Spotlight Award and a Reminder

Maybe you’ve seen the blog

Last week I got a sweet email from Megan at This & That Creative Blog  saying she wanted to spotlight my settee!

The post is up today.  

It makes me happy that so many people have enjoyed this project of mine. I am very much loving the settee.

I invited my neighbor over (the one who sold it to me) to see the finished piece. She loved what I did with it and told me the settee belonged to her great-grandmother who bought it as an antique. I knew it had to be old because the carving is all done by hand.

In other news, the MADD Walk-a-thon is this weekend. My sister and her family are walking to raise money to help prevent Drunk Drivers.

If you didn’t see my post, Aunt’s Against Drunk Drivers, I share the impact on our family of losing my nephew, Kale to a drunk driver last February.

We are trying to raise $2,328 (Kale was 23 and Pawel, another soldier killed in the same accident was 28). So far, we have raised 87% of our goal.

We need about $300 more.

Frou-FruGal friends have helped us raise almost $900 of that goal.

!!!THANK YOU!!!

If you have want to help support this cause, we are asking for a donation of $2.30, $2.80, $23.00, $28, or $23.28. Whatever you can spare, but please don’t feel badly if it’s more than your budget allows.

I know there are a million worthy causes out there. Mostly, I’ve ignored those causes and it’s not really my nature to campaign for a cause. However, I personally have been touched by tragedy. I see the hurt and loss to family and friends and loved ones of those left behind. It’s heart-breaking to see.

Drunk driving is completely preventable.

Besides trying to raise money, I’d like to add my personal plea to you.

Please don’t ever drive if you’ve been drinking.

Even if you think you haven’t had that much to drink. The risks are too high. The cost is too steep and the devastation is almost too much to bear for those impacted by the loss.

Please Help Us Prevent Drunk Drivers:

Suesan

Blessing Gown with Brazilian Embroidery

I often look at my stats to see what kind of Google searches are getting people to my blog. I can’t help but notice that I get a lot of hits by people looking for Brazilian Embroidery. I thought I’d show you another blessing gown I made where I did some more of this technique. I’ve included some links to the stitches if you’d like to try out this three-dimensional embroidery technique for yourself.

In 2004, I had another opportunity to make a blessing gown. This gown was for Miss Sunshine. I was excited to make another dress and I used the same Vogue Pattern as I had used on the wedding dress blessing gown.

I wanted to use a very loose weave cotton for the fabric. I finally found some on eBay and took a chance that it’d be the right fabric. I was very happy with it.

I apologize for the crappy full-length shot. It was in my pre-blogging days and this was the best one of the lot.

I adjusted the pattern by not doing as much smocking and putting in some horizontal pleats above the smocking. I used the space above the pleats for some Brazilian embroidery.

Here’s the details of the center motif.

The French knots are pretty standard embroidery technique. Click on the links, if you want instructions on how to do the Stem Stitch, Bullion Stitch, Leaf Stitch or Couching.

I used Rayon floss for the embroidery. I like the sheen of Rayon floss. The embroidery floss below are all very similar in shade, but notice how the sheen increases from left to right? Brazilian embroidery uses floss (what is the plural of floss? Floss, Flosses, Flossi?) with a variety of sheens, textures and weights. Since it’s a three-dimensional technique, the more variety you have in your floss, the more interesting the end results.

I did a similar motif on the collar.

I hand-stitched all the lace on this dress. It was easier than trying to figure out how to do it with a machine, plus I dislike seeing machine stitching on lace.

I also ordered the lace off of eBay. I still have quite a bit of it left. I like the repeat of the bullion stitch in the lace and echo of the motif in both the lace and the embroidery. It’s almost like I planned it that way!

I had enough leftover material from the wedding dress to use for the sleeves of Miss Sunshine’s dress. The major bonus to this move was that I saved me the step of hemming the sleeve. I hate hemming. I’d smock any day before I’d hem. It’s not like hemming is even hard, it just annoys me for some reason.

I have no reason to be smocking anything these days. The two blessing gowns are, in fact, the only things I’ve ever smocked. However, I truly love this art. I love the repetition and how it looks on the dress. It’s a timeless design and if I ever have granddaughters, you can bet they’ll get something smocked from their favorite Grand-Maja. I’ll be keeping my eye open for a pleater in the meantime.

I also used some leftover material from the wedding dress for the bonnet.

I was so happy to make this dress for Miss Sunshine.

One thing to note on this pattern. I used the newborn size (smallest size on the pattern) for every dress I made. I’m not sure what mammoth baby Vogue considers a “newborn,” but I’m fairly certain I would not want to give birth to the child they used for pattern sizing!

Here’s Miss Sunshine in the dress at four months! Notice she is NOT newborn and how well the dress and bonnet fit.

I love that girl, but my time with her has been limited to just a few visits. She’s sassy and sweet and girly and, urgh, I wish I could spend more time with her.

Here she is as a cute 7-year old.

Suesan

It’s All In The Risk

The Nester is have a National {Not Really} Take A Risk Day. I got me thinking about the risks I’m willing to take.

My most recent risk is my Ancestral Map Settee.

It wasn’t really a risk for me to tackle the project. I’ve done other upholstery projects before and I knew this one would be pretty straight-forward.

Deciding to draw the map on the fabric and paint it, that was a risk. I hadn’t seen anyone do something like that. I could see in my head how I wanted it to look, but sometimes translating the visions in your head into reality can be a tricky process.

I also took a bold risk of color when I redid my dresser.

I’m not totally sure how I feel about the color choice. I love all the colors individually, but together, I’m not sure. I certainly don’t want to repaint it any time soon, but I have yet to figure out the direction for my room.

The bedspread that I bought for my room has torn and will need to be replaced. The green of the dresser matched the bedspread, so I’m not sure if I’ll keep this color or not. Since I have the settee in my bedroom, I’m leaning more towards a pastel pallet that pulls from the colors in the settee, which means the red would have to go.

The other risk I took with the dresser was coming up with the embossed panel.

Again, this was a matter of taking an idea in my head and trying to make it a reality. I love the design and no matter what color I paint on the dresser, I’ll happily keep the embossed panel.

My lampshade was also a risk. It could have gone from pretty to kitschy in about 3 beads.

I love this lamp shade, but I’ve yet to make a matching one for the other lamp. It was so much work and I really need to find a different frame for the shade. One that has side supports. My love of beads and glass will never leave and I truly enjoy this lampshade.

It’s easy for me to see a project on a blog and think, “I can do that.” Getting ideas is why I look at blogs. Blogs and companies give us inspiration and direction and help us create beautiful things for our homes.

Knocking off Pottery Barn or Anthropology or any other place is about copying someone else’s creativity. Don’t get me wrong. There’s no shame in knocking off one of the big guys and making something for pennies that they’re trying to sell you for top dollar. In fact, I plan to knock off PB’s butterfly pillows soon.

But knock offs are not generally risks. Taking a risk means moving out of your comfort zone. It means tapping into that inner voice that’s giving you guidance and direction on a project. It’s looking at something and seeing the potential.

People ask me where I get my ideas. I don’t know. I’ve seen map projects on the blogs for awhile now and I’ve loved every one that I’ve seen. My sister just started a genealogy blog and I’ve been helping her a bit with that, so genealogy has been on my mind.

I follow the lovely Marian at Miss Mustard Seed and the delightful Donna at Funky Junk Interiors. I think if they had a love child, it’d be me. Both of their styles are so different, but the both do things that I absolutely love. Both of them, coincidentally, are no stranger to risks. Maybe that’s one of the reason I follow them?

You throw all those things into my head, and out comes an Ancestral Map Settee. It was a risk, but the greater risk, in my mind, is to be safe. Not take a chance. Not listen to that voice that speaks to you. Being safe has it’s place, but when it comes to creativity, there’s got to be a risk.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct arising from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves. – Carl Jung

What risks have you taken lately?

Suesan

How to Highlight Author Comments in Blogger

This originally appeared as a guest post on My Repurposed Life! I’m reposting it  in case you missed it.
_________________________________________________________

I am something of a tinkerer. I like to figure out how things work. This is especially true when it comes to blogs. As I tour through Blogland, I see things I like and I try to figure out how to do it. A few months ago, I found a blog where the author’s comments were in a different color than the other comments. I liked that look and wanted to do.

I tried out a couple of the comment gadgets that are designed to do a similar thing, but I found my blog slowed way down when I used them. I wanted another solution.

I went looking around and I found some tutorials that were written by people who assume you have a basic understanding of HTML and all that fun, technical mumbo-jumbo. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes from glazing over and rolling back in my head as I try to read those type of blogs.

Since Gail asked me how I did this on my blog, I thought I’d save you from the Geek Speak and show you how you can do this for your blog.

Back Up Your Blog

For the sake of your sanity, be sure to back up your blog BEFORE you make any changes. If you’re like me, you’ve probably done some customizations and tweaking of your blog. You don’t want to loose all your customizations. Also, as a best practice (that’s Geek Speak for “Good Idea”), you should back up your blog on a regular basis. I try to do it every time I do a new post.

Go to your Dashboard in Blogger.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Blogger has decided to place the Delete Blog and Export Blog links so close together. Whatever you do, don’t click the Delete Blog button!

It will automatically save in your My Documents>Downloads folder. You can move it into another folder after the download, if you want. I just leave mine in my downloads folder.

Get Color Codes

You need to figure out the HEX Codes for the colors you want to use. For this tutorial, we will  not be changing the comment text color. The comment color is the same as your post text color. You need a good contrasting color for the background and for the border. I used a light gray (#dddddd) for my background and a red (#771100) for the border.

The easiest way to find the color codes you want is to use the Template Designer. Since I’m helping my sister get her blog up and running, I’ll be using her blog for the rest of the tutorials.

 

Select the Template Designer and go to the Advanced option.

Some of the tutorials I’ve seen on this state that each template has slightly different coding. Miss Jenn’s blog is using the Picture Window Template.

Under the Advanced Section, click on the Links option, and three boxes come up with colors and HEX Codes.

Template Designer shows you the colors that are a part of your particular template, and it also recommends some other colors for you. If you click on one of the colors, you’ll see the HEX code as I circled in the above photo.

Write down the HEX code for the background and border color you’d like to try. I would suggest a slightly lighter or darker background than your regular post background, and a coordinating color for the border. You might want to write the codes down for a couple of options to play around with them and see how you like them later on.

NOTE: Before you leave this section, make sure the colors in each section are the actual colors you want applied to the links. If you can’t remember the original colors, you can go Back to Blogger which will erase any changes you’ve made.

Add CSS Code

While we are still in the Template Designer, let’s go ahead and add the first and easiest part of the new code. Scroll down to the bottom from the Links option and find the Add CSS option.

Click in the white box in the Add CSS area and paste in this code:

.author-comments { background: #ffffff; border: 2px solid #666666; padding: 5px; }

Replace the HEX codes in this code, with the codes you selected and wrote down. Be sure you have the ; after the HEX code.  

Apply To Blog, to save the changes you’ve made and then go Back to Blogger to exit out of the Template Designer.

Edit the HTML Code

Here’s where it gets a little tricky, as we need to edit the HTML code. Be sure to check the box to Expand Widget Templates.

Next, you want to search for the section of code that looks similar to this code: 

<dl id='comments-block'> <b:loop values='data:post.comments' var='comment'> <dt class='comment-author' expr:id='"comment-" + data:comment.id'> <a expr:name='"comment-" + data:comment.id'/> <b:if cond='data:comment.authorUrl'> <a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl' rel='nofollow'><data:comment.author/></a> <b:else/> <data:comment.author/> </b:if> said... </dt> <dd class='comment-body'> <b:if cond='data:comment.isDeleted'> <span class='deleted-comment'><data:comment.body/></span> <b:else/> <p><data:comment.body/></p> </b:if> </dd> <dd class='comment-footer'> <span class='comment-timestamp'> <a expr:href='"#comment-" + data: comment.id' title='comment permalink'> <data:comment.timestamp/> </a> <b:include data='comment' name='commentDeleteIcon'/> </span> </dd> </b:loop> </dl>

I say, “similar” because with the differences in templates, your code may not look EXACTLY the same as this code. As long as you see the sections I’ve highlighted below, you’re in the right spot. 
If you’re having trouble finding the section of code, try searching (Ctrl + F) for the text I highlighted below. You can copy it from the above box.
Follow the instructions in this picture.

New Code #1

Put this code after the line. The easiest way to do it is to just copy the whole section and paste it in. 

<b:if cond='data:comment.author == data:post.author'> <dd class='author-comments'> <p><data:comment.body/></p> </dd> <b:else/>

New Code #2  
Put this code after the line. Again, highlight, copy (Ctrl+c)paste (Ctrl+v) in the code.

</b:if>

After you paste in the new code, Save Template, and trust that the code works.
If Blogger lets you save it, you can assume the code was entered correctly.   NOTE: I’d love to tell you to Preview it before you save, but you can’t actually see the comment section when you’re looking at the Preview screen. In this case, Preview doesn’t do you any good. You have to Save Template to see if it worked.
If it didn’t, this is why we backed up our blog before we started. :D   If you did it right, you’ll see your comments are now all highlighted, like so (remember, this is my sister’s blog so Miss Jenn is the author, not Suesan):

Okay, so maybe that whole conversation was just me, but still, Miss Jenn totally approved of it! Go ahead, ask her. She’ll gladly tell you how awesome I am, that I am a great sister how much she likes her highlighted author comments.

I hope this helps you highlight your comments to let your readers better see  your responses to their comments and questions.

Thanks for letting me share today, Gail!

Suesan

Settee – The Big Finish

Are you ready for it? If you’ve followed me on my journey to refinish & reupholster my $20 garage sale settee, you know this project has taken me some time to complete.

To remind you, here’s the before:

If you saw my last installment, you know that I used a drop cloth for the upholstery, but I took things a step further and drew/painted a map onto the fabric. I made the map an ancestral map of our family by writing in our ancestors names in the location where they were born, along with the year of their birth.

Without further ado, here’s the final settee.

I won’t attempt to show you the entire reupholstering project. If you want to tackle a project like this, I suggest looking to your local library for some upholstery books with good pictures to guide you.

Here are some steps I did.

I added some padding to the settee. It wasn’t very cushy so I bought a foam mattress pad at the dollar store and cut it to fit.

It was not long enough for the top section so I pieced it together.

For the seat back, I used a thin layer of bonded cotton I had on hand to cover the foam.

 

On the bottom, I reused the cotton batting that was originally on the settee. I put the batting over the foam.

I also sewed a row of piping at the bottom edge of the seat back piece. This was done on the original upholstery and I was tempted to skip this step. I’m glad I didn’t. The pink ruffle piece tucks between the seat and back and gets stapled from behind. The pleats in it help ease it around the curves.

The row of piping finishes the piece off nicely and helped ease the fabric around the corners. If you want to learn how to make piping, Miss Mustard Seed has a great tutorial. I watched her video before making mine and it helped a lot.

 

My apologies to California.  You lost a bit of land in this process. When I originally pinned the fabric together before drawing the map, I knew that the potential was very high for things not lining up when I put it all together. I’m happy I was able to match up the states as well as I did.

I had a few panic moments. The pressure on the staple gun was set too high and the first few staples tore through the fabric. I think my heart stopped beating for several seconds. I made the necessary adjustments, pulled the fabric tighter and restapled. Save!

Because of where the staples had to go and where the edge of the wood was, the gimp that I bought to cover the staples was too narrow. Another moment of panic set in. I realized I was going to need to make some double-welt cord to finish it off.

I found a great tutorial at Centsational Girl that saved the day. Three packages of cord later and a Friday night spent sewing had me in business.

I believe that double-welt cord is the repentance of upholstering. We all have made mistakes. We have areas and blemishes in our lives.

Then we repent and our lives are beautiful once more. Double-welt cording covers ALL our upholstering sins. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. As is true repentance.

Overall, I’m very happy with how the settee turned out. I do wish I had put my map symbols closer to the maps. I ended up having to cover a part of them with welting, and it bugs me a little bit because I love these emblems.

I also ended up have to put a pleat above each leg in the back. If I had pulled the fabric tighter and eliminated the tuck, I would have lost even more of the emblems.

 

Can you spot the napping doggy?

I also made a new bumper for the back.

Here’s what the old bumper looked like:

  It was an epic battle to remove that stupid little piece. I eventually conquered it, but I almost chucked the whole piece of furniture in the trash because this piece would. NOT. come. off!

Oh hey, look. You can see my great-great-great-great-grandfather’s name. He was a Chippewa Indian. Kah Ge Gay Oh De Mo Quay. His daughter, Mary O-taun-tug (O-Don-Duck) married Daniel Rohrer, a white clerk at a nearby Army outpost. They had great-great-grandmother, Clara Rohrer or Mo-ko-maun-e-quay which means Little Knife. Clara later migrated to Hawaii and now I am a part of the Mossman Ohana (Ohana means family) from Hawaii.

I couldn’t be more pleased with the settee. Did I say that already? I’m going to say it again. I love this settee!

It’s unique to our family and I’m happy with the look. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t fast. It was a labor of love, but I’m okay with doing projects like that from time to time. I think those pieces have value, too.

One final note. A friend asked me how I was protecting the piece. In truth, I hadn’t even thought about that. I will need to go back and add some Scotch Guard to the seat and back of the couch. If you’re going to attempt a similar project, I recommend Scotch Guarding the fabric prior to upholstering.

Cost Breakdown:

• Garage Sale Settee - $20.00
• De-Upholstering and Reinforcing – $49.33
• Stripping & Refinishing - $15.39
• Painted Fabric - $23.98
• Foam Mattress Pad - $12.00
• 3 Packages Cotton Cord - $6.77 (I had two 40% off coupons and one 50% off coupon!)
• Bonded Cotton/Sheet – Stash on Hand

Total Project Cost - $127.47

Suesan

If you missed the other posts in the series, here they are:

1. Settee - De-Upholstering and Reinforcing
2. Settee – Restoring the Wood Finish
3. Painting on a Drop Cloth – On Purpose
4. Settee – The Big Finish

I’m linking up: