It's TIME to Paisley-fy! Clock re-do tutorial

Well it is looking like I am not going to get copies of the pix I took of my Phantom of the Opera Costumes so that's a big bummer.  The moral of the story is "Bring your own camera next time!"  However, life goes on. 

I had a very boring clock on my office wall.  I had to change a dead battery in it and while I had it off the wall and in my hands I decided to paisley-fy it.  First I had to see if I could take it apart without totally breaking it.

As it turns out, the plastic disc covering the face just pops right off when you insert a rusty Exacto-knife (or other skinny/flat object of your choice) near the little tabs.

After removing the plastic cover, I traced it onto a piece of white card stock so it would fit the clock face.  I didn't even remove the paper face that was already there.  It it was glued on pretty well and I thought tearing it off might damage the mechanism holding the hands.  Since the card stock I was using was mostly opaque AND I was going to draw and color on that I figured the original numbers would not show through--and they didn't.

I worked my doodle magic inside the circle and also marked a smaller circle right in the center where the hands would be.

I colored my paisley, cut out my circle and the smaller circle for the hands, then started to put my drawing overtop the original face.  After trying to thread the hands through just the little circle, I realized they needed more wiggle room.  I cut a small slit, about 1 1/2" to get them through.

Then I threaded the hands through and positioned my improved clock face the way I wanted it.  Lying flat, against the clock's face the extra slit is not visible.

I carefully popped the plastic cover back on, inserted the new batteries and hung it back up.   This was super easy to do; the drawing and coloring was what took the longest.  The potential for this project is huge!  You could cover your clock face with anything you want, whether it's a unique drawing, a large enough picture, matching wallpaper or fabric to go with your décor.  The possibilities are endless!

It's the middle of March...

And I've now gotten one thing crossed off my UFO list. 
At this rate, I should get 4 things done all year...

This was what my son's gamer chair looked like.  He, and his siblings, have a habit of standing up on it and eventually it popped a hole right through the seat.

 

The thing that amazed me most was how cheaply made this chair was.  It was basically hollow inside. 

I shored up the seat with this piece of pine which I screwed into the frame.  Then on top of this I put a block of foam rubber for extra padding.  I cut off all of the vinyl and reused the foam from the original covering.

After visiting JoAnne's remnants table (twice due to not paying attention to how I cut my side pieces) I used the original vinyl as a pattern to sew these tweedy bits of upholstery, added a little headrest pillow and then stapled it all in place.  I have another vinyl gamer chair that is going to need the same treatment.  #2 son says he wants royal blue and black.  We'll see what the remnant table holds :)

Resolve...

It always seems that when the New Year rolls around I'm always surprised.  Like it doesn't come this time every year.  With the new year brings Resolutions.  I can tell you right now I am not quitting smoking, eating healthier, losing weight or any of the other same old resolutions that everybody else does.  (I don't smoke anyway.) 

No, this year my goal is to finish some of the very long-suffering UFOs that have been sitting upstairs in my office.  Some of them have been there since before I was married 15 years ago.  Since one of the best ways to keep your resolutions is to make yourself accountable, I'll be posting some of those projects here.

I'm also going to continue to make surface designs.  This one is for Spoonflower's Fabric of the Week--next week I think. (They still haven't announced the winner of this week's.)  I usually don't do two Spoonflower contests back to back but I really like the palette they chose.  It reminded me of one of  Helen Dardik.  I love her style,  it's very loose and funny but at the same time graphically sleek.  Her color choices are always great.  She often uses colors I wouldn't choose but makes them surpisingly cool.  I tried to emulate that style in this design ( mainly to see if I could) while at the same time keeping my own style evident.  I think I accompished it.

Halloween Flower

Since Katie is the only one who has told me what she wanted to be for Halloween, Katie is going to be the only one getting a costume made special by me. Here were have the half done top of her costume, a pink satin flower that is going to be attached to a green sweatsuit as a hood. This year, the costume satin (or satan as I like to call it since it likes to fray if you even just look at it) hasn't given me as much of a hard time as it did last year when I did a full princess costume. The hardest part of this whole thing has actually been finding a green sweatsuit.

Each of the petals is a sandwich of 3 fabrics: satin for the front, pink flannel for the back and brown fleece to give it bulk. Your fabric sandwich has to be your front and back right sides together with your fleece on top of that and you leave an opening to turn it right side out. The brown fleece is a leftover from a monkey costume I did last year for Ryan. My plan had been to make PJs after the monkeying had been done. However, as a clothing fabric, the brown fleece is cheap and awful and will tear at the slightest provocation. But as a quilt batting, it's pretty good! It's thin, lightweight and pretty easy to sew through when you have a few layers. Then you turn them inside out. I was going to trim the seams but when I turned it just to see what it was going to look like, it puffed out so nicely that I didn't.

Each of the leaves were done the same as a sandwich of green cotton, brown fleece and a layer of irridescent gossamery stuff. I trimmed those with pinking shears for a leafier effect. More later when I get it finished.