After getting somewhat distracted with a change of room colour scheme and an Ikea binge, I finally made the time last Saturday to complete my little project promise. Whilst the timing of completion was a little later than intended, the bonus was that I got to spend some quality time with my wonderful mother. It turned out that she too required a cover for her new sewing machine!
I was going to use the tutorials that I mentioned here, however we threw caution to the wind and decided in true DIY fashion - to actually do it all ourselves. We bought some pre-quilted wadding to line our covers with, providing some structure, bulky-softness and oomph! We really didn't get too technical in the pattern making stakes. It pretty much involved flopping our material over our machine of choice and measuring it with our tape measure. We cut the fabric out according to our measurements and kinda made it up from there.
Have I told you how awesome my Mum's sewing skills are? They're pretty spectacular. We cut all the pieces out and overlocked the wadding onto the fabric. I got a little anal and decided to iron mine.
Yuh-huh. That is a tiny table ironing board ($9.99. Thanks Ikea!). I actually bought it for Adam to use at the Academy, but it turns out, they have plenty of ironing boards up there. After that we started sewing the pieces together. Mum was considerably faster at it than me, but then she's had a lot more experience. There is only so much I could learn watching from my bouncer as a bub. While Mum and I were having quality mother-daughter time, Adam was downstairs tinkering with his mame cabinet.
Ever since we started dating, Adam has had moments when he likes to make it hard for me to take a photo of him. This was the best I could get, and even though it still shows slight disdain - he still looks so handsome. You might be impressed by how tech-savvy he looks in this photo...With laptops, monitors, extra keyboards, joysticks and a clean organised work bench - but what I managed to cut out of the photo was this:
Yeah, there is a lot more to building a meme cabinet than playing with computers. He's got a lot of things going on at once - old tupperware containers, joysticks, random wires, a doorstop... But that's enough of him, now back to me!
I am in love with Mum's choice of fabric. Being that Mum was making a cover for her sewing machine, she needed a hole in the top of her cover to be able to use the handle to carry it. She had a little bit of a disaster here. First she lined the hole with a purple spot fabric, which was great in theory but it kept puckering and just looked dumb, so she cut that out and decided to use a fancy stitch around the edging to try to make it look better. That also looked like crap terrible, and as a result of all this change in technique, the hole just kept getting bigger and bigger. I tried to take a picture of it, but she kept covering it with her hands. I now know where I get my obsession with perfection from now.
This picture is WAY too flattering of the ugly big hole. All this talk of big holes resulted in our reminiscing and quoting Jo when he was little. You know the classic line from the little boy in Kindergarten Cop - Well one day Jonathan announced "Boys have penises and girls have big holes" which still cracks me up to this day. That...and the vision of him walking out of the bathroom, dressed only in a nappy, chewing on a tampon. It was a clean one, thank god. Ah the memories. So we were both feeling distraught and defeated in regards to the big hole. What to do? What to do? Mum was so displeased that she was considering starting all over again... when, like an angel sent from above Lady Mausey came knocking on our door!!
She immediately made a suggestion, that we had not thought of.
And with the precise skills of a plastic surgeon, Mum whipped up some very attractive flaps for her big hole. With the flaps in place, Mum's sewing machine cover was complete!
Isn't she purrty? With Adam, Mum and Nan present in the house, I decided to try a pregnancy test. You see on this day my periods were 4-5 days late. The test was negative, which accounts for how sad I look in the next photo. I got my periods very late in the next evening. It turns out my body was just being a jerk...who has a 39 day cycle?? I said this to Mum and her reply was that maybe my body was trying really hard, but just couldn't make it this time. That's a much nicer way to look at it. Oh well, back to the baby-making drawing board!
Here I am sewing the bottom binding onto my cover! See that thing on my wrist? That's a velvet-look, smiley-flower-shaped, slap-band pin-cushion. Yeah, if only you could be so cool. It was a Christmas present off Adam. He knows me too well.
Here's my cover. Complete and in action. Next time I would work it so that the sides are wider, but still... she fits and is going to look beautiful against the wall when it finally turns green. I am loving me the citrus. Ok. That doesn't make much sense....but you know what I mean. So not only have I said goodbye to my dead-ugly purple shopping bag masquerading as an overlocker cover... but I have also said au revoir to my clean and tidy spare bedroom. You see, Adam has been a busy little handyman and we are in the middle of changing our entire main bedroom. And so... yet again - the spare bedroom has become a temporary dumping ground.
I look forward to showing you the progress we have made, some day in the not-too-distant future.
