Jessie Loves: DIY Home Projects
Tips for my favorite handmade home decor
Over the years I’ve added little touches to my personal spaces that I made myself. The impetus for this is twofold: 1. I am usually on a tight budget and 2. I love to make things!
Below I showcase a few of the projects I’ve worked on in hopes they might inspire you. I am hoping to hear about your favorite DIY home projects too!
A Coffee Table Skirt
Out at the beach, I had a sad coffee table I never liked. It was white metal and just cold and boring. It’s very, very hard, I find, to source nice coffee tables.
Not having the budget to buy a new table, and not even having found one I would buy if I could, inspiration struck one day and I decided to sew a little skirt for the table I already had.
I adore the tablecloths that Maison De Vacances makes. I decided to chop up one of mine to make the skirt (I used their Nutmeg colorway). Before I cut I had to do a lot of calculations to understand if the tablecloth would give the right amount of fabric needed. There are some weirdly-placed seams but in the end it all worked out. (A good measurement for a ruffle is usually 1.5 or 2 times the desired finished width of the ruffle).
I learned that you can order glass on Amazon (of all places) in the exact size you need. I could hardly believe when it showed up unbroken. I put the skirt on the table and the glass on top and voilà! It became a super functional table that holds coffee cups without getting stained. It’s now a piece of furniture in my house that I love instead of hate.
An Under-Sink Skirt
Speaking of skirts… in my kitchen at the beach designed by Zoe Feldman, we decided to use curtains instead of doors on some of the cabinets. I love this feminine touch!
I visited Sweden on a special trip with some of my close friends in June of 2023 and we went to Svenskt Tenn in Stockholm, which is probably one of the most beautiful stores (if not the most beautiful store) I have ever visited in my life.
There amongst the gorgeous Josef Frank fabrics I found a stunning blue linen. It is a yarn-dyed fabric with highs and lows that create a rich and varied quality.
I took out my trusty sewing machine again and got to work. I looked up curtain tutorials on YouTube to help me understand the best process. I even added little curtain weights I had seen at the five-and-dime in Sag Harbor to the hem of the skirt. This adds a lovely heft to the curtain to hold it in place. Here is the finished product:
Every time I look at it I think of Sweden, my family’s Swedish heritage, that special trip and my wonderful friends.
Edged Curtains
I wanted curtains in my Brooklyn bedroom, but designer fabric is expensive and I didn’t really know a good place to get curtains made (I’m comfortable sewing small curtains but not floor-to-ceiling ones). So I bought some very affordable curtains from Crate and Barrel and sewed lovely wide cotton ribbon along the edges.
The ribbon of course is from my favorite ribbon resource, Studio Carta. This is the 1.5” wide cotton ribbon.
This project took a very boring curtain and turned it into something special. (My husband hates curtains and ultimately I put them up on a weird spot on the wall with crappy hardware and I think they need to come down at some point. But in the meantime, they are better than nothing).
Tile Layouts
I love Moroccan Zelige tile so so much! I have used it in many different spots. When we were working on my kitchen by the beach, I impulsively decided to make the floor out of tile with a contrasting border.
This isn’t really a DIY project, but I add it here to show how getting hands-on can bring a project to life.
Once all the heavy tile arrived on my doorstep, the contractors asked how I wanted it to look. Figuring out the layout was a very technical process. Initially I tried to use a to-scale drawing on my iPad, but that didn’t work. So I decided to lug all the boxes upstairs to my kids’ giant shared bedroom to test different configurations.
I used tape on the floor to represent my kitchen island and began playing around exactly to scale. The possibilities with tiles are endless. At first I tried making giant checkers like this:
But ultimately I went with a smaller-scale checker for the final look:
A few more little projects:
I had a headboard made out of some left over LR fabric for my bedroom in Brooklyn.
I used ruffled bedspreads to create a makeshift couch cover out in the Hamptons. I have to say most people have no idea it’s just bedspreads.
As I’ve mentioned before, even tying a ribbon on a light fixture makes an impact.
Finally, this is one of my favorite DIY projects I’ve ever done. I was getting sad that my kids were growing up. So many of our special memories have taken place at the beach, and I loved all their little Vilebrequin bathing suits over the years. I decided to make a quilt out of the suits so I could always look at them. I can pick out any triangle on that quilt and immediately picture those little bodies in that exact suit and a special moment together. I hung the quilt on the wall out by the beach.
Would you like to see more details on any of these projects? Let me know!
What I’m wearing this week:
I popped down to Charlotte to speak on a panel at the Mint Museum with my friends Katie Hobbs from Cara Cara and Maggie Smith of Mignonne Gavigan. I wore my leopard platforms with our eyelet dress. The platforms were such a huge hit with the ladies!
Ashley, my co-worker, wore the red Willy dress and red Margot. Everyone dresses so colorfully in Charlotte so these were favorites.
We hosted a trunk show, too. I wore our collared Daisy blouse, our studded belt, comfy and chic Cleo boots and our brown Lo cardigan. Did you know the collar buttons off? I wore mine with no collar to suit my blouse. I love a two-in-one item!
And one thing I hate:
I hate that Brian said the border I chose on the kitchen tiles looks like a California Pizza Kitchen and I hate sewing without a good podcast. True Crime is my fav. Any reccos?
Giveaway Winners!
For our Substack dinner at Stissing House, we custom-made these genius gift bags to celebrate six months of Jessie Loves and filled them with my favorite (sold out) LR cosmetic pouches and cozy cashmere socks. We have a few left, and I’m excited to send them to three lucky subscribers… and those subscribers are Sarah Hrudka, Bethany Askew and Rebekah Bradford! Look out for an email from my team, and thank you for your support!
Your kitchen is a DREAM and I love that bathing suit quilt ❤️
Oh my gosh, I feel like this gets said too flippantly on Substack but this post has sparked SO many ideas! Love the tiling and bedspreads as a couch cover!