After waiting for 1) adequate sunshine for picture taking, and 2) the purchase of new white pillow cases (as the old "white" pillow cases were definitely showing their vanilla-colored age), at last, here is a picture of my new duvet cover in action:

Just so you all know, Monkey King will probably kill me for posting that picture. The lengths I go to for a laugh.

That's not all I've been sewing, however. This morning, in a fit of "green guilt," I sat down and bammed out a reusable Clorox mop pad. YOU'RE WELCOME, EARTH. Not just because it is so much cheaper than buying those $10 boxes of one-use pads all the time. That had noooooothing to do with it.

For the benefit of other cheap eco-concious sewers, I've prepared a photo tutorial of how I did this. This is my 1st one, so it's not a beauty by any means, though it is plenty functional and can be done in under an hour. And did I mention cheaper than a trip to Target (because you know that you SO do not just leave with one box of anything) and good for the Earth? I'm still trying to figure out how to wean myself off of the bottles of Clorox floor solution, but one green, thrifty step at a time.

Take out a clean mop pad and trace the outline onto the wrong side of your fabric (pre-shrunk cotton fabric, that is). These lines will be good for guiding your seam stitching too. I pre planned that, it did not happen by accident at all. (I'm lying.)

Cut around your outline, giving yourself about 1/2 inch of extra fabric. Also cut out a piece of cotton batting the same size as the "pad" part of the Clorox version.

You're going to sew the pad in the middle of one of the pieces.

Layer your pieces with the 2 "right" sides of the fabric facing each other.

Now pin your pieces together, leaving one end open. Sew all around, using the pencil marks as your guide.

When you're done with the sewing around (leaving your one end open!), snip the corners to reduce bulk.

Turn your work inside out, and poke the corners so they stick out better. Iron your work, and on that open end, turn the raw edges in and iron them flat. I forgot to take a picture of this step, but you're going to sew these together from the right side and you don't want that ugly frayed edge showing.

Here is where I quilted the piece to reduce the fabric shifting around. The stitches didn't show up so good, so I used my vast Photoshop skills to put these squiggly lines in to represent where I sewed.

Voila!

Um...Extra voila!

Why yes, I regularly mop my carpet. What, that's weird?

Did I tell you I'm going to Paris next Wednesday? I'm really excited, it's my first trip to anywhere in Europe at all, and I'll be there for 11 days. SWEET.

I look forward to being embarrassed by my lack of French language skills (but I got plenty of frenching experience, I'm sure that counts for something) and eating lots of crepes and cheese and snails and being drunk all the time and spending the entire contents of my savings account.

So, basically a Friday night at my house, but in a foreign country.