Bliss Ranch: Burlap

Is burlaped a word? Some wise blogger said that if you write it in blogland it becomes a word. So mine is burlaped. Or maybe it should have two p's? Burlapped. Sort of French sounding when you say it that way.... buur'lapped. What ever. I hate burlap. I hope to not burlap often. But I love burlap. I love everything I see buur'lapp on. I hope to have it on many more things. Versatile, quaint, country, chic, all rolled into one adorable fabric. Fabric of fraying messiness, little fibrous pieces of smelly textile. I hate burlap.

Coffee sacks. If you are lucky a few green coffee beans will fall from the seams when you cut into them. If you are doubly lucky you will have mounds of thread-shred-shed all over you, your floor, your dining room table, and everywhere else the stuff walks off too. If you are smart you will do this on a sunny day outside. No comments please about me not being smart, it was a weather issue and you should know by now I like to work on the dining room table anyway.

There is a tremendous difference in the weave, texture and feel of burlap coffee sacks. For this project (what is the project you wonder?) I wanted to use the lighter colored sacks, which were the looser, coarser variety. They were all clean and flat when I bought them. I washed them to get the smell out and it turned them into mangled twisted, sacks of lettered wrinkle. They didn't even smell till after I washed them.

Draw Straight lines

I do not sew. I found out this weekend I don't even cut or glue all that well. Math, forget it, I measure by using from my elbow to my wrist. Works. Sometimes. Usually not very accurately.

Donna over at Funky Junk always has ideas I think I can do. She makes stuff look "Bliss-able". Her faux shades were the perfect no sew project for me. I chugged along, uphill, and got it done. Chanting "I think I can, I think I can" when I was up to my elbows in math calculations for cutting and lining 5 shades that should of all been of equal size. For the full tutorial go to Funky Junk and do it the way she says.

Easter weekend I found myself in a farm store staring at a bin of coffee sacks. $1.29 each, some are two sided, bonus! I had no intention of making the valances from Funky Junk even though it was love at first sight, but that was because I didn't own any coffee sacks. Now there they were and I bought 8 of them. 3 have been cut up for five windows above our kitchen eating nook.