June 2-3, 2012 Weekend, Lots of Granny Squares and My Kitchen Curtains

My weekend started off with spending some quality time with my Megan on Friday night. She joined John and me for dinner and we let her pick out where she wanted to go eat. She chose breakfast at the Village Inn. Then we came home and we watched some television before Jennifer came to pick her up.

I tried to explain to Megan why I take so many pictures of her. I told her that I am trying to create a memory for her so when she grows up she will be able to share her photos with her own children. I know that she will eventually understand why I take so many pictures of her, but right now she just thinks that Gran Gran is a nuisance. 🙂

Before I picked up Megan from latch key I stopped by Material Girls to pick out some fabric for the black, white, and gray granny square pillow that I was going to try and complete over the weekend. Well, when I found this fabric I knew that it would be perfect.

So on Saturday morning I sewed the rest of the gray, black, and white granny squares together and added a pretty red shell border around the outside edge. Then it was time to measure the fabric, cut it and sew the fabric pillow together. Apparently I cut the fabric too big so the pillow form that I already had was too small. So, the black, gray, white, and now red granny square pillow was tossed to the side again until I could break away to get a larger pillow form.

Much to my surprise I was having such a good time sewing that I decided I wanted to try and make my kitchen curtains. I sort of had an idea of how I wanted them to look and I hoped that I had purchased enough fabric for them; since I wanted the curtains to be double the measurements of the window and I also wanted to line them with the same fabric. After snipping and ripping the fabric for the bottom curtains I ended up not having enough of the base fabric for the backing of the top curtain, but I did purchase some red coordinating fabric so the top curtain would have to be backed with red. Since I didn’t have a pattern for the valance, I took down the one in my bathroom and laid it down on the fabric and drew around the shape of it to cut out the valance for my kitchen curtain. I also remembered the crochet embellished rick rack that I had made several years ago and thought it would be perfect on the edge of the valance. I was a little worried that I wouldn’t have enough of the trim to add to the edge of the valance but I was very willing to try. John just happened to come in the room when I was measuring it and he said, “Ok, if you don’t have enough trim and you decide to add crocheted flowers to cover up the empty space make sure you make them non-gender flowers.” (Wow he knows me so well, I hadn’t even thought about covering up the empty space with crocheted flowers yet). But now I was curious on what he meant about non-gender flowers. So I asked him and he replied, “they should be one color, not stripey.”  Sometimes he makes me laugh so hard I can’t stand it. Oh by the way John went to Michael’s and picked me up not one but two more larger pillow forms so I didn’t have to break away from my curtains after all. Now it looks like I’ll have to come up with another crocheted pillow to cover the extra naked large pillow form that John bought. 🙂 He’s so good to me and I still sometimes wonder why?

Anyway, I’m happy to report I didn’t have to use any non-gender flowers to cover up any empty space, because I had just enough of the crochet embellished rick rack to go from one end to the other. I loved hanging the valance before I laid myself down to sleep on Saturday night.

I could hardly wait Sunday morning to start on the bottom curtains, ruffling the fabric and adding the turquoise rick rack to the bottom of the ruffle made me very happy. I love looking at the rick rack just hanging there waiting for me to get the inspiration to add some crochet to it. 🙂

I’m not sure who is more proud of the curtains, me

or John?

John is so thoughtful when I can’t seem to get the finished project photographed right, he’s always willing to go the extra mile and help me make it happen. Just like when he placed this white cardboard underneath the curtains to make them show up better when I took the photo.

Once I finished the curtains, I was off and running back to the sewing machine to stuff the pillow form into the pillow case. As you may have already guessed I couldn’t stop at just the crocheted red shell around the edge. Yep, the centers of the granny squares were screaming to have a non-gender crocheted red flower in each of them. 🙂 And John was more than willing to pose with the funky granny square pillow for just the right photo.

I love the way the pillow turned out and the fact that the fabric part of the pillow was large enough for me to machine stitch the crocheted portion of the pillow down to it was even better. That means it will stay on so much longer than if I would’ve sewn it down by hand like I was going to do.

I felt so good about what I had finished up and since I was so close to being done with these cute granny square trivets, I sat down and machine sewed them to their fabric backs.

When I was at Material Girls on Friday I also purchased some fabric to back this set of trivets, but these will have to wait for another day.

I almost forgot to show you the 2 crocheted mini-wash cloths that I made from my scrappy wash cloth pattern. I had a wonderful weekend and feel good about what I accomplished. Did you have a good one? I would love to hear all about it.