Burlap and Gingham Love

A few weeks ago, this great website called Paper Coterie had an open house.   Now, I am poor, but they were offering a free $40 coupon, so I took them up on it.  Their prices were so reasonable I was able to get two items for only the cost of shipping!  I got a gorgeous 20-page wedding photobook and a cute polaroid-inspired poster. Today's challenge was to find a pretty way to display this poster of my family!

 The cool surprise about this poster was that it was a STICKER!  Yes, that's right ladies and gents, it comes with instant mounting capabilities.  Buuuut since we live in an apartment, I had to find a more temporary display option.  So armed with a canvas, a glue gun, some burlap, and some gingham, I made a beautiful little mount for my beautiful little family.

Step 1: glue burlap to canvas.  This is harder than it looks if you are using thrifted burlap bags, because they wrinkle and stretch in many weird ways.  But after a half hour of wrestling and burned fingertips, I succeeded.

 

Step 2: stick poster on.  I was happy to find that the poster had a more fibrous, fabric-like feel to it than paper.  It allowed it to be flexible, and blend well with the burlap.  Just remember to start in the middle and smooth out to the edges when you are applying it, to avoid puckers and wrinkles!  Sorry, I forgot to take a picture here.

Step 3: attach some frou-frou.  There are plenty of fabric flower tutorials out there in the blogoshpere, but I went a little off the grid with this one.  I mostly just smashed up some gingham and threw a ton of hot glue in there.  That's how I made the "flowers," or whatever you would like to call them.  Then I made a little gingham fan, and with a mess of hot glue, attached it all to the canvas.  That's it.  3 easy steps.

 And here is the finished product:

Recycled Burlap Bag

I get inspired by things I see floating out there in the blog-osphere. My latest obsession is stenciled burlap bags. Here are a few favorites of mine.

Home Decor

Restoration Hardware

Restoration Hardware

royaloakcottage

coffeepurse

Bags Glore

DezignsbyShannon

thebeefarmer

Red Heads Craft More Fun

I scored 10 F-R-E-E burlap coffee bags. All three of the missus (Mrs K, Mrs S and Mrs D) will be sharing in the burlap bags. Should we make it a throw down between us three sisters and see who can come up with the most creative coffee bag project? I'm smelling some kind of giveaway too..... so excited!

MAN CRAFTS: Carboy Cover Tutorial

Don't forget to enter the earth Day Giveaway HERE.  It is open through Wednesday!

Also, we were featured on Tea Rose Home this morning!  She featured Mrs. K's Kate Spade Pillow Knock-Off, and several other inspired projects!  Welcome, Tea Rose Home Readers!

While my husband was enjoying his brand new brewing mitts, I was thinking of the next big man craft that would make him happy.

The next project is waiting.

Mr. S. enjoying one of his homebrews
 with his mitts.

Well, Mr. S has been talking about needing a carboy cover for a while now, so I thought I would make him one for Easter.  While some people give each other baskets of candy for this holiday, my family always steered clear of the sugar, and my basket usually contained little trinkets, hair bows, etc.  Well I think Mr. S would be sad if the Easter bunny brought him hair bows, so we'll try this instead:

Basically, a carboy is a water bottle that holds your beer while it ferments.  It is supposed to be completely light-proof, and Mr. S recently told me that he also would like it to be padded, so that his glass carboy will not break if he drops it.

I was originally just going to make a wrap, but since he mentioned dropping things, I made it a little more bag-like.  Mind you, I have never seen what a real carboy cover looks like, so I completely made this up.

I used an old wall hanging, some scrap batting, and one of those burlap bags, so this project was FREE.  I took two layers of the hanging, and pinned them to the "right" side of a piece of cut burlap (mine was cut to fit his carboy), then stitched 3 sides together.  I used my biggest needle on the sewing machine.  While it was easier to sew than expected, the burlap shed EVERYWHERE.  Be prepared to clean out the inner workings of your machine and vacuum when you are done with this project.

Stitched and Trimmed

Pinning right sides together

There were a couple thick parts that my machine would not go over, so I hot glued them later.  I probably should have hand-stitched them, but I was feeling lazy, so glue gun to the rescue!  I sewed the seams in about an inch, but I ended up trimming a little around the edges when I was done.

Then, I turned it right-side out, and stuffed in some old batting scraps to make padding.  Should I have quilted it to make sure the batting didn't bunch around? Yes.  Did I? No.  This is one of those times that it would have been nice to have some of that adhesive spray, huh?  Oh well, it will serve its purpose; plus it's probably going to get beer spilled all over it, so I'm not inclined to make it look too pretty.

Turned right-side out

Batting time

Once the batting was stuffed in, I turned down edges at the opening, and top-stitched them shut.  At this point, I realized that I was basically making a giant coffee sleeve.  Hm.  Then I folded the rectangle in half, with the burlap sides together, and stitched the side shut.   This way, the carboy can slide into the cover without having to be lifted up too much (they are heavy when they are full).

Pinning the edges together

Sewing the edge shut

Carboy slides in

Okay, so then I made some ties to help tie the side and top together.  I took some nylon string and old shoelaces that were in my stash.  For the side tie, I took a crochet hook, poked a hole in the burlap, and threaded some of the nylon string through it.  On one side, I just used a lighter and fused the string to itself to make a loop, and then I threaded a piece through the other side to make a tie.

For the tops, I picked two spots on either side of the spout, and ran one piece of shoelace through each side.  Since it's pretty hard to get a shoelace through a hole in the burlap, and you tie a knot at the end of the lace anyways, I don't expect the string to slip out of the holes anytime soon.  Plus the string is long enough that you can open the top up almost all the way!

And voila!  A light-proof, padded carboy cover!  And now for a photo shoot!

All tied up

Letting it all hang out

Keepin it real!

Thanks for stopping by for this tutorial!  So glad you could visit us here at Krafting With K!