Achaia’s Etsy shop!

I’m SO excited to announce the opening of my very own Etsy Shop!!

In my shop you’ll find pillow covers hand written and hand embroidered by me! They also feature a variety of pretty backing fabrics, full lining, sturdy zippers on the bottom of the covers for easy taking on and off, and handmade tassels on the zipper pulls.

I had a lot of fun choosing sayings for each pillow, stitching on them, and putting them together. I hope you’ll find something you’ll love that puts a smile on your face, and a little extra beauty on your bed or couch!

xxx Achaia

PS The listings do not include pillow forms, but if you would like to have one of those included as well, be sure to send me a convo for pricing and a custom listing!

A new Ironing Board cover {a tutorial}

We use our iron + ironing board a lot. We mean. A lot. So it's no wonder that after three + years we needed a new one! (We're too embarrassed to show you a picture of the old one. Really. You could hardly tell what it was made of!)

Mommy and Abi got together and in an afternoon whipped up this new ironing board cover. They took step by step pictures. Measurements will depend entirely on your own special ironing board. Ours is old and dips (just a little bit) in the middle, so we needed extra padding. We'll explain more below!

So — are you ready??!

Ironing Board cover {a tutorial}

1. Choose your fabrics! Fun! Since our ironing board sits by the one red wall in our studio, we wanted to have red in our cover to make our board pop. (Mommy's favorite color choice.)

2. Cut and arrange your patches. This can be one of the most enjoyable parts, so have fun mixing and matching your favorite pieces! You'll want it to be 6" to 8" bigger than your ironing board (so that you have several inches left-over on all sides of your board).

What you'll Need:

Putting it Together!

1. Layer sheet, batting, and patched top. Use large safety pins to pin it together.

2. Sew through all layers. We chose one of our favorite (and sturdy) stitches on Mommy's machine.

3. Lay your ironing board face down on top of your Insul-Fleece. Use a permanant marker to draw the shape of your board onto the fleece. (NOTE! if your board is not like ours (dipped), than you are more than welcome to skip the batting when your quilting your cover. Use the Insul-Fleece in place of the batting. We're also hoping that once we wear this cover out we can replace it and the insul-fleece will still be good).

4. Our Insul-Fleece was shorter than our board, so we pieced it.

(Continuing) 4. Pieced.

5. Cut out the board shape and lay the Insul-Fleece right on the board!

6. Lay your ironing board face down on top of your patched top and prepare to cut around the board shape. Be careful to leave several extra inches all the way around the board!!!! Do a finishing stitch (we did a zigzag stitch) around the edge of your cover after you've cut out the board shape.

7. Working from the top of your cover and at the middle back-end, fold back a little end of the raw end of the extra wide double fold bias tape. Sew on at 1/4".

(Showing) 7. See?

8. Finish sewing on the bias tape just like you started. Do not overlap the pieces, but only meet them up together.

9. Fold the bias tape completely over to the back. Stitch in place.

10. Use a large safety pin to run your 1/4" elastic through your "casing". We cut approximantly 122" of elastic because this was the measurement around the under side of our ironing board. We ended up cutting plenty of elastic off, but we want you to have plenty too. Put your smashingly adorable cover onto your board and pull and tug, working the gathers to fit around your board. After your elastic is just perfect, knot and knot your elastic ends. Cut off extra elastic. (And save the rest of another project!)

11. Grab your Scotch Gard and head outside! Follow the instructions on the bottle. (We gave ours plenty of spray-layers.)

(continued) 11. Cute dog not required. (But helpful.)

And your ironing board cover is finished!!!!!

Let us know what you think! And happy ironing.

xoxo Kristie & Abi (for all)

a vintage birthday.

A piece of vintage blue luggage as the centerpiece, on a table decked out in old tablecloths.

Old dishes (garage sale find), with the perfect chippy edges.

Brown paper packages, with vintage pattern front embellishments.

And fluffy pink strawberry dessert. A successful party for a special girl!

love from here~

the Long ladies

temari love.

For Christmas this year, we wanted to find a really special gift for mom. (Because she is so special, of course.) When we found our dear family friend, Julie, on Etsy last year, we knew exactly what we wanted… some of her beautiful Temari embroidered balls. They are so gorgeous and creative! And Julie made them especially for mom, in some of her favorite colors. (They came packaged in the cutest-ever Chinese take-out boxes.)

If you've been looking for a lovely home decor item, stop by Julie's lovely store. We love her Temari. And we love her too! Thank you, Julie!

xx, the Long ladies

color is fun.

Midwest Modern 1 and 2, Dolce, Essential Dots, and American Retro are unified by shades of pink, yellow, and orange. So happy!

We love color. All kinds of color. Color everywhere. A lot of people ask us about mixing up different fabric collections… can you do it? And we just say, why, of course you can! The main thing is to keep a tight color palette. Here are two fun examples we wanted to share you!

Blues and greens and turquoise, with a splash of yellow…
Plain Jane, Mod Girls, Garden Party, Dolce, Love, Bell Bottom, Pretty Please, Park Slope, Darla, Simply Sweet, and Nicey Jane. Pretty fun, don't you think?!

Fabric-mixing like this works really well for home decorating and wardrobe planning. And for happy scrappy quilts like Eleanor's. It keeps things from looking too "matchy-matchy"! We love pulling different bolts off the shelves, just to see what happens. Want to come over and play color with us? Do you have a favorite color palette?

love, the Long ladies

Rag-eddy Rug-eddy

We are so glad you all liked our bathroom re-do! That rag rug is the recipient of so many comments… and it's such an easy peasy project. But we're warning you– making only one is virtually impossible.

Find instructions here!

Oh yes, and we'll add a link to the tutorial list in our sidebar!

Beautify your bathroom

So… who likes a pretty bathroom? That may sound pretty silly, BUT true to our line "where practicality becomes beautiful", we believe lots of everyday, ordinary things should (and can) be beautiful. Why not a bathroom too? All that being said, here we are with another tutorial for you all. Give it a whirl and see what you think! Isn't the bathroom pretty after all?

Tank Set Tutorial

1:: Begin by using freezer or craft paper to trace around you toilet lid. Take off your tank lid and lay upside down on paper, tracing around it as well. Cut out shapes.

2:: After deciding on what fabrics you would like to use (scraps are great for this too!), patch 2 tops in random fashion. Now use the patterns you made in Step 1 and cut your patched tops to fit your toilet lid and tank lid.

3:: Cut piece of batting and one piece of solid or patterned backing (old sheeting works well) larger then patched pieces.

4:: Lay out– in this order– backing (right side down), batting, and patched piece (right side up) in a stack. Pin together. Quilt by hand or use fancy machine stitch to hold all your pieces together.

5:: Trim off extra backing. Zigzag around edge of both your tank lid top and your toilet lid top to secure all sides/pieces together.

6:: Next, measure around your toilet lid and tank lid separately.

7:: Cut strips of fabric 3 5/8" wide x distance around + 1/2" (for seam allowance) for both toilet lid and tank lid. Make sure your fabric matches or coordinates with the fabrics used in your patched tops (Step 2), since this will show!

8:: Sew the cut strips into a "necklace", using 1/4" seams.

9:: Pin your "necklace" (the one you cut for your toilet lid) to the top of your toilet lid patched cover, right sides together. Sew using 1/4" seams. Now do the same for your tank lid.

10:: Fit on lids to make sure all is coming out right!

11:: Make casing on both your patched lids by turning down 1". Pin and stitch, being sure you leave an opening for inserting elastic.

12:: Using measurements taken in Step 6, cut (for both your toilet lid and your tank lid) 2 2 1/2" strips for ruffles. We like to make our ruffles about double the measurement of the toilet and tank lids.

13:: Sew 2 ruffle strips together– hem on top and bottom. Run gathering stitch around top. Repeat for other ruffle.

14:: Mark lid covers in quarters. Mark ruffles in quarters. Pin ruffle to lid, matching quarters, with wrong side of ruffle facing right side of lid cover. Stitch right inside edge of lid.

15:: Insert elastic. (Measurement of lid around from Step 6. Our measurement was 48" and we cut our elastic at 34".) Close casing.

Ta-da!

We used fabrics from the Darla collection (in pinks & reds) for this project!

the crowning project

And here we are… the crowning project of Nanny's visit! What a perfect slam-bang finish to a wonderful time!

Mom was really feeling the need for some new pillows out of one of her favorite fabric lines, Ava Rose. A little change every once-in-awhile is good for you! SOOO….

What can we say? We got sewing. Ahh… perfect. Just what the doctor ordered.

Remember the quilt? And now, everyone is probably wanting a little more background on "everything"… okay, we'll let you in on a few little secrets.

::the "mr. and mrs." pillowcases are vintage. We thought a little simpleness would be so pretty. Too much pattern is too much of a good thing!

::the floral pillow (on the left, second row) is actually a tablecloth. Faded and just right. (We were really amazed at how the faded one matched the Ava Rose fabric so perfectly!)

::you've probably already guessed… the lace on the front, long pillow is vintage too! Couldn't resist.

::the big pillow (right in front of the mr. and mrs. ones) is patched just like one of our brooke bags! We added a couple lace pieces to it too!

::last, but not least the velvet. Actually, a curtain from Target (Shabby Chic line). Mom had such a remarkable idea to buy it! We added it to the patched pillow, the front, long pillow, and the one on the right is COMPLETELY velvet. Ruched (or gathered, right Nan?) all up perfectly. Personally, that almost seems like the crowning point of all the gorgeous pillows!

A couple more pictures of some of Mom's other "pretties".

Apphia’s room~

I love, love, love my bedroom– it is so Apphia, as Mom would say. Pink and gold and black and white, with punches of turquoise to keep it interesting.

First of all, my new addition… a gorgeous pink mirror! I found the old window at a flea market for $8. And it was just so perfect for my room that we couldn't pass it up. Dad (who can do everything, by the way) fixed it up for me. Nan helped me add the finishing touches when she was here!

I'm really not sure how I came up with the idea to use the widow as a mirror. But the mirrors cost way more than the window. Gulp. The brass sconces were flea market finds, with candles from Hobby Lobby (at half price, of course… you see how I'm making up for the $$ of the mirrors by purchasing everything else at bottom dollar? Good girl.)… Nan found the fabulous tray at a garage sale.

The pillows~

The matching valance above the closet door (we made curtains when Nan was here!)~

Nick-nacks~

My flea-market-find-magazine-rack and dresser~

My nightstand (thanks, Paps- I love you!) and little gold chair~

Other pretties (the lovely lamps belonged to Nan & Paps years and years ago… they are some of my favorite things!)~

What we’ve been doing the past 10 days…

Here we are, back again! We have had some busy, fun, full days. Sorry we couldn't keep all of you posted through the whole thing, but we were too busy! We'll have to split this up into a few posts…

Achaia's Dresser… Reorginazation and POP! We didn't buy one new thing. Just moved things around the room. The canisters are a flea market find and the letters are from her graduation party.

Abigail and Abiah's Dresser… Full and fun! We did buy the boxes at the left end of the dresser (Hobby Lobby 25% off coupons!). The doll was Nanny's when she was a little girl. Abiah's been making lots of crocheted washcloths…

Of course, we had to make some flea market stops, plus Mexican food.

We did quite a bit of this, too!

It was one wonderful time. More pictures on the way!

Gold….

makes the most gorgeous pillows! The latest phase of my room-redecoration….

The black and white polka dot is Daydreams by Deb Strain for Moda. I found the gold moire at Hobby Lobby for 40% off! And the pale pink, pale yellow, and gold damask were all vintage flea market finds…. I made the pale pink pillows and the pale yellow pillow out of tablecloths– the remnant for the bolster was only 50 cents!

This is the best makeover yet, no?

Rag Rug

Finally! Here’s our ‘rag rug’. We saw it first at a friend’s house and just loved it. All you’ll need is a piece of fabric measuring the size of the place you want the rug to go and little 2" squares. We weren’t particular about the square size….(translated, we eyeballed the squares and didn’t measure them all)

Our bright squares piled on our work table. And then sewing the squares on….

After you cut your 2" squares, fold them in half, (corner to corner). Then, sew straight through the middle, (over-lapping the ends of each square) securing squares to the base fabric. Continue sewing squares in a long row down the entire length of the fabric base. When you’re ready to start another row, hold the previous row back with one hand while you’re stitching the next row. Your rows of stitching will be about 3/4" apart. We started the whole process with a row of squares in approximately the center of the base. Once you’ve made it from the center to one side of the base, you’ll head the other direction. One of the nice things about this rug is that the sewing lines don’t have to be perfect. Once the fabric "fluffs" up, you’ll never see the stitching lines. If you want the rug to look even fuller and fluffier, sew the rows closer together. This is one rug that is made without any "perfect" way, and yet it is as cute as can be!

tada! Here’s the back and front of our new rug!