Just one of those weeks!

We all have had them.  Start off the week on the right foot, ready to conquer everything on your To Do list... Then it all comes to a halt, because you get sick.  Ugh, I am so tired of feeling sick and tired.  As of today I am on the mend, but I think that allergy season is now in full swing with a vengeance, so I am very sniffly and I look like Rudolf the red nosed reindeer.  Oh yeah, I had to deal with two dead birds in our yard this week too!  I stumbled out of bed on Wednesday to go to the store and post office.  On my way out the front door I see a hawk on our front lawn with a headless pigeon in it's mouth (not a great thing to see when you are feeling well, but being sick it was almost to much to handle).  The hawk got scared and flew away, but left the pigeon on our lawn.  Great!  Then yesterday I see Domino playing with something in the back yard and go out to investigate.  Get up close to him and he has a dead bird in his mouth!  Again, YUCK.  

Enough of my pity party.

I have been meaning to post about this for awhile, but I just got around to mending the hole in the cushion cover.  Remember the cushion cover I made way back in November... Well I was sitting on it with Domino, rubbing his belly (forgetting that I had put Advantage on him earlier that day).  When he got up the nasty Advantage stuff had eaten a hole in the cushion cover fabric!  

Okay, grated this fabric is vintage repurposed drapes (and I have no idea what the fiber content is), but for this stuff to eat a hole in it!?!  What was it doing to us and our dogs?  I haven't used it since, but now need help finding a good natural remedy to rid the dogs of fleas.  

I did patch the cushion cover.  Luckily, I had underlined the drapery fabric with a layer of cotton.  So I sewed a straight stitch around the hole:

Then cut away the torn fabric:

Zigzagged the raw edges:

I had some left over drapery fabric, so I cut out a piece of it, trying to match up the pattern.  I applied sticky back fusible webbing to the patch, to hold it in place while I topstitched around the patch edges:

Viola!  A mended cushion cover:

So if any of you out there have a natural way to get rid of fleas on your pet, please let me know.  Right now, they are getting bathed weekly and I am putting eucalyptus oil on their collars.  I am also washing their bedding often, vacuuming often and spraying where they hang out with a mixture of apple cider vinegar, water and a few drops of the eucalyptus oil a few times a week.  But would love to know if any of you have better ideas.