The Nursery

I started work on the nursery today.

Every nursery should have a rocking chair and I remembered one made by Gladys Schuster that I had bought at Gilbert's Cove Lighthouse in Nova Scotia in 2008.

The bears were just tacked in so I removed them.

I took a cushion from my market stall for the seat.

I didn't have any pink wallpapers in my stash so decided to do the lower walls in fabric. Had two pinks and went with the darker one.

First I cut cardboard templates for the back and sides. (This is the back piece.)

Then I cut a piece of fusible web slightly wider than the template and fused it to my fabric.

 Trimmed off the excess fabric.

 Peeled off the paper backing from the fusible web.

Centered the template on the fabric.

Put that face down on a sheet of parchment paper and iron.

Flip over and fold the excess fabric to the back and iron in place.

Do the same with the side pieces BUT on the side pieces leave about 1/4" extra fabric to wrap around on to the back wall so there is no break where the pieces meet.

Attach to the roombox with two strips of Duck indoor/outdoor carpet tape. (This is great stuff. I get mine at WalMart but most hardware stores carry it. Many, many years ago when I first heard this, all the carpet tape I had seen was quite thick and I could not understand the hint. This (and, I suppose, many others) is paper thin and works beautifully to attach almost anything to anything.)

You could cut off strips of it to secure pieces of furniture to a wall. Not my favourite method. I prefer poster Velcro for that but that is no longer available from Lee Valley (where I have always bought it). It's probably available elsewhere but I haven't checked it out.

 Do both side walls. It's easiest to do this by turning the roombox so the surface you're working on is on the table. (But pay attention! I was watching TV while I did this and originally put the second wall piece against the ceiling instead along the floor. :-(  Fortunately, caught it quickly and it peeled off without damaging the paint.)

Sorry I thought I had taken more pictures to explain the process. If you have any questions, you can email me and I'll try to help.

Then add the back piece.

So far, so good! I'm lovin' it!

Can't do much more until I finish the outside of the box. Think I'll run over to Quiltessentials (the quilt shop down the street) tomorrow and see if I can find a nice piece of fabric to finish the outside. Not too sure what I want (something with the pink from inside) but even though I only buy a foot of fabric they are so helpful there so I know we'll come up with something perfect. Plus I think I'll pick up a couple more metres of the fusible web.

Once that's done, it'll just be a matter of filling the room. Of course, it's a matter of simply cleaning and moving most of the pieces from the original roombox. But as with the rocking chair, some new ideas keep coming up.

We're celebrating Christmas on Boxing Day so we'll all be together except DS Carol and BIL Fred. David's parents will be with us (first time in roughly 35 years) so I'd like to finish it by then so I can have Marie and Rob take it up home for the big day. Marie and Rob live in Peace River and David and Laura live in Grande Prairie.

Joanne and I are going out to dinner then to see Colm Wilkinson at the Winspear tomorrow night. How exciting!