Painting a Rug

Immediately post my wedding I has shuttling between cities, getting adjusted to running the house, and doing a whole lot of things that were either new (and needed getting used to) or boring (and needed getting adjusted to). This ensured that my crafting had come to a complete stop. Life was awesome, but was missing a certain cheap-thrills / glee element. So when I took a break to get my messed up health back on track, I decided to ensure that my previously sporadic crafting would now become a regular part of life.

One of the first plans I made was to beautify the everyday use objects that were in desperate need of pretti-fication. When I mentioned this to Shri, his response was "They do??" (Amazingly awesome husband though Shri is; he can live with butt-ugly stuff and never notice). So I started. The first item on my list was a boring, striped cotton area rug. Although eminently useful and colorful, it lacked what I like to call either 'character' or 'pizzazz'.

The colors on the rug kinda made me think of the Savannah (or the fact that I was watching a series on animal life in Africa did). So I decided to paint some animals silhouettes on it, the way they are seen against the evening  / morning light in the documentaries. Of,course, the fact that this meant using a single color was an important deciding factor. :P

This is kinda what inspired me

Once I had decided to do animal silhouettes, I had to choose animals. And I quickly realized that the very bright colors on the rug would dampen the impact that most animal silhouettes would have. So I needed a very distinctive shape, and found that the giraffe best suited my needs. I cut out a giraffe shape in card-paper, and then used it to trace outlines onto the rug in chalk. This helped me decide on the placement, and also ensured that I would not have to deal with a stencil while painting. I was worried that paint may bleed off the edges of a paper / card stencil onto the surrounding areas; particularly since the rug was a very absorbent cotton.

Used a nice brown shade in fabric colors, and applied about three coats for each silhouette. This was the first one.



Once I was sure I liked what I was making, I added another four behind the first one to complete the side.


Originally, I had thought of painting on only one side of the rug. But with one side complete, I realized that I would have to paint the other side as well! So more paint was bought, and more giraffe's appeared on the other end of the rug. End result - awesome looking rug that is still looking good and making our living room look cool 2 years later. :)

Butterfly's on a Clock

Recently (OK, not so recently) I had ordered a mirror finish clock off a shopping website. It's a simple round clock face, with a few butterfly's flying out of it. It fit in perfectly with the minimalist/classic/natural theme of my attempts at decor. The only problem was, when it got delivered, it had a crack. Right in the middle, and eminently noticeable, thanks to the clear glassy surface.


The website I had ordered from was nice enough to try and replace it, failing which they provided me with a generous voucher which I have since used to buy some awesome dinnerware. But the clock still sat in a corner, since we had no idea what to do with it (and I HATE throwing stuff out). Then the other day I suddenly remembered that Aparna had sent me some adorable butterfly cutouts. So They were dug out to see if any would cover the crack properly. And what do you know?? One did!









The clock had come with a number of double sided sticky dots. Using one, I managed to secure the butterfly flat to the clock-face. Thus "repaired", the clock promptly went up on the wall. I decided to add a couple more of Aparna's butterfly's along with the mirror finish ones just so there's some color; and voila! Awesome time-telling wall decor was in action.

Flared Cotton Top

My fascination with clothes continues. As does my desire to try stunts. The biggest issue I had with the previously made Kaftan Top was that it bellowed around the belly. Now I wanted to make something that was simple, but comfortable and flattering. So a basic flared top like the one shown here was the chosen victim.

The original tutorial was written with jersey fabric in mind, but I (the one with abundant foolhardiness) decided to experiment with a soft cotton instead. 'Why, Why when you are just learning?' you may ask. Well, for one, I love using cotton and for another, finding jersey or other soft knits in my area in a pain in the brain! The question of the day now was: Would the flared hem fall as gracefully in cotton, or would it stick out comically?

I am glad to say that it sits reasonably well. It's a li'l flared and fun, and thankfully, not comical.

I chose to use some prudence, and cut the sleeves without any flare. With my not-at-all-slim frame, I really can't carry off floppy sleeves; particularly in cotton. This gave the whole thing a rather simplistic look, but I like that.

The one mistake-ish I made, is that I tried to fold over the edges and stitch for the armholes, neck and hem. While this works perfectly for the armholes and the hem, it's not the best idea for a curved neckline! Cotton does not feel happy about being folded and stitched over... so I got a really narrow hem (and may just have skewed the neckline a bit at that).






 At this point I tried the top on, and it kinda floated around me a little funnily.

To ensure that it fit, I put in darts at the back. This image and tutorial supplied by Melanie Rose gives an idea of the various ways to use darts in different locations. I put in two darts in the back (the orange markings for the back in the diagram), and suddenly the thing looked just purty!







And so, the top was ready for use. I did a library run in it, and it felt really comfy and felt good. Happy days!