room chairs and it had been irreparably damaged. While at CCA I found this chair and a little footstool and decided these would be the perfect items to try to recover in fabric. I was wrong. The chair was very difficult to recover because I couldn't take the seat off. It was glued on. So I found an alternative way to sew directly onto it. I'm glad I'm done because I will never do that again. What a pain! I used a curved upholstery needle and lots of time to get the thing done.

After:

Maybe you're the one with the problem

So I drove 40 minutes to Garland to look through a lady's fabric stash. She advertised on Craigslist that she would sell some of her stash by the yard for $3-$5 per yard. I thought, well, ther probably won't be a whole lot I like so I'll put $40 as my max and I don't have to spend it all if I don't find enough that I really want. This weekend, I worked as quickly as I could to make the $40 doing my new data entry job. I took out the cash so I wouldn't spend more than my limit and Lincoln and I drove off on our journey to Garland. Chris took the old car so I could drive on the toll roads and that in itself proves how dedicated I was to looking at this fabric. The end of the story is she had a lot of really cool fabric that I really wanted and I spent more than 3 times my budget. Oops.

I bought 2 yards each of these:



Then 1 yard each of these:



Then 1/4 yard of these:

and these:


Can you really blame me though? I mean, come on!

Afterwards, we went to see where Chris works and have lunch with him. Lincoln fell asleep in the car on the way home. I managed to stay awake. It was a fun day trip, but it sure wore me out.

My best deal

All this for only $3.00 total! Everything in all 3 pictures! This is why I couldn't help going back a 5th time.
Squares of really cute fabric:

Fat quarters and strips, oh so many strips. Mother, I loved your strips of color quilt. I think you may be able to make another or 10.:

Finally, the pieces that have been sewn already, also the batiks, and some random pieces that were of odd sizes.:

My Stash

In case you can't tell, I'm catching up for a long time of not posting anything. I think Chris still has pictures on his computer I need for my blog, but I don't remember what they are anymore. He just uploaded the ones I'm now posting, and yes, I do know how to do it myself, but it's easier if he does it for me, isn't it?
So now I'll include some pictures I took of my fabric stash. I went to an estate sale, and then back again, and again, and again, and once more. It was such a great deal I couldn't pass it up! The lady who passed away was an amazing quilter and had a whole 2 rooms full of fabric. Something like 300 bolts plus smaller amounts of fabric. It was crazy, but in a good way for me.
Now that I have a ton of fabric, I am no longer afraid to sew because I know even if I make 1,000 mistakes there is still no way I will get through all the fabric I have.
Large (Bolts):

Medium (Yardage):

Smaller (fat quarters mostly):

I don't have pictures of all the scraps I have in about 10 extra large ziploc bags. Look at the post about my $3.00 deal to see how much fits in 1 bag.