Easy Fabric Cover for Wire Shelves in My Country Guest Room

Happy New Year, everyone!

In this first post of the New Year, I thought I'd share a fun, easy DIY project that I did a few months ago.  A fabric cover for a cheap, wire shelving unit.  Very little sewing required.

First, some background.  My smaller guest bedroom in the country was painted green when I bought the house, and it is one of the few rooms in the house that I haven't re-painted.  I like the green.  I found a really cute comforter at Target last year that looks great in the room. 

Also last year, I bought wire shelves for the kitchen (they were about $50 at Lowes) but then soon thereafter upgraded to nicer wood shelves.  I didn't want to get rid of the wire shelves so needed somewhere to put them, at least temporarily, while I decided what to do with them.  They ended up in the green bedroom.  Not too attractive. 

Then one day the thought suddenly came to me, hmm, what if I made some sort of fabric cover for the shelves, so that I could leave them here in the room and use them for storage??   

I considered buying a fabric in a complementary color/pattern, but then at Target (yay, Target!!) I found the perfect thing.  A reversible comforter cover that matched the comforter I had already bought.  It had the two different patterns, and I could use the smaller print pattern that is less prominent on the bed as the main fabric for the shelves and the bigger print that is more prominent on the bed as trim for the shelves.

I did the project pre-blog, so I didn't do a very good job at taking photos along the way or really keeping track of exactly what I was doing.  But, basically, I  rolled the edges back so that the comforter would fit around the shelves, tacked down the edges with iron-on tape, wrapped it around the shelves, sewed it to the top of the shelves, and then made the piece to go on the very top, taking care to center the pattern.  

I added ties to make it look more finished and to keep it closed.  The very happy accident was that the pattern on the two front trim pieces matches exactly, as you can see in the photo below, which I took before I put the top piece on it. 

  

The matching was purely an accident.  Don't you love when that happens? 

And here it is shown with the panels open, so that you can see the contrasting fabric inside (thanks to the fact that the comforter cover was reversible).

I'm so happy with how it came out.  I use the shelves to store fabric - fittingly! 

 

Christmas in the Country

My Christmas tree this year at the Eastern Shore.  The bay window in the dining room is the perfect place for a tree.  The tree is lit with lots of lights and decorated with hundreds of antique ornaments that I've collected over the years.  I counted - there are about 225 ornaments on the tree!   

Fiona was very excited to have so many tree branches (her favorite thing) inside the house, and she investigated the tree from every angle before I decorated it.

I also hung a huge wreath on the front of the house.

I made the wreath at a wreath-making class at Strange's florist in Richmond, VA last weekend.  BTW, can you see Fiona at her favorite spot looking out the window?

Merry Christmas from the country!

Christmas in the City

My Christmas decorations in DC tend to be pretty low-key, because of both space and time constraints.  This year, I did a table-top live tree, which I decorated with some of my collection of antique ornaments.  (I now have hundreds and hundreds of these ornaments.  I think I have a problem.  Seriously.  I can't stop buying them.  Check back for my CHRISTMAS IN THE COUNTRY post in a few days, and you'll see what I mean.)

I also placed seven, handmade beaded stars on the tree.  They're perfect for filling in blank spaces.  I plan to do a post with instructions on how to make them.  They're really not hard at all.  But aren't they beautiful?  Sparkly simplicity.

Here is what the full tree looks like.

I love it!!  

Happy Holidays, everyone!