Reverse Applique

I was inspired by InStyle magazine telling me that denim vests are BACK!

Look-there's Jessica Alba wearing a flowey dress with a denim vest!

I went to the thrift store and picked up a denim jacket for $4. I immediately cut off the sleeves. It was a little boxy and made me look ...I don't know a little less Alba and a little more

I went home and went to work. First I took in the side seams to make it more fitted. Then I took some inspiration from this guy:

He's cute, but look at his shirt. SKULL! I found a tutorial online for a reverse applique of a skull and will show you how I used it here:

http://www.lilblueboo.com/2009/04/reverse-applique.html

So the first thing I did was pick fabric from my scrap pile and laid it on the INSIDE of my denim vest.

Then I drew a skull on a piece of paper.

 I didn't have any interfacing on hand so I used muslin for stability. I cut out my paper skull and traced it on to the muslin. 

Then I sewed over the drawing (like tracing it with thread, if you will). It used my free-hand presser foot-there's a name for it that I can't remember. It's for quilting, etc. It definitely takes some practice, so I went back to my regular presser foot. 

Next, I flipped it over and cut right along the stitch lines-very carefully so I only cut the denim and not the fabric underneath. See how it exposes the pretty fabric, yet looks so rockin' at the same time?

It's starting to look like a skull!

I finished by adding two flower eyes from another scrap fabric and now it looks like this! I'll add a better picture when I can. This picture was taken by a 4 year old...

Fabric Cabinets

I'm always working on some sort of project in my house. I thought I'd document my progress/obsession for all to read about. Everyone is interested in what I do to my house, right?

My very first blog post ever should be about the project that drove me crazy and is loved by only me-my fabric cabinets. It all started with a trip to Fancy Tiger (owned by best-friend-from-jr. high Jaime Jennings-how about that?), where I bought the cutest fabric to make curtains for my kitchen. They were so beautiful, I thought painting the cabinets red would really make my kitchen awesome!

See? Isn't that fabric awesome? So I made the curtains and bought Rustoleum Cabinet Re-finisher. I bought it in a cherry-ish color because the other "red" color, Paprika, looked a little too orange. This product promises to make your cabinets look new and amazing without sanding-sign me up. However, it's not easy. First I watched the instructional DVD twice, then I went to work. I took off all the cabinets, all the hardware-my house was a disaster. Our house is slightly over 1000 square feet, I had the cabinet doors laid out all over the kitchen, dining and living room. I followed the time consuming steps: 1. Primer, wait 90 minutes 2. Color, wait 90 minutes 3. stain, wait 6 hours 4. finish, wait 12 hours 5. put your kitchen back together/get your life back in order. After all that work. The cabinets looked awful.

OK, the doors looked great-but they were made 3 years ago by my brother. The cabinet bases, which are original, looked terrible-every bad, goopey paint job from the last 50 years was highlighted by this new finish. There was no way I was going to paint these again (or sand anything, for that matter). Since I had recently seen all those great fabrics at Jaime's store, I wondered if I could fix it with fabric. I went in and consulted with them. I was directed to the laminate covered fabric. I bought a 1/2 yard to test it, when it worked, I went back and bought 3 more yards. Here are the results.

I used a spray adhesive and some carpet tacks to keep the fabric attached. I did have to take all the doors off and put them on again, but it was still easier than painting. Of course, the bird fabric that started it all really competed with the cabinet fabric so I moved those to the dining room, headed back to Fancy Tiger, got new fabric and made new curtains. Ahhh. I've had the fabric cabinets since March and I still love it. I'm not sure how we'll ever sell this house with fabric cabinets, maybe we'll just never move.