Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Big, Fat Fails... Plural

I haven't posted in almost a week. I'm here to explain why:

I had my third strike in a row of fails on my diy projects.

So I'll post about failing, and someday I'll post about how I turned those fails into success... maybe. ;)

My first fail was not so very complete. I created a small mobile for a corner in the nursery. It turned out pretty cute, but upon loading all the pictures I took, I was very embarrassed by my photography skills. The pictures looked so amateur compared to what I see on other blogs, I just couldn't write a post with pictures like this:



So I've gone to a few different blogs and sites, reading up on how to use manual on my camera. I'm working up the courage to try a few more pictures today.


My second fail was much more catastrophic. I spent a whole week working on a project and destroyed it all in an hour.

I used my new (to me) sewing machine and spent a week painstakingly figuring out a simple way to create slipcovers for my plastic dining room chairs. I used several white sheets I'd bought at the thrift store (Buy two for the price of one: Score!). And though they were far from perfect, they were functional... which is much more than I expected from my first sewing project. I did make MANY, many mistakes, but after a week of applying myself, I had four slipcovers for my chairs:


Another beautiful example of my photography/editing skills!

But white slipcovers were not the plan. I wanted to dye them navy blue. So I bought the dye, studied the directions on the RIT website and went at it Saturday afternoon...

Did I mention that I bought the sheets at a thrift store? So they were all different kinds of sheets, and maybe different material/fabric blends...?

When I pulled them out of the washing machine after their RIT bath, they were not the four navy slipcovers I'd imagined. They were sopping wet slipcovers in 50 shades of... purple:



Big fail, I could waste money on more dye, but they'd still be different shades where the materials are different. So I'll have to think about how to cut my losses on this project...

And then my last fail:

Inspiration:

































I found an excellent recreation of this Pottery Barn duvet cover at Fussy Monkey Business:

Pottery Barn's Hadley Ruched Duvet Knock Off

She has an excellent tutorial and if you make it for a queen-sized bed like she did, it just might work out! All you need is 3 king-sized sheets! Unfortunately, I have a king-sized bed and my attempt came up quite short:








It came out only slightly longer than a throw pillow from my couch. I might have saved it, if I hadn't tied knots at the ends of the ruching, and cut off the extra length of thread, effectively burning all bridges.

The only idea I have to save this project is to buy two more king size sheets, make another half to match this one and then sew them together. I don't know how easily that will be done, and I'd hate to make another one and have it come out either a) too short again or b) dumb-looking.

Between these fails and the fact that a newborn will be joining us in 9 days, I don't have high hopes for my blog posts in the immediate future. I'll try and get some good pictures of my mobile, since the project itself was fairly simple and came off pretty well in my humble opinion.

Until next time...


No comments:

Post a Comment