Degardening

What is degardening?  It's what you do when you remove sad features from past gardeners that are making the whole thing worse.  Here's my before for my back garden fence.

Pretty, isn't it?  Oh wait, no it isn't.  The good news is that fixing this was a simple job for the electric screwdriver (cos I'm lazy).

Oh and trying not to step on/ cut when cutting up the branches for the bin/ squash with the fence a certain ginger cat...

But here's the job un-done!

The dead leaves that were caught in it have marked the fence a bit but that should was off with a bit of rain.

So not a big project but perhaps inspiration for you to get a little but annoying thing out of your life!

This is a little one but I actually got a 'little job' done.  I had a lace curtain in my bedroom that was way too long.  For several months I tried to pretend that it was OK because it was artistically draped but the reality of a little kitten meant I had to do something.

This is the point I would show you the before photo. 'Aha' I thought.  I don't need to worry as I can use that photo from when I first painted.  Trouble is, it turns out that photo was prior to me getting the curtain.  So the short version is, I don't have a before.  But I did cut off over 20 cm of material and the amount of material folded over for the new pocket was... hmm, 5+5 for the pocket, 1.5+1.5 for the bit at the top plus another 1cm for the folded mock french seam... 14cm?  ish?

Anyway, there was a lot of excess.  Got that mental picture in your head?

OK.  So here's the after.  I was quietly astonished that it is A) straight and B) not a teeeeennyy bit too long or short in a Murphy's law kind of way.  Woohoo!

It wasn't terribly high tech.  Basically I first measured to see what length I wanted (197 cm).  Then I laid it out in the most open area I had (dinning room floor).   Then I did the above again AFTER the cat didn't think this was the best new toy ever *sigh*
Using pins, I added a pin to mark the bottom of the pocket, top of the pocket (5cm), 1.5 for the top bit x2 (as it will be folded over here), 5cm for the other side of the pocket and 1cm to fold over for the seam.  That was the point that I then very very carefully cut so it wasn't wonky.

After that, I pressed the folds before sewing (very low heat, no steam as I think it was synthetic material).  That made the sewing SO much easier.  Fold the 1cm edge over first (this hides it in the pocket and makes a nice finish) and press.  Then I used the nice ironed line to measure the other fold line- 6.5 cm from the new fold to the old, pin in place then press.

Finally, sew the two seams- I used a zig zag stitch as my two second google research says that's best for lace/shear fabric.  One just above the bottom fold first (the bottom of the pocket) then the other at the top pocket line.  Not having a cat jump on the material can be helpful in this case, as can that cat not deciding that it was time for cuddles...

And of course don't get me started about putting the curtain up and the joy of a certain four legged, fur covered creature deciding to play with the big pile of lace again...  Sill, he's cute so he's easily forgiven.

House update

And here is the finished result of the bedroom.  The walls are a white now rather than cream except the feature wall that is 'canoe blue'.  Ignore the cable in the bottom left- it goes to the fan that is only temporary but essential (it only got to 30C minimum last night so the fan is a necessity!).

The heat also puts the breaks on more DIY so I'm back to arranging the house etc.

A new craft challenge- house ownership

I've hit one of those landmarks in life that shows that I'm in adult mode, I've started the next big adventure- home ownership!  It isn't much, a little two bedroom place (or rather, one bedroom and one craft room) but I can do what I want with it and no one can complain.

So to ease into my life of DIY I'm going to start with the main bedroom.  Apart from having a faint to strong scent of the previous tenant's smoking habit (urghhhh!!!), it also has a very... brown... feel.  Plus I won't be into the place properly for a few more days yet since I'm hiring big strong backs with a truck to move the furniture to the new place so the only things over there are things that I can move myself.

Well apart from the piles of clothing, but they are only temporary!

That's a chocolate brown feature wall.  Not necessarily bad, per say but with the bits I can't change easily right now (beige wardrobe, beige window frame and a beigy grey carpet) it's really brown.

So step one is now complete.  I've taken the curtains down to wash (not a pleasant job when I saw the colour of the water after the first few rounds but they came up well), used lots of bicarb on the carpet to hopefully absorb odours from the carpets and I've given the walls a wash to prepare them for paint.  Next step, fill in holes and decide on colours- stay tuned for updates!