Blanket Chest

          My favor place to shop these days is definitely Savers. I can easily get to two locations in my area. There are  three additional stores on my way to Boston. I have a system I use to scout the store. The first place I go is the housewares in search of  "always looking for" items. I am always on the hunt for off- white serving pieces. I then go to the furniture department, followed by the shoes, bags and final the dresses. 

A few weeks back after weekend long meeting I dropped into the Framingham location and found this piece. It was  love at first sight but we have a new rule in my house since the broken foot fall.I am not allowed near furniture without my husband's help. I decide to chance it, it was only $14.00. I managed to drag it to the register. While waiting in line I struck up a friendship with a lovely  union sanitation worker from Boston. Its interesting how a good deal can lead to a friendly conversation. He helped me get it into the car and off I went.  

On the way home I decided that I would paint it white because the green had that early 90's look to it and it was chipped pretty badly. I did notice it had a citron green poking through in a few spots, that, I liked. The doors were sealed shut and one of the knobs was missing. When I got home I had to con my husband into bring it into the house and down the dreaded stairs to the basement. He's standard reply " what are you going to do with that". I convinced him it would be awesome and went to work.  

                                                  The more I looked at the green I started to think it might work. I took the sander to it to smooth out the chips and reveal a little more of the paint below. I took off and adjusted the doors. I gave it a coat of Johnson's Paste Wax and put on some new knobs. The knobs and the wax cost more than the blanket chest.  Husband had to admitted it is one of his favorite pieces.

Faux Button Tucked Headboard

When couples decided to move in together they bring a lot of the stuff from their past into the relationship. This baggage from the past can cause many problems. There is a lot give and take and some merging to do  marry someone who has been living alone, moving from city to city for the past 12 years. I was ready to deal with his collections, his golf stuff and his music, but I was not prepared for the mattress. Dave had just purchase the mattress the year before, and mine was pushing 15 years old. His was a queen, mine was only a full, so we settled on his. 

To make it our bed we went out and bought a beautiful four poster bed. Almost immediately there were problems. It was lumpy, it made a great deal of noise, and every-time one of us moved the other felt everything. To top it all off, the bed pretty high profile. Dave is not a tall man and had to almost do a running leap to get into it. Right from the start I knew this mattress was bad but we struggle through with it for 10 years. 

The bed with the old mattress

We decide to purchase a new mattress! Before it arrived I decided I wanted new bedding to go with it. I've been salivating over all white bedding, painted furniture and quilted headboards on Pinterest for months. I love my the wood finish on the bed, so I was am not willing to commit to painting it or stapling fabric to it. I decided to fake ahead board. I have rediscovered a great place to by fabric, Osgood Textiles in West Springfield, MA. I spent hours trying to find color and patterns to go with my existing paint and curtains.

 The first thing I did was create a paper pattern. I taped newspaper on the wall behind the bed and traced it. 

 Next I made a pattern out of muslin, and traced it onto the fabric. After cutting it out I pinned it and draped it 

over the bed.

When I was happy with the seem allowances I cut out 2 pieces of fabric using my muslin pattern. I next used the pattern to cut out 1 piece of batting.

 I sandwiched the muslin, fabric and batting together and sewed them.  The sandwiched fabric was fabric, batting, muslin, fabric. I left the bottom open. I cut all the curved edges for turning and pressed the seem back. 

I laid the finish piece flat and used buttons from my collection to button tuck the fabric. Make sure you only go throw the first 3 sandwich layers. I tied ribbon to the corners to secure it to the bed.

Now remember when I said the bed had a high profile, well I should have taken that into consideration before I made the cover. The new mattress is a good 6 inches higher than the old one. When we put on the new mattress all the new pillow and bedding it totally hid everything I did. Oh well, I know its there.

Fluffy new mattress

Blogging and then not Blogging

I am ready to give this another try. I have a whole list of excuses why I have not attempted a single post in 8 months. Here's my list:
1. Broken foot- caused by falling down the starts while removing replacement dresser from first blog post.
2. New school year, with broken foot. Always playing catch up
3. Freak October ice storm. So much damage, so little time
4. Holiday season. Shopping between physical therapy appointments and doctor visits
5. Newly elected to MTA Board of Directors- Where are we meeting this month?
5. Eldest son announces he's getting married, with two weeks notice.
6. Cotillion, midterms
7. Barcelona followed by a deathly case of "Spanish Flu"
8. How much did I gain? We have to start working out again,
9. Prom, finals, more meetings,

10. Out of excuses-  Let the crafting and fashion begin