It's a cover-up!

When September started I had that 'swimming against the tide' type feeling.  You know the one I mean?  You're paddling away, working really hard, but you're just not moving any further down the river?  Yep, you know the one.

Well, I had hoped it would go away once school started and I could get some routine back and the house in order again.  Unfortunately, that still doesn't seem to have happened yet.  In fact, it was only last week when I was thinking about writing this new Pretty Crafty Home post for October, that I was beginning to wonder if I would have anything to put in it at all.

I did manage to finish off the plan for hanging Little Madam's artwork up.  You remember we'd made the pegs?  Well, the line is up and the artwork is hanging nicely.  It still looks a little messy for my liking but LM is pleased because she can change and add new artwork by herself.

Somehow, that really didn't seem like much of an achievement for a whole month, so I carried on with my other plan, which was to disguise my old dinning room chairs.

Luckily, and rather amazingly, the job which I've been putting off for ages because I didn't really know the best way to start it, went rather well.

The old chairs, you see, are a rather dingy dark red and, after several years of use, are looking rather the worse for wear.  They exist now, not for dinning but as a computer desk seat and a kind of 'dropping off point' for my clothes in the bedroom.  So, as they need to stay, under my self-imposed rules of PCH-ing, they should be pretty!

I formulated the plan of a patchwork cover using oddments of fabric I'd brought previously for who knows what, and some left over curtain material from my bedroom.  So far, so good.  Nice and thrifty, meeting another PCH criteria.  The only problem was, I've never made a slip cover in my life.

 Still, I wasn't going to let a little thing like that stop me, so I got started.  I started sewing squares together until I had three different patched pieces.  One for the seat, one for the front of the back and one for the back of the back, if you follow me.  Then, taking my pins and my courage in hand, I draped these over the chair and started pinning away.

I did it in stages, first one edge, then another, sewing each tentative seam as I went along.  Prepared, indeed expecting, disaster to strike at any moment.  But, amazingly, it didn't and the basic chair shape started to emerge.

There's some tricky old bits of a chair to deal with, but the pinning, sewing and checking method stood me in good stead and I soldiered on, even beginning to feel a glimmer of hope as the corners came out looking rather splendid.

The only thing that remained as a finishing touch was a little bit of ribbon.

Could it be?  Had I done it?

Yes, I had managed it.  I had made a chair cover.  A patchwork chair cover and what is more, it was a patchwork chair cover that didn't look like a total disaster.  Yippee!

I can't tell you how relieved I was that I had managed it.  I'm sure it must be the most advanced sewing I've ever done in all my puff and as an added bonus, it also means I have something to show for September.

You'd probably think, after such success on the first chair, that I'd be leaping around with joy and think nothing of the dashing off another just like it for the second chair.  Not a bit of it.  I had more the feeling of someone who had walked dangerously close to the perilous edge but had managed somehow to survive to tell the tale.  The idea of jumping straight back into the danger zone didn't appeal.

But, seeing that first chair sitting there in it's pretty dressings, looking all darling and home-made, I decided to pull myself together.  I had made one, I could make another.

So this week, I dived in yet again.  Actually, I needn't of worried.  Things went much easier this time as I had a formula to follow.  I knew what I was going to do before I did it this time and that, my friends, made the whole thing a relative walk in the park.

It took a mere two afternoons to whip the second one up and I'm so glad that I didn't wimp out.  How  much nicer it looks sitting in it's little bedroom nook.  So much better than it did.

Now that I have finished both of them, I do feel a lot better.  I feel like there is light at the end of the tunnel and that things are starting to be accomplished at long last.  It was 'housework day' today, so the house is clean and tidy, two eye sores have been removed to be replaced by eye candy and my heart and mind, I must confess, are beginning to feel a bit lighter.

Now, of course, comes that moment in the post where I throw the ball over to you.

What inspiration or suggestion should I offer you after the month I have had?  To challenge yourself maybe?  To try something new?  Maybe it should simply be to decide to finish just one thing, because one thing can make a big difference.  At least, it's made all the difference to me.

I shall let you decide which, if any, of my ideas floats your inspirational boat and shall hope to see what you've been up to in the Flickr Pretty Craft Home Group.

S x