Wintry Saturdays Are Made For Crafting

This morning was a lazy-ish day... ran some errands this morning, then took my Sammy-cat to the vet oncologist around lunchtime for a check-up - he has Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and Neutropenia, so he gets to go to the vet-vet a lot!  He hates the car, but fortunately the best veterinary hospital in the Midwest is only a 30-40 minute drive from our house, so it's manageable!

Anyhoo... being that it's February in Ohio, I got to drive through a spectrum of weather conditions along my trek to the vet's office today... it was raining when we left the house, sleeting by the time we dropped Sammy off and went out to get a quick bite to eat, and changed over to snow flurries just as we were on our way out again!  By the time we got home my nerves were just about shot from the mucky road conditions and the idiot drivers, so I changed into some track pants and a t-shirt and dove right into my "to-do" pile of sewing projects: I started by fixing a ribbon tie on a shirt for a friend of mine, I put a replacement zipper in a coat for a co-worker's grand-daughter, then I decided to tackle something for myself:  a fun decorative item for my kitchen!

I have a KitchenAid stand mixer, which I absolutely adore.  I also have four very furry, fluffy and lovable cats, whom I could strangle some days because they get into everything in my house, and no surface is safe from their pawprints, fur, etc... And so, the aforementioned mixer can get a little dusty and crusty sometimes when it's sitting out in the open.  It's not practical to take up a bunch of cabinet space with the mixer, and I don't particularly care for cleaning kitchen appliances before I use them, so I had a "cozy" cover that kept the mixer dust-free and ready for use.  The commercially-made KitchenAid covers are 1) practical, 2) relatively affordable, and 3) good at keeping dust off... but they're a little too vanilla for my tastes.  Here's a pic of the original cover I was using:

Enter my mad, mad collection of decorator fabrics.  I have a tendency to be a bit of a textiles hoarder.  I have a few (ok, maybe a bit more than a few) tote boxes full of fabrics in my crafting room... everything from quilting fabrics like calico, clear up to fleeces, faux fur, and a nice collection of upholstery and drapery fabrics that I've picked up on clearance over the years.  A while back I was at my favorite Swedish megastore (did someone say IKEA? :-D) and found some adorable upholstery-weight fabric that I just couldn't pass up!  Of course, I had no project in mind for it, nor was it critical that I spend $7 per yard on fabric without purpose... but it was just too stinkin' cute to let it slip away!   Today that fabric finally found its destiny, in the form of a "reupholstering" of the mixer cozy.  I figured there was no sense in re-inventing the wheel, so I disassembled the old (plain) cover and re-worked it into a piece of art!  The body of the cover is the IKEA fabric, and the bias trim and piping are made from fabric I had leftover from a bulletin board project I completed at my sister's school last summer.

Here's the results:

(pretty nice, huh?)   ;-) 

Anyway, I'm hoping that this project will inspire some more crafting and creativity here in my house, because it's been a little (s)lacking as of late!  Next up on the sewing front is window treatments for the kitchen and dining room.  Already have the fabric purchased... just need to get the inspiration and time to get things done!!


Happy Renovating (and Sewing!)