Sure, I could have done something easy for my last project, but I wanted to go out with bang.  I have to admit that an unfinished project really bugs me.  I usually either finish a project or hide it from my view where I can forget about it.

I started working on this chair over the summer and then I got busy with other things and never finished it.  As you can see it was pretty bad.  Someone had reupholstered it at some point but they didn’t really know what they were doing.  I decided this chair deserved to be beautified.

This project was so cool that I knew I didn’t want to abandon it, which is why it has been sitting around taunting me with it’s unfinished-ness for months.

One of things that makes this chair really cool is that the design is loosely based on a photographer Damon Winter’s work. A friend gave me a card last year with this design.  The minute I saw it I knew I was going to do my own interpretation of the piece and put my own spin on it.

Here is the chair partly completed.  I added some additional batting to the seat and back of the chair to make it more cushiony.

For the original photo the photographer captured light beams in a window display, but mine was done with ribbon.  I changed the silhouette somewhat by making the image feminine rather than a masculine one.  I also left out the woman in the foreground as I felt I wanted a simpler design. I also changed the color scheme.  In the picture below you can see the detailing that I did to the silhouette.  I created lines with my stitches that both reinforce the image and also add another decorative element.

Day 31: Finishing a Damon Winter Inspired Chair:

Wow, it’s day 31!  I made it . . . in many sense of the word!  I am so thrilled to finally be done, but I also feel like I have a renewed sense of my skills as a maker, artist and designer.   This project was the longest project of all the projects I’ve completed.  In all I think this project has taken me 6 hours to finish, but it looks great and I am very happy with it.  Every once in awhile it’s good to flex your crafty muscles and this one was a fun, rewarding challenge, for sure.

Thank you everyone for reading and sharing this process with me.  I am curious to know what project people would most like to know how to do themselves?  Please let me know which if any, of these projects would you most like to see turned into a tutorial.

In case you didn’t read my first blog post about this project . . . this post is part of a 31 day challenge I am doing to bring more creativity, stories and solutions to my life.  I have been using my creativity almost exclusively for work in the recent past and for the month of January I will creating things for my personal life, talking about them and taking pictures.I would love input from readers as to which project you enjoy the most and if I get enough comments on one particular project I’ll turn it into a tutorial after the 31 day challenge of crafting, stories and solutions is over.  So please let me know what you like!

by:jen

Recently I was going through my closet and found that I owned something like 10 pairs of yoga pants.  Many of them were ill-fitting in one way or another.  I decided I wanted to trick out a pair of my yoga pants and turn them into bloomers.

The first thing I did was to cut off the pants just below the knee.

Then I made 2 very long strips out of the cut off portion of the pants (lower portion of the pants).  I sort of estimated how long I wanted the strips to be.

Using my sewing machine I sewed a long (3.5) straight stitch with my sewing machine all the way on one end of the strips.  On the other side I serged all the way along the strip.  The reason for the straight stitch is so that it doesn’t stretch as I work with it.  The other end that was serged I wanted to stretch slightly to create a subtle ruffle effect.  Then I evenly spaced the strips and stitched them down to the bottom of the pants in a spiral fashion wrapping around the leg.

Day 30: Yoga Pants to Bloomers

Here are the finished bloomers, which I can wear by themselves or under skirts.  What do you think?  I like ‘em.

In case you didn’t read my first blog post about this project . . . this post is part of a 31 day challenge I am doing to bring more creativity, stories and solutions to my life.  I have been using my creativity almost exclusively for work in the recent past and for the month of January I will creating things for my personal life, talking about them and taking pictures.I would love input from readers as to which project you enjoy the most and if I get enough comments on one particular project I’ll turn it into a tutorial after the 31 day challenge of crafting, stories and solutions is over.  So please let me know what you like!

by:jen

I made a meatloaf yesterday and realized that I didn’t enough ketchup to top the meatloaf with.  I thought, “maybe I could make my own?”   I remembered that the last time I was at the Victory Bar I had ordered hush puppies that came with homemade ketchup and it was amazing.

I haven’t made ketchup before so I started searching for recipes.  I found this one from Epicurious. I didn’t have any cans of whole tomatoes so I substituted 2 smaller cans of tomato sauce.  I finished it and added it to my meatloaf.  It was unbelievably good.  Next time I think I’ll add a little less brown sugar.  I put the extra ketchup in a canning jar, so we can use it in the future.   Now I want to try my hand at making hush puppies too, maybe this weekend.  Here’s a recipe for hush puppies that sounds great.

Day 27: DIY Ketchup

Can be chilled for up to 3 weeks.

In case you didn’t read my first blog post about this project . . . this post is part of a 31 day challenge I am doing to bring more creativity, stories and solutions to my life.  I have been using my creativity almost exclusively for work in the recent past and for the month of January I will creating things for my personal life, talking about them and taking pictures.I would love input from readers as to which project you enjoy the most and if I get enough comments on one particular project I’ll turn it into a tutorial after the 31 day challenge of crafting, stories and solutions is over.  So please let me know what you like!

by:jen