She had told me she was going to shop around for a new bed ensemble for her room and asked if I wanted to go with her. That's about the time I spotted a couple sheet sets in her linen closet and asked her if she wanted me to sew up a duvet cover and some accessories with them. She kind of looked at me funny and said "You mean with those old sheets?" "Yes, Mom. They're beautiful. Don't you like them?" Long story short, she had no problem with me ripping them apart and so I did and she still is using them in her bedroom during the spring/summer season.
So here goes. I didn't have to do anything with the pillow cases, but I took two of the flat sheets and sewed up a duvet cover for her down comforter. I used ribbon in a matching shade of blue to tie the top together. I also made a pillow and monogrammed it with her first initial (same as mine).
I just free formed the "L" on a block of white fabric I made and hand stitched it with embroidery floss. Then I hand sewed the white block onto the sheet fabric. {This is the part I will ask you to pretend to not see the black ink peeking out from under the embroidery floss.}
I had found some pretty sheer white ribbon that had a strand of faux pearls running down the center and criss crossed it with some ribbon I found with a special message written in gold.
Here you can see a closeup of the "old sheeets" which have a linen-like print, as a background to the flowers.
I even had enough fabric to make up a French message board. It looks great with some of our old sepia family photos tucked into the ribbon. (She had just changed back to this set today and had not yet put the photos back up though).
I found some very inexpensive flowers and made up this arrangement to go with her new "old" set. {Yes, I know there's no such thing as blue roses, so don't look too close at that either.} The wicker vase is one that I had from back in the 80s that I was happy to find a good use for.
And I had just enough fabric to make a quick set of toppers for both of her plain white curtained windows. I lined the toppers with the white fabric I already had.
And then today, she reminded me that I had also made her a button box back then too.
It was just a little round cardboard covered box that I painted in a Tiffany blue shade, and then had glued overlapping white buttons all over the lid.