I took all the homemade, wonky, gluey hearts down from the wall in my kids’ room and it looked so sad and bare. The room needed some cheering up! First I was thinking I would let the kids go crazy with washi tape, then I thought maybe we could make some paper flowers and tape them up, but then I saw this amazing wall.
My daughter and I headed to the craft store to buy some [faux] flowers. I’m usually not down with fake flowers–or even buying that much plastic at once–but I have to admit some of these flowers are very,very pretty. The weedy looking ones are my favorite. I do believe I’m the only woman in the world buying plastic weeds.
Luckily all the fake flowers were half off, so we went a little crazy picking them out. My daughter fell hard for the bubblegum pink roses covered in fake water droplets. I was not so smitten, but she was so in love. When we got home I was messing with the flowers to see if I could get them to look a bit more natural and when I pulled back the petals on the rose, it turned into this absolutely gorgeous bloom. You can see how the rose looks closed and open above.
To hang all the flowers on the wall, I cut the bunches apart with a wire cutter and trimmed most of the leaves off as well. Then marked five rows on the wall. Working from the top down I simply taped each flower up so it was in line with the one above it. My rows aren’t perfectly spaced or perfectly straight, but the it’s the contrast of orderliness and nature I was going for–that’s what drew me to the first photo of flowers on the wall. Also, it’s just plain awesome to have a field of flowers on your bedroom wall.
For 20 dollars and an hour of our time, we managed to get spring to come a bit earlier in Wisconsin. Not bad, not bad at all.
It is almost spring, at least the forsythia thinks so. The weather man seems to think there is a winter storm in the works.
Either way, it’s a new month with a new batch of sponsors! Wouldn’t you like to be one? Sponsorship on elsie marley is only $25/month. I keep it small and affordable, so indie shops and little blogs can easily do it. You don’t need to be a professonal blogger (whatever that is!) to have a sponsor spot. Maybe you just want to get your blog out there and grow your readership a bit. With 50,000 unique visitors a month there will be plenty of people headed your way. I would love to introduce your shop or blog to elsie marley readers. Drop me a quick line at
elsiemarleyblog@gmail.com
and we can talk about sponsorship and the weather!
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So the winner is Ginger from chazandginger! I’ll email you shortly, Ginger and soon you’ll have a towel for your kitchen and a book for your bookshelf. If you like, you can head on over to amazon (or your local bookstore) and pick up your very own copy of Zakka Style.
Thank you, everyone, for telling me how you get here and to other blogs. It seems it’s a pretty even spit between google reader and good ol’ bookmarks. If those of you in the bookmark camp have never tried google reader, I highly recommend it. My bookmarks were a hot mess until I signed up. In google reader you can organize the blogs you follow, mark them to read later, and search all read and unread posts. The next button is a nice browsing feature where you can go directly to the most recently updated blog. Pip introduced me to it a few years ago.
Now I might just go make myself a cup of coffee and do a bit of blog reading like so many of you said you do in the mornings. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?
Rashida (of I heart Linen fame) contacted me a long while back to see if I would contribute to her new book, Zakka Style. Of course I said yes! I remade this project, so I could fix the pattern and change the colors a bit. I never did get around to making and selling these pocket pillowcases, but yay for my laziness because now you can make them!
The pattern really is quite easy and makes for a lovely gift. The diamonds are fiddly, I won’t lie, but you could skip them and sew any sort of patchwork your heart desires. The whole book is filled with simple and clever little things to make. And they are designed by some of my favorite people: Holly, Amanda, Leslie, and a good deal more.
I actually made two projects for the book, but the second one didn’t make the cut. Remember this towel I made? Well, I reworked that project as well: a little bigger, nicer patchwork, and in linen. This continuous towel doesn’t fit in my bathroom and though it does look kind of nice in my kitchen, I think it would look better in yours.
That’s right, a little giveaway for this Tuesday: Zakka Style and a zakka stylish linen towel. To enter yourselves in this giveaway, I would like it if you’d answer a question for me. How do you read blogs? Do you use google reader, links from facebook, twitter, flickr, pinterest, old fashioned bookmarks, something else entirely? I want elsie marley to be easily accessible to all of you, which is easier if I know how you are all accessing it :)
Ok so leave your answer before Thursday Feb. 23 at 9am and I’ll let the robots do the picking. This giveaway is open to all my lovely readers, no matter where you live. Good luck!
I wasn’t going to make my kids anything for christmas (what a horrible mother!) but then dammit, all my friends were making these beautiful robes for their kids. Basically I am 33 and was peer pressured into this sewing project.
Of course I’m glad I did sew them, because my kids look pretty adorable in their cozy flannel robes. The robe pattern came from Sewing For Boys, which I reviewed here. The pattern comes together very quickly. Leave off the pockets and you could have one finished in a few hours. Make your own fiddly pocket pattern with contrast piping and it will take you a lot longer.
There is one mistake in the book. You must connect the two front pattern pieces before you cut your fabric, but that important step is missing from the directions . I only realized this after I cut out all my pieces from the PLAID FABRIC! Oh, what’s that, you can’t tell? That is because I’m the master-plaid-matcher!
The fit of the robe is straight up old man robe. So sizes don’t matter all that much. I made the size 6/7 both for my 6 year old daughter and almost 5 year old son. The fit is great on both. For their 2 1/2 year old brother I made the 2/3 size, but I should have gone a size up. His robe did get a little shorter because of the plaid matching I had to do, but a bigger robe would have fit him better and for longer too.
A few other things I would do to the pattern if I make it again:
shorten the sleeves a bit. They are meant to roll up, which is why they are so long, but they roll up a little too much for my taste.
make the ties a least a foot longer. Makes it easier for little hands to tie (around those big bellies).
lengthen the pattern a bit–especially for the smaller sizes.
A couple things I did right the first time:
I made a hang-y up-y loop that I sewed inside each robe. It makes clean up time a tiny bit better.
I skipped the belt loops and just sewed the tie to the back of the robe in one spot. That way the belt cannot be used as a leash or a jump rope or weapon.
I read the fabric requirements. Each robe, each one, takes about 4 yards of fabric!
![a wall of [fake] flowers](http://mftfem.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/wallj3.jpg "a wall of [fake] flowers")
![making the flower wall [gif]](http://mftfem.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/gickr.com_3a0e41a5-d805-58d4-7d67-e497e8f9b343.gif "making the flower wall")
