Who says tools need to be housed in hoe-hum masculine metal drawers? NOT I

I recently saw this post on Little Green Notebook about her tiny NY apartment and tool storage dilemma. She posted pictures of a Mary McDonald's designer solution for office file storage.

A few images I like...

A ruched trim before adding the extra border. How about a little ruffle or just clean and simple.  I think a border can add even more dimension and style to this type of duvet.










Hopefully this image with help clarify were the pintucks go and why I added the 5" squares to the center of the 10" squares. You could just mark the pintuck positions with dots but the lines and boxes were helpful to me so that I could keep everything lined up straight.  If you decide to use the template method like I did I used all the line on the grid to line my template up to making it very visually easy to everything square.
 



Hopefully this was helpful and I answered all of your questions. 


xoxo,

Finally I finished it and I love it. It's interesting how something so simple can make such a breath taking statement.  I'll have to do a room tour in another post since Blake and I have been hard at work putting the finishing touches on our bed. That's right we built a bed. I even used a table saw. But enough of that lets get to the DIY details of this project. Here's a little history on the project.

I originally bought this duvet from West Elm in Sea Spray. It was gorgeous I loved it and the price wasn't half bad at just $99 dollars. Unfortunately it was basically a piece of CRAP!!!!  It's made from  230 thread count organic cotton, but really you should substitute organic with scratchy and paper thin plus because of the nature of pintucks  you have a basillion pressure point for tearing and boy did it ever. We are talking if you sat on it rip, if you pulled the covers over you at night, rip, If Toulouse smelled it rip, If you looked at it sideways rip. It lasted all of about 3 days, Ahhhhhhhhhh. I was so irritated and I sent the baby back post haste. This led to problem #2 "Finding a Replacement". I loved the color and structure of the West Elm Duvet after hours of searching I found several similarly structured duvets & comforters TARGET, ANTHROPOLOGIE, NORDSTROMS  but either the price, color or the fact the it was a comforter and not a duvet lead me to face the facts. I was going to have to make this myself. Queue the tiny violins.

I scoured the Internet for a pintuck tutorials and found this. Unfortunately I didn't want the twist method I wanted the tuck method (Insert Blake laughing as I tried showing him the obvious difference between the two) trust me they look different. So off I went to Anthropologie to purchase a $56 GASP pillow sham so I could recreate this elusive technique. After a little analysis I discovered it was  EASY, CRAZY EASY. However it's also time consuming, CRAZY TIME CONSUMING and that's why they charge you an arm and a leg. So now that you've been warned lets DIY.

MATERIALS:
Sewing Machine
Tailors Chalk
12x12 Quilt Square
123 Matching Cloth Shank Buttons or 4 hole buttons. (button shouldn't be bigger the 1/2")
Thread/ Sewing Needle
Fabric or Flat Sheet

OPTIONAL MATERIALS:
Pinking Shears
Extra Fabric

THE DETAILS:
I'm going to be focusing more on the pintuck technique on the duvet and less on the making of the duvet it's self. If that's what you're interested making a simple solid duvet is really easy. It's basically making a giant pillow case.  I would suggest using sheets since you probably won't want a giant seam down the middle of your duvet and it's hard to find fabric that's 110" wide.  Take the sheets right sides together and sew a 1/2" seam on three of the 4 sides. On the 4th side sew in towards the center of the sheets about 5-8" on either edge of the 4th side. Turn right sides out and add several buttons to the interior of the duvet and accompanying button holes to finish the closure of the duvet.
 

By sewing the buttons on the inside of the duvet and the button holes on the fabric closest to the mattress you won't be able to tell were the opening is and you'll have a clean finished edge. Personally I didn't want to  make the actual duvet so I purchased a $40 simple blue queen sized duvet and added the pintucks.

A FEW THOUGHTS:
If you decide to go the pre-made duvet route consider this. When you add in all of the pintucks it will make the actual size of the duvet smaller so I would suggest 2 things if you are making a queen duvet buy a king this will allow extra fabric for the pintucks and leave the finished duvet just the right size. Or you could add an additional fabric broader around the 4 sides of the duvet. Adding a little detail and making up the size difference. Also weather you get a pre-made duvet or you go with 2 flat sheets make sure to get a thead count of at least 300. It will be softer and the material with be much stronger.

STANDARD SIZES TO KNOW:
Twin Duvets: 86"x 68"
Queen Duvets: 88"x92"
King Duvets: 92" x 108"
* I purchased an over sized queen 92"x 96" however in hind sight I should have purchased the over sized king110"x 96" because I ended up unpicking 2 rows of pintucks to get the size I wanted.

THE GRID:

I drew the above grid on my fabric along with a 5" square inside of the 10" square to mark the point of the center pintuck... Like this.


After you have your grid all drawn out on your fabric you place a pintuck at every green dot and if your counting that 123 pintucks. Here's how you create the pintuck.

PINTUCK:
I made a 1"cardboard template and drew a line down the middle of the template. Leaving 1/2" on either side of the line.

You create the pintuck by pulling 1/2" pleat of fabric on either side of your grid line. If you are using a template to insure accuracy you align the center line on the template to the grid line on your fabric.  Pull fabric from either side of the template until they meet at the center line on the template. This will create you 1/2" Pleat.
Remove the template and sew a 1/2 inch or less straight stitch across the two folds of fabric. You could pin all of the  pintucks before hand but I found that the pins didn't hold the pintucks accurately so I just pleated the fabric as I went. Sorry these pictures are crummy I didn't realize how bad they were until I was already finished. 


 Repeating this step about a million times. LOL I really hate repetitious projects. this is why I don't knit. At this point your duvet should look exactly like the west Elm version and if you like that look you can be finished. However in lou of the problems I had with the West Elm duvet I also added a button to cover the stitches making it extra secure and a strengthening square of fabric to the back of every pintuck.
Well that's it, hopefully that wasn't to confusing and at least a tiny bit helpful. If you have any questions comment below and I will try and answer them if I can. I couldn't be more please with the way mine turned out. Would I do it again?... that remains to be seen. 123 pintucks + 123 buttons is a lot for a girl who hates to do 2 reps of push ups, but I would defiantly pay someone to do it for me {wink wink}. Here's hoping it lasts until I can afford to do so.

xoxo,


A few questions answered HERE

Here is the beading sequence encase you don't want to watch the videos 5 times.

1ST HALF ...............2ND HALF
5 Beads .................................3 Beads
Cross .....................................Cross
...............................................2 Left Beads
4 Beads
Cross..................................... 2 Beads
1 Left Bead............................ Cross
..............................................2 Left Beads
3 Beads
Cross .................................... 2 Beads
1 Left Bead............................ Cross
...............................................2 Left Beads
3 Beads
Cross..................................... 2 Beads
1 Left Bead............................ Cross
...............................................3Left Beads
3 Beads
Cross...................................... 1 Bead
2 Left Beads .......................... Cross
................................................4 Left Beads, ties 2 square knots
2 Beads
Cross
1 Left Bead


Product Links:
The Lace Place

Well Look at that a tutorial just for you.


I have had these three frames empty in my living room for months. So I decided it was high time they got a little love. I'm really into silhouettes these days. I love how they can capture the spirit of a person or object without the attention of tons of detail or color. Plus even if you are totally un-photogenic, like me you'll turn out looking pretty good. The tutorial below will give you all the details on the project, except how I got the original silhouettes. So I'll explain that now before we move on.

On Sunday the dogs, Blake and I headed over to a neighboring apartment building where they so graciously provided us with a white brick wall. We took some digital pictures of our shadows...



Then because we took the shadow pictures on a textured wall and I'm a bit of a perfectionist I put the pictures into illustrator and traced over them so that the outlines of the shadows would be perfect.


As you can see I also took a few creative liberties and fixed my messy bun and added a flower. However as I mention in the video, if you don't have access to illustrator or you don't know how to use it, this is still a project you can do. If you take your shadow picture on a smooth lite colored wall you will get a much crisper shadow result. You can then use your printed photographs as templates. Cut out your photo shadow and trace it onto the cardstock to create your silhouette. Plus if you set up a tripod so that the picture are take from the exact same distance and perspective your images will be all the same size and proportion. Instead of like mine where we just held the camera and then I had to size everything in the computer. Below you'll find the rest of the tutorial.

ENJOY!



Also a freebie.... Gee wiz I'm getting generous this morning. These are the hands I used in the tutorial all you need to do is save to your computer and print. They are already sized to fit a 5 1/2" x 5 1/2" frame so it should be a snap.



xoxo,