Love Burlap & Love Cleaning!

My mama came over last night and we fixed my sewing machine,hooray!! My sewing machine was back in action. I first made a burlap pillow. Some of you know my father is in the coffee business & has been asking his warehouses to keep all of the extra burlap bags! Each burlap bag ranges to hold 132.276-154.322lbs. of coffee. (BAM) I remembered this from working for him my whole life.  We also used TONS of these burlap bags for our wedding & then recently my sister in law Laurel started up an Etsy shop that uses all the coffee bags in various ways. She is so creative & I just love her work. She did lots of amazing crafts for our wedding. We love you La! Here is her Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/LaurelHanson?ref=pr_shop_more

Back to my burlap pillow. I'm slightly obsessed with burlap. I cut out the burlap, pinned and started sewing. Because of the burlap bag I actually only had to sew two sides. I sewed one and half of another side with the sewing machine. I then turned the pillow right side out. Then my mom and I Jam/Crammed my pillow inside of the burlap. Then my crafty mama showed me how to do an invisible stitch. This little pillow took me maybe 7 minutes, okay okay maybe 10 minutes since we had to pin lots!

Ta da!

I love how it turned out. I will be making more don't worry. I also just love the wording on the pillows so fun! 

Next Project.....

Brian and I wanted something new to hang outside by our front door. He invisioned something with our last name on it! 

I of course immediately thought....burlap! I found an old canvas that my sister in law used to practice making me a painting for my classroom. I'm glad I kept this canvas because usually I throw everything away.

This canvas roughly measures 16 x24 but any size canvas will do

Cut out any fabric you would like to use. Leave 2 inches on each side so that you can tuck it and staple it to the back when we are finished. 

I then wanted to create a color contrast and a rough vintage look. I decided that I was going to use a piece of muslin to go on top of the burlap. The muslin I cut into a rectangle. Roughly a 6 x20 section. I doubled this up too since this muslin was soo thin. This is left over material from our wedding. We had tons of muslin at our wedding, muslin is my second favorite material right now! 

Now I needed to iron my fabric out. I called my mom and asked her if I could iron burlap. She said ehhh probably not I think it's highly flammable! hehe. It's not, I ironed it. I did place a towel and fabric over it so that I did not come in direct contact with the iron as she recommended to do. But I did try the iron directly on the burlap and it didn't do anything! I took precaution just in case!

Next step pin the muslin to the burlap wherever it is that you like it. I tucked under the 2 inch border when I did this so that I did not pin it in the wrong place. 

Sewing time: I left my edges of my muslin out because I wanted the raw look! I sewed the entire piece of muslin to my burlap.

Stencil time. I got out my dark gray paint and stencils. I carefully, carefully, carefully stenciled these words. Of course if you look close you can see all the tiny imperfections, but hey that's okay!!! I'm not perfect! It gives it uniqueness right!

I then realized there was too big of a place space after Shields. I of course thought of burlap roses. I made 3 of them and place some extra burlap behind them to look like a little leaf attached to the flower. This rose I folded the burlap in half and just rolled it up like a cinnamon roll! ha! Seriously, I did! I then hot glued along the way. 

Hot glue the burlap roses on the muslin.

Next step: No picture- I used a staple gun and stapled the material to the back. I tried to make it look nice by folding it under in the back and then stapling. I actually lined the white canvas with a gray fabric because you could see through the burlap. You don't have to do this but I did since I had stuff on my white canvas. 

I added a muslin ribbon I got from one of our wedding presents to the back. Shout out to the Bassi's! :) I also used a staple gun to staple the ribbon on the back.

Here it is! How cute! It's by NO means perfect but we love it! 

As for Cleaning.....

I LOVE cleaning too! Mr.Shields has decided to take on a HUGE task. REORGANIZING OUR KITCHEN now that we have made the consolidation! Here are some pics of him in action. I can't wait. I get my own baking cabinet! So exciting! I will be baking soon. Mr. Shields is trying to decide on whoopie pies or chocolate pudding chip cookies! Yum Yum Yum!