Tiki Sofa Cushions

So what exactly to do with my recent fabulous eBay win? Barkcloth Tiki Curtains. 

I knew all along that these curtains would end up on the sofa, I just needed to make sure they were actually too small for the window or I would have put them straight up there.

I love my red leather sofa but that's quite a lot of *red* in a small room so I like to ring the changes with throws and fabric. However there is nothing worse than a sofa throw that silently works its way into a pile on the floor - a crumpled mess that needs straightening and tucking in every five minutes. Aaarrrgh.

It drives the family mad too. 

I was determined to make my Tiki dancers into cushion covers that stayed put, trouble being there wasn't much fabric in each curtain and there was quite a bit of damage to along the edges. These might not last the summer, but what the heck..

The pattern of disintegration is interesting, it appears that only the red dye is unstable and holes appear where there is red in the design - mostly along the selvedge edges, so I surmise that it's probably sun damage with the curtains open and the sun catching the edges ... or colour selective moths.

Sunshine + this red dye = rotting? 

Any chemists out there able to throw some light on this? I'd be very interested. I reckon the fabric is probably 60yrs old at the most.

For the cushions I had a couple of choices: 

a: I could take the fabric to an upholsterer and ask for it to be used on the top surface only of a piped and zipped cushion cover in a complemetary fabric. 

b: I could try to do this myself. 

c: I could make a loose cover secured with elastic - like those in catalogues that fall out of colour supplement magazines.  

I chose the easier, cheaper option and chopped the old header tape off.

Squared each curtain up by adding a 7inch strip of canvas from the stash along one edge, then clipped the corners into curves in order to make hemming a pocket for the fat elastic easier.

I threaded elastic, slipped the cover over the sofa cushion and tied it off tight. 

Just fits!

There used to be a lovely small upholsterers just up the road from where I live, the guys there have covered a few things for me in the past - but sadly the shop has closed. Another small independent craft business goes under in the face of chicken shacks and phone shops on the High Street. 

Sad, he would have done a far more professional job.

Tiki Runner Completed!

I started this project oh … I dunno, about 2 years ago now? I can still remember the afternoon I sketched out the flowers, chose my fabrics – it was a beautiful day, I was waiting for a call from work, listening to jazz.

It’s not like I’ve been actively sewing the thing for 2 years, I’m a flighty maker – I get excited by new projects, get a rush of excitement from fresh ideas and finishing something off suddenly seems dull by comparison.

So it has been nice to revisit an old friend, the runner just needed backing and a good press after being rolled up in a box for aeons.

It was intended as a centrepiece for the dinning table – but quite honestly you can’t find our dinning table under the mountain of stuff that gets dumped on it. So the (rather large) footstool now a chic coverlet. We don’t use it as footstool – it is simply another depository for dumped stuff. But maybe now the family will think twice before piling things on top of the applique.

I read a really constructive post about surfing the net and creative procrastination on Elizabeth’s blog Things Bright, here. She advocates reading less blogs as an aid to creativity in a quality vs quantity vibe.

Enjoy this food for thought, not forgetting to add Make It Up to your essential reading list!

Tiki Table Runner

What better time to dig out some WIP and actually make some *progress* than when your machine is in its death throes? With my poor sewing machine at the menders under a death sentence I felt obliged to get on with a hand sewing project I'd started about 6 months ago.

Tiki Table Runner Applique.

This is my sitting room - getting ever more Tiki by the day.

I have a wonderful oil cloth table cover which I bought here many years ago - I wanted a daintier fabric something or other to alternate with it.

Armed with my Cath Kidston applique book I got for Christmas, I decided to focus on one of the Hibiscus designs from the oil cloth and add a couple of humming birds for good measure.


I bought some fabric scraps from the local haberdasher - nothing fancy - and a run of linen. I was ready.

Then work and life got in the way...




Ho hum.




But hey - now I'm back on track! Last week I painstakingly transferred the pattern to iron down paper and then to the fabric. The fabric pieces were reassembled into the design on my length of linen.

The main pieces have been ironed in place and I'm now in the process of edging the design with tiny stitches (yawn) which is in fact quite speedy once I'm settled on the setee with a good movie.

Once I've stitched most of it place and found some backing fabric, I'll take some good snaps in situ on the table and blog further progress.

The runner will be made up of 3 pieces eventually - a longer central panel and then two smaller end pieces that hang over the table edge. I haven't started work on the end panels yet, but more humming birds will be the order of the day.

The humming birds are essentially tattoo swallows - I'll give them an extra long beak with some embroidery silks, along with some fancy stitching on the leaves and flowers.

I'd like to finish the whole thing off with a couple of tablecloth weights to make the thing hang nicely - which happily means a trip out to some bead shops!

I Made A Hawaiian Wrap

  



I bought this Hawaiian shirt from a charity shop for a couple of quid as part of my Refashion Pledge. It was XXL but I loved the fabric.

I dismantled the shirt, used a 'wrap shirt' pattern to create a summer top.

There wasn't enough fabric to create the wrap so I used the sleeves from the original shirt and grafted them onto the pattern front.
As a result, I have palm trees both vertical and horizontal .. but hey, who'd notice on a hot beach with a Pina Colada?