Inspiration for future projects

So hello stranger, how have you been? 
The past three weeks went by so fast, I cannot believe it! When the weather was good, I took our little guy outside and enjoyed the sun while it lasted. So no sewing, a little bit of crocheting, but mostly I spent my time reading, catching up and finally sitting down with a huge pile of magazines and some lovely books I bought myself as well as reading up on my favorite blogs and web shops.

And while reading, making a list of new Makes to be done in the next few weeks/months to come.

So stay tuned for some skirts and dresses for my girl, some pants for the little guy and I want to make a cover for the bouncer chair, so our little boy is totally snug and comfortable.

See you soon!

Love,
Maartje

Pillowcases... final touches for the nursery

Hi there, so nice to meet you here on my blog!
As you know I have been busy the past few weeks to catch you up on all my Makes for the nursery for our little baby boy.

The final bits were some pillowcases to finish off the look. I found a great pilow cover tutorial on the lovely blog of MiekK, which you can find here (in Dutch).
Even for me, with only a bit of sewing experience, it was very easy and it turned out very well, if you don't mind me saying so ~smile~

I made two pillow covers, one measuring 50 x 50 cm and the other slightly bigger at 60 x 60 cm. 
Following the instructions step by step, I measured, cut and sewed both pillowcases, using a navy canvas and some left over fabric I used to reupholster the roman blind (blogpost can be found here) for the 50 x 50 pillow.
The second one I made from the same navy canvas and another left over piece of the postal bag fabric I used to make the memo board (blogged about that one here) and I only finished that one last Friday. Therefore you get to see the results now and not last week as I had planned ;-)

As you can see, the white Ikea chair got a completely new look and feel. By adding the postal bag fabric, it really lifted the color scheme of the room with the little bits of red and the sandy color of the pillowcase.

So here's a little peek into the nursery. Since the nursery is on the Northeastern side of our house, light is a challenge when taking pictures. So hope you can see how it all combines so well.

See you next time!

Love,
Maartje

Wall Art for a little boy's nursery

Oops, over a week has passed without posting a thing on my blog! I suppose I could say, life happened ~smile~
I have been enjoying our little boy a lot, getting to know him, which is so wonderful. His big sister is very loving towards him, I love how she has totally accepted him as part of our family! Since I am recovering well, I can spend more and more time out of bed and around our house. And that feels great!

I wanted to share a great and easy make with you today, the wall art I made for the nursery. Here goes!

So with the nursery almost turned around from a girly girl nursery to a baby boy one, I wanted to add some final touches to complete the look.

I wanted to make some wall art, using a blank canvas, some fabric and flock foil (grey and navy). I ordered the flocking material here and two days later it arrived in the mail, yay for fast deliveries! 

Since the birth announcement card had elephants on them, I wanted to include them in the nursery as well. A couple of weeks before J was born, I bought a lovely blackboard garland at Leen Bakker, shaped like elephants.

I used one of the elephants to outline the shape and cut out the pattern.

Then I placed the pattern on the flock material and using scissors, I cut out the elephants, one in grey and one in navy.

Then, using my iron and two pieces of fabric cut to fit the canvasses I wanted to use, I ironed the flock elephant onto the fabric. The grey elephant was ironed onto plain white fabric, and the navy elephant was combined with a grey and white gingham fabric. Make sure you use a tea towel between the flock and the iron when ironing the flock onto the fabric of your choice.

I let the fabric cool for about 15 minutes, before stapling them onto the canvasses. Finally I placed the canvasses onto the console in the nursery, where they will sit temporarily until I decide how and where to hang them on the grey wall ~smile~

This make was a lot of fun to do and not hard at all. Everyone can do this, so why don’t you give it a try. I would love to hear about your flocking projects!

Love,

Maartje

Reupholstering a roman blind

Hello again,

Has spring sprung where you are? Here, 15 days after Joppe was born, it is still very chilly. With a fierce wind blowing from the East, I have not taken our little boy outside yet. Hoping it will get better next week... 

On the upside, it gives me some time to catch up on blogging. I still promised you a post on the reupholstering of the roman blind, so here goes...

So, before Joppe was born, I wanted to make sure the nursery was suitable for the arrival of a little boy. Therefore I wanted to redo the roman blind, which was in the room. It was fuchsia pink and at first I decided to dye it a lovely navy blue, but unfortunately, as it was 100% polyester, the dye did not take at all.

So I had to think of something else to do. As the lampshade in the nursery was a navy and white-checkered fabric, I went to my favorite fabric shop and bought a few meters of matching fabric. Using fabric glue and my sewing machine, I reupholstered the roman blind.

The curtain has four stiffeners at the back of the curtain, so folding over the fabric where the tunneling is and using the fabric glue, was not an option. I cut into the fabric and sewed the seams.

Then I folded the fabric around the original curtain and using glue, I attached the seams to the back of the blind. That way I could secure the fabric before stitching it with my sewing machine. Using my crochet hook, I stuffed the fabric into the tunnels.

Then I turned curtain with the back facing forward and using the original stitching, I sewed the curtain so the horizontal panels were visible. If I did not do that, the fabric would look very weird when I would hang it back up in front of the window. It was a tricky job, because I was sewing with the back of the curtain facing up and it was 120 cm of straight sewing, it was quite hard to keep it straight. In the end, I am very happy with the result, even though the stitches are not perfectly straight.

And when hanging them, the nursery immediately turned into a boy’s room!

Have you ever done anything like this? Would love to hear from you!

Thanx for stopping by today!

Xoxo,

Maartje

Birth Announcement Card

Hi there!

Hope you are doing very well. Is it Spring already where you are? Or are you moving on to Fall if you are somewhere in the Southern hemisphere?

In The Netherlands the weather has been up and down, spring-like and with some snow showers as well. So Spring, get here already! I want to take our son outside for a walk!

In The Netherlands it’s custom to send cards with a birth announcement. There are so many cards, styles and prices to choose from, that it can be quite the challenge to find something suitable.

First up, I checked our supplier that made our daughter’s card two years ago, because we wanted the same card, in blue. Unfortunately they did not stock that specific card anymore, so I needed to think of an alternative.

We really wanted a card, which had navy blue in it, so with everything being open again, we could pursue that idea. Most cards for baby boys here are in baby blue, beige or maybe even light yellow or green. Only a few cards I could find, had navy in them, but I did not like them all.

I also wanted a card that had elephants on it, just the silhouette, but I could not find anything suitable. I made a secret board on Pinterest to collect ideas and I took those ideas to the printer’s. I drew the outline of the card on a piece of paper and the girl at the printer’s took my idea and worked out two different lay outs. My husband and I were unanimous that the one with four elephants on it, was nicest. I wanted them to be a bit smaller than the girl had suggested, and so she adapted the design for me.

I choose the ink colour that would be used to print them and we decided to make the elephants all in a different blue, making sure they we all the same colour, but the saturation would vary. One would be 100%, the second 75%, the third 50% and the fourth 25%. When the cards were printed and the husband picked them up, we were both very happy with the result!

And since the card has arrived overseas within one week, I can now post this on my blog ~smile~

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

Xoxo,

Maartje

One week ago...

... our son Joppe Wisse Maes was born! This past March 11 was the coldest since 1928! Today he is one week old already and doing very well!

Cannot help but want to show you a lovely picture my sister-in-law Anique made over the weekend of our two precious children. I am so grateful for these two little ones (as is the husband of course ~smile~)

I will pick up where I left off blogging last week in the next few days! I still want to share with you how I reupholstered the fuchsia pink roman blind in the nursery and I also made some wall art using flock foil.

Looking forward to hearing from you, wishing you a lovely week!

Xoxo Maartje

Makes by Maartje: Flag Garland

Hi again!

Hopeyou are doing well on your end of the world! Thanx for stopping bytoday and read up on my blog.

Inthis post I wanted to share my flag garlands. I made them to matchthe playpen mat and made two because I had enough flags to do so.Both have flags which measure approximately 10 x 12 cm and areattached using bias tape. One has seven flags and the other one five.

Ichose to make rectangular flags, as the playpen mat also has arectangular shape. The longer one I used to hang on the playpen. Theother one is now in the nursery, on the memo board.

Myidea for the one on the playpen is to iron the letters of our son'sname on it. That will be done later though, since he isn't born yet.Of course the husband and I already know his name, but will not shareyet ~smile~.

Asfor making the flags, I used a cutting mat and rotary cutter (which Ilike to call my fabric pizza knife ;-) ). It is an incredibly fastway to make same size rectangles with straight edges. Putting theright sides of the fabric together, I sewed three sides of the flagswith a regular straight stitch, leaving an opening to turn. Using oneof my crochet hooks, I pushed out the corners and ironed them flat.Then, using bias tape, I sewed the flags to the bias, one by one,without pinning them. As the flags are so small, this was no problem.I did adjust the sewing speed of my machine, allowing me to sewstraight. When I finished step one of sewing them together, I took ashortcut in folding and sewing the back of the bias tape, to avoidthe use of pins.

AgainI ironed the flags, folding over the bias tape and ironing that aswell. Forgot to take pictures, so I cannot show you. I do hope youunderstand what I mean. If not, do not hesitate to drop me an emailat makesbymaartje@gmail.comI would be very happy to help you!

FinallyI sewed the bias tape to finish the garlands and hung them on thememo board and playpen.

Thiswas a very easy and fun to do Make. It actually gave me enoughconfidence to sign up for a charity project, making a birthdaygarland for Happy HippoFoundation. My blogging friend Annemarie is organizing this andhas some information about it on her blog which you can find here.It is in Dutch but that might not be a problem for all of you. Goalis to make 300 garlands which can be given in a birthday box tounderprivileged children so they can have a lovely birthday party.More on that in another blogpost!

Ihope to have inspired you to make your own flag garland. It is an ideal way to use those left over fabric scraps and it makes for a great present for any newborn or just as a (birthday) present ~smile~.

Sofor now, thank you for stopping by for a visit!

Xoxo,

Maartje

Makes by Maartje: A Playpen Mat

Hello!

So lovely of you to come and visit my blog (again)! Today is all about the playpen mat I made for our son to be! As I am not experienced at all in writing tutorials, I hope you can understand my describing the different steps I took to make this Make! Hope you enjoy it and would love to hear from you.

So with our second child on the way and the creative spark that is slowly but surely bursting into a flame, I decided I wanted to make our son a playpen mat. My mother-in-law made one for our daughter two years ago, but this time I wanted to give it a go myself.

Our playpen measures 80 x 100 cm. With our daughter having hit her head a few times when she was tiny, I wanted to make one approximately 100 x 120 cm.

So I came up with the idea of using three different kinds of fabric. The color scheme for the nursery is navy, gray and white. Even though the playpen is in our living room, I decided to go with the same colors for the mat.

I bought four kinds of cotton fabric in various blues and prints. A navy one with small white dots, navy with small white stars, a patchwork fabric with stars and stripes, also in navy and white and last but not least, a Delft Blue like fabric with old fashioned mills, wooden shoes and tulips on them. But when laying out the design, I decided to not use the Delft Blue one as it did not complement the color pallet or style. That one will be used for another one of my Makes ~smile~

I cut two types of fabric into four rectangles and sewed them together. Nothing fancy, just straight forward sewing. I did hem the fabric as in my experience, babies do drool and puke on these mats from time to time. By hemming the fabric, it will surely survive our laundry machine ~smile~. After sewing, I ironed out the edges, giving it a straight and nice look. It also allowed me to iron out some creases in the fabric.

So the four blocks are the base of the mat. With the navy and white stars fabric, I made a border. Since my mat was a bit bigger than the base of the playpen, I wanted to use that same fabric as backing of the mat.

Before cutting and measuring the backing, I cut the edges. My mother-in-law helped me so I cut all of the fabric as economically as possible ~smile~.

For padding the playpen mat, I used a fairly thick duvet from my favorite Swedish shop, Ikea! I cut it into the right size, after I sewed the edges to the four rectangles.

Then I put the large panel of fabric on the floor, with the rest of the white star fabric underneath. Then I cut out the backing, remembering from one of the tutorials I read, to add 2 centimeters on each side, allowing the lining to have enough room as it was so thick.

With the right sides of the fabric on top of each other, I pinned them together without the lining in between. That way sewing them on my machine would be much easier. I also measured the playpen, to check where I needed to attach the ribbons I wanted to use, to secure the mat to the bars of the playpen. Then I pinned on the ribbons and started sewing it all together. I left an opening as if I was making a proper duvet cover, to be able to put the lining inside. Then finally I cut the lining to size and sewed the opening shut.

Only thing I have to do now, is to sew the rectangles, the lining and the back of the mat together, to prevent the lining from shifting. But that will be done over the weekend, and I will have to do that manually, as the total package will not fit my machine without wrinkling all of it. And I would hate for that to happen of course!

Pictures of the final result will be posted later on. 
My next Make will be a flag garland from the leftover fabrics. I will post that in a couple of days. So until then, thanx for joining me today!

Xoxo,

Maartje