Manic Pop

So last weekend I had the chance to head out to Chicago for a bit.... and it truly was visiting home. I know I'm on a creative sabbatical right now which is a luxury in and of itself but I can't wait to go home to the city I lived in for a decade. While there I couldn't pass up a book that was at Shangri-La Vintage in Roscoe Village. It's one of my personal favorite vintage boutiques in Chicago and it stocks some of my favorite things like retro interior decorating books and a fairly large corner of vintage fabric. (Of course I would like the fabric!) So that got me thinking about my (fictional) new place once I head back...My old house was super-retro and I'm sure an apartment will look similar for me. Enjoy some photos from a 1975 home decorating book I found for inspiration!  Dream living room.   But I'll take this too. Or this!   You know eventually I need to make one of these as a couch cover, right?  The red/yellow/...

I've been doing lots of home re-vamping so it was only a matter of time before I got to doing a home tutorial! This one is a quilted pillowcase! For some reason or another, we had this pillow on the couch with this really ugly fabric. I actually don't even know where this pillow really came from either - things just appear in this house and beg me to improve them. The original pillow has the exact size triangles as my version on the right but the fabric is so close you can hardly tell! This pillowcase is also made from all scrap fabric in my sewing room. I guess I tend to really over-buy fabric. The brown was from a pair of menswear pants I made back in 2005 in college, the yellow (I really think I picked it up at a thrift store long ago) will be familiar if you've seen the top of my Mix N Match dress , and the green polyester is from when I constructed my mom's apron . This is my little sketch of the pillowcase before making a triangle pattern and an edging ...

Lately, I've been getting into re-decorating the house, making it a little more mid-century modern than it has been looking. About 90% of this stuff happened to be in the house when I moved here, but I'm just extremely playing off the mid-60s to mid-70s accents again. My favorite recent purchase was this lamp! (Simple, I know.) But I had been thinking about it on and off for the past 3 weeks or so yet couldn't justify buying it for nearly $40 even at Target. I go back for curtain rods the other day for the sun room and ta da! The lamp is $10. This mid-century chair was just chilling downstairs. I was originally going to paint it orange (bought spraypaint and everything) but then I got the lamp and couldn't bear to paint it orange. It's going to get a new coat of white though since it's chipped. I also temporarily pinned up old 45's I rescued from the street about a year ago. I had planned on making cool record wall hangings (and still will, since I h...

So I am absolutely dying to make curtains like these: These are specifically made for a kitchen as they are much shorter than what I would do. I have curtains that desperately need replacing  in my living room (the front picture window) and this project is definitely on my list. It's daunting though because each curtain will have to be around 4 ft. by 6 ft. Yikes!  I also would sort of update this look by using more subdued hues like a pale green and a pale, sheer blue. This would be fun to try on a much smaller scale - like a kitchen window in this photo. (Photo credit: The Complete Encylopedia of Crafts, Volume 1 from 1975.) For anyone in Chicago, a great place to find lots and lots of cheap fabric is Textile Discount Outlet . Go there with some time on your hands as there are 3 warehouse-sized floors of fabric, notions, etc. and always check their hours! Another fun home idea is this, though I may be the only one crazy enough to actually do this: (Photo:...