• we visited my in-laws for a week;
• after getting back to Berlin, Marie developed a kidney infection;
• Toffi was in Vienna on business while I was caring for a very miserable Marie;
• as Marie got better and Toffi came home, I succumbed to an unforgiving stomach bug;
• and then, after not working for over two weeks, I desperately needed to do some translation work.
So, now that things are back to some version of normal, I can tell you about some things that have made the Susie Homemaker part of me very happy.
When we moved in, we had two couches that looked like this:
and this:
Never mind the fact that they didn't match each other - they didn't match anything in the whole damn apartment. But since we didn't have the money to buy new couches, I decided to make covers for them. This is what they look like now:
But it's been quite a journey. I had no pattern for these. I designed them in my head, sketched them out on a scrap of paper, and after roughly calculating how much fabric I would need, I picked up this heavy cotton twill at Ikea, of all places. That was about a year and a half ago. I pre-washed the fabric and put it in a drawer.
My first creation was this skirt for the raised platform in our living room.
I started making it at 5 am one morning at the peak of my nesting craziness shortly before Marie was born. I remember a bleary-eyed Toffi wandering into the living room at about 7:30, wondering what in god's name I was doing at such an inhuman hour of the morning. I finished the project that same day, and then, the remaining fabric hung out in its drawer for a few more months.I made the futon cover when Marie was about 3 months old. Thinking back on it, it was simple as it gets, but at the time, it seemed like quite a challenge. It basically consists of two large pieces sewn together where the seat meets the back of the futon. The back piece drapes all the way down the back side as well, and is joined to its own front by a long, thin panel on both ends of the futon back. Everything was accurately measured and hemmed fairly carefully, and that's about it.
The other couch was much more daunting. Maybe that's why I only just finished it last week - I was a little intimidated. Once I started, it didn't take that long, but I didn't start until a little less than a month ago. The seat cushion is a perfect rectangle, but the back is a trapezoid, as are the arm rests. Since I didn't want the fabric to drape down to the floor for this couch, I had to be much more meticulous in measuring and hemming to make sure all the hems were even, parallel to the floor while still hiding the blue fabric underneath. This cover is also two pieces sewn together, but this time the seam is along the top edge of the back. The top corners of the back are sewn, but the fabric then parts about 8 inches down, from which point onward the front and back are tied together. This was the only way to have a tight-fitting cover that could be pulled over those wacky corners. I guess I could have used zippers, but I hate sewing them.
The arm rests had me stumped. They're trapezoids, they have metal bars coming out of them (attaching them to the main couch), and like the main cover, I wanted to make sure I could remove the covers to wash them. So instead of trying to design their covers beforehand, I just designed as I went. By gosh and by golly, I wrapped and pinned fabric around these babies, and finally came up with something that worked. The outer corners are sewn, the inner ones are gathered and folded. The underside is mostly uncovered, which isn't a big deal since you'd pretty much have to crawl underneath them like an auto mechanic to see their bellies. I put rivets along the seams here, and threaded ribbon through them so that the cover could be pulled together tightly onto the cushion. The perfectionist in me sort of wishes I had spent more time on finding a way to finish the arm rests that would look cleaner, but let's face it: I'm impatient as hell, and I always get to a point where I'm sick of a project hanging over my head and I just want it to be effing DONE. And that's when I settle for something that seems pretty perfect, so long as you don't examine it too closely.
Finally having these couches done has really improved our living room dramatically. We have a lot of black and white in the room, and the blue just wasn't jiving. And the futon had such an unattractive red wine stain on it that I had always just thrown a large blanket over it, a blanket that didn't match anything either. But now that this file has been closed, it seems to have freed up space in that part of my brain that obsesses about home improvement projects. My new preoccupation, which came on quite out of the blue and smacked me with full force, is that I want to convert our office into a room for Marie. I suddenly feel like it's time for her to have her own room, and this will mean a LOT of reshuffling of furniture, getting rid of some things and buying a few new ones. But mostly, it means that - wheeeee!! - I get to rearrange and redecorate!
