Measure twice cut once

Posted on March 19, 2014 by lucy

If only I would take heed of these my father’s wise words when at the machine. But as my sewing buddy can confirm, pinning and measuring really aren’t my thing. I just want to attach things together and deal with problems later. Some may find this surprising, my perfectionist tendencies being well known, however task completion and productivity are in fact higher values for me. I just love racing through a project.

Though I sew every Monday night with my pal and neighbour Kathryn, I’ve also been turning out a few extra projects at weekends during the rugby torture/season. This, and baking, as ye Instagrammers and rugby revellers will well know. This winter i’ve made efforts to improve the draughts blowing through the flat. Because of the uneven floors, its difficult to go conventional on draught exclusion around the front door. Hence i opted to construct a more traditional item, using tweed samples rescued from a junk shop in the Borders (The Glory Hole, Innerleithen). These tweed squares came from the closure of Ballantyne’s mill in 2010, the last establishment of the formerly booming textile industry to remain in the region. After a bit of research, i discovered that buckwheat hulls are the ideal filler for excluders, owing to their density, weight, and eco-friendly credentials being a waste product, not to mention mouse-unfriendly. Using traditional synthetic filler leads to a lighter and hence less effective mechanism. I added attachments for the door, to match the newly painted walls in Stiffkey Blue (see later post).

Thanks to Waitrose, I’ve recently started drinking coffee. But just the lame type, latte. Meanwhile my husband drinks tar from this receptacle on a regular basis. So i reckoned it needed a bit of sewing love, and made it a wee jacket. To keep it warm in our draughty house. I looked at a few pictures online and then put together the cosy in my own way using some nice floral offcuts, random buttons and vintage elastic. It’s got some nice insulating lining and hopefully will keep our coffee happier for a bit longer.

Death by scatter cushions – could be the strap-line for my entire interior decor style. So it follows that I have made a lot of cushions over the years. But never a round one, hence my latest conquest. The living room is pink floral in theme, and i fancied a new challenge in the soft furnishing department. I cut an Ikea filler to size and used my favourite vintage soft satin curtains for the cover. Some white piping and buttons, and hey presto.

Having been following the BBC Sewing Bee, i’m tempted to try and work with a pattern, which i haven’t done so far. I’ve been modifying some charity shop clothes with some success, but quite fancy some ‘just for the heck of it’ sewing projects. I have a Liberty sewing book which i plan to get into over the summer – first up, a peacock pincushion project…

Hot charcoals

Posted on July 31, 2013 by lucy

Sometimes, life doesn’t go quite the way you expect nor hope.

Sort of like many of my sewing and painting projects, which of late have proven to be both blessing and curse. A blessing when you are able to make a nice homemade personalised gift for a friend. [Insert nice picture of tweed patchwork quilt or nappy pouch, recently made but hastily dispatched before being able to take a picture]. A curse when you realise you don’t actually know what you are doing, or why the project is going so wrong.

Such is the case with my latest curtain escapade. Having contracted with myself never to do any more curtains after the drama of the living room ones (still unfinished), somehow i ended up doing another set for the bedroom. It’s the gift of those rose tinted glasses i often wear. i was thinking, it’s surely just a matter of cutting out some big rectangles and sewing them together. And these ones don’t even require the tricky business of joining panels together, so its gonna be a cinch. What can go wrong? Ha!

I found this luscious charcoal velvet on ebay, and some good quality lining fabric. Cutting out went swimmingly. To sew the linings, you make a big tube out of the outer and inner fabrics, turn it inside out, and then sew on the heading tape at the top, and hem the bottom. What i was blissfully unaware of was the difficulty in sewing some very heavy fabric, namely velvet, to some lighter fabric, the lining. Enter: Tension Problem. No amount of twiddling the blessed dials on my machine would allow me to successfully make these two fabrics happy bedfellows. Whilst the velvet would create a tight stitch, the lining would do the opposite, resulting in a twisted mess that hung at about 30 degrees from the traditional vertical inclination of an obedient curtain. After about 5 sewing and ripping out sessions, i bundled the haberdashery offenders up in my sewing room and forgot about them for a few weeks until inspiration hit: forget sewing them together, just join them at the top and leave the two hanging separately.

This proved a success and after a short stint at the machine i was hanging my velvet curtains like we were best of friends. Here they are looking swanky in our bedroom.

Staying with the charcoal theme, i decided to paint the shelves at the end of our bed in a similar moody hue. I have previously lauded Farrow & Ball paints here before, and in this latest project I was busy congratulating myself on my daring choice of “Downpipe’ eggshell. Especially as the subject was this beautiful handmade oak shelving unit, which could have easily contented itself in it’s former unadulterated solid wood state.

This didn’t last, once i realised that failing to use the appropriate primer underneath (a cost-saving initiative on my part) affects the finish and drying time of F&B paints. These shelves took around 4 days to dry, and even now my delicately placed trinkets tend to stick fast to the surface.

Here we have shelf one decorated by me, with pointless items such as vintage shoe inserts and bricks. Shelf two is carefully crafted by Malkie, with items such as…. shoes?! What daring functionality!!

Spring happenings

Posted on May 11, 2013 by lucy

The problem with having about 40 ongoing projects is finding the time to document them all, something i enjoy doing here for interested others to but also as a kind of ledger of my (at times frenetic) activity. I thought, maybe if i group them by time, my blog output might improve. So here’s what springs has brought to The Gardens.

I bought this antique footstool at my first auction experience in Bo’ness. I’d say it was a classic first time buyer’s piece – paid too much, not in great nick, and sort of regretted since. However in Hailes Street it worked well as a wee perch for little people if they had a TV breakfast at the coffee table. Sadly the fine beadwork didn’t stand the test of time, and Kath and I spent more time hoovering them up than possibility benefitting from them through decorative appreciation and foot support. The new living room here appears to be moving in a pink direction so i decided to reupholster it and cover up the tired red.

I realised that this fabric is another Sanderson print, for which i seem to possess a homing device. I purchased a black binbag-full of it at a Stockbridge ‘colonies’ sale for £1, not knowing it was high quality stuff which had originally been made into a sofa slipcover. I combined it with some pink velvet, and linen piping. Then its a simple matter of attaching it on using a staple gun (strictly speaking, not an upholstery technique, but a great shortcut.) The stool works well as a mate for the two window chairs.

Sticking with Sanderson, my vision for the living room, with it’s wonderful new sofa.com, is to create a laid-back but traditional floral feel. Here’s another Sanderson remnant i picked up in a charity shop.

Yes, i know there are too many cushions already, but i do have a longstanding penchant which sadly cannot be assuaged by mere logic alone.

Not satisfied, I made another one with the leftovers from the footstool.

I make most of these kinds of things at sewing night on Mondays with Kath. We used to do it at Hailes Street and have worked, at times against the odds, to keep it a regular commitment.

Vintage maps are fast becoming the must-have decorative item these days. Lucky for me, my husband loves maps so this latest wee project is something we can both enjoy. I found this 1961 map of Northern Ireland in a lesser visited but very delightful charity shop in Leith called St. Columba’s, where my pal Jules used to find all sorts of envy-inducing things when she lived nearby as few years ago. I handed over my 50p (everything is 50p…apart from on that day this rare Piquoware kettle at £65, which I unwillingly resisted). The frame came from the salvage yard, an ugly gold affair which i reincarnated with a lick of white paint. The map was pretty badly creased so I spray-mounted it onto the board. Whilst Malkie took great pleasure examining the alternative driving roots to the M1 which wasn’t then built, and the source of the River Bann, I admired my £5.50 design piece now adorning the hallway!

The other major work of April was re-arranging the kitchen to accommodate a dining table in the window. After a long but futile search for the usual rickety old victorian, turned leg, pine affair, I happened upon this Ikea offering. Having rid myself of nearly every other gratuitous Ikea piece within the house (apart from the actual kitchen, obviously!), it was with reticence that i went to buy this one. However i reasoned that it was the perfect size, was sturdy, had a mid-century feel, and an interesting bamboo top. One flat-pack later, and we were sunning ourselves at breakfast, feeling quite pleased that sacrificing the beautiful handmade oak shelves originally in their stead to the bedroom had been worth it. I have a couple fo Ercol chairs which bring it more towards the mid-century look. This week i am going to be pushing out the boat and painting the chairs scarlet red. I usually opt for fairly safe greys and whites for furniture painting, but at the risk of an entire house full of French Grey, i’m taking the plunge…

What, the curtains?

Posted on April 24, 2013 by lucy

There are two phrases used with reasonable frequency in our house, both of which seem to have particular relevance to this most recent project. For the quick-witted amongst you, the reference in the title relates to a favoured scene in monty python when he begins by saying ‘One day, lad, all this will be yours’, gesturing to the land beyond the window, and the rather pathetic son says….as above.

In addition, round mid-ulster parts one would say ‘You’ve got tickets on yourself’ when attempting to rise above your station. Such was indeed the case when i decided, without prior basic experience or expertise, to make the curtains for our enormous drafty bay window. It pretty much fits with my usual rules of thumb when appraoching any new sewing project, as follows:

1. Choose the most complex level of the project you are embarking upon

2. Don’t seek the careful advice of wise and experienced others, just do a bit of cursory googling

3. Use inadequate equipment eg a wood off-cut to mark out straight lines on your material

4. Take lots of shortcuts so that the project doesn’t drag on and get really boring.

I started out about 4 months ago with choosing the material. I tend to fear spending too much on such a DIY project in case it goes miserably wrong so i economised and bought the material on ebay. A plain colour is the way to go for a novice, no matching up patterns etc. I bought 20 metres of plain un-dyed irish linen, assuming this would work with most furniture (as yet un-purchased for our living room). The lining also came from ebay, and is draft-excluding (in theory).

Probably the most tricky bit is cutting out. In fact there’s very little complex sewing involved, just straight lines to piece together all the sections, and straight lines to attach the heading tape. Each cut piece needs to be near enough a perfect rectangle, so that when sewn together it all lines up in one big square. Sadly straight lines aren’t my forte but I seemed to get away with it and only ending up with one piece far too short, but that’s easily remedied.

The other tricky aspect is dealing with the sheer quantity of material. This is where a sewing workshop would come in handy, but the dining table had to make do for me. I ended up fully engulfed in linen quite a few times. Then to add insult to injury that all gets doubled up with lining fabric too.

Fast forward a few months, after the arduous process of trying to get a decent curtain rail attached to crumbly walls, and the curtains have been hung! Aside from practical issues in getting them to slide along the pole (another story), i managed to achieve a number of key objectives, namely

1. They cover the window panes

2. They are long enough

3. They hang from the hooks without falling off

4. They meet in the middle.

For a beginner’s project, i feel this is a reasonable achievement of goals. But i’m not sure that would tempt me to undertake such a mad project again! Some pictures so you can decide for yourself….

Bedroom blitz

Posted on March 6, 2013 by lucy

So we had a fire. In our bedroom. Which meant 2 things. 1: A valid excuse to expedite its re-decoration, just 1 day after the kitchen was finished. And 2: The need to find a new way to clear the smell of little sleeping people doing an innocent poop in their nappy, that does not involve tea lights set in precarious proximity of the sheets. Thankfully, the little person in question was sound asleep in her own bed by the time the fire got going. We managed to limit the damage to just the bed and surrounding items, by dragging the burning stuff outdoors. (“That front door just paid for itself”). Most things were replaceable but perhaps the most annoying loss was this huge and luxurious bedspread which i picked up years ago and now can’t replace.

So i decided to try and salvage it by making things from what was reasonably left. This turned out quite well in the end, as i had been looking for inspiration for our large window and fancied a long fabric seat to go with the plethora of scatter cushions. I have a weird sensory sensitivity to foam (makes me shiver!) so i didn’t fancy the thought of having to handle a big wad for the project. I was therefore pleased to find an old window seat at the salvage yard and stripped off the cover to reveal this cotton-covered foam piece.

A word about piping. For most projects i try and convince myself its ok to skip piping, owing to the time involved in making it, and then having to fiddle around with getting it all in place and sewing through huge wads of fabric layers. But for a window cushion i reckon its pretty indispensable, so i made some out of an old skirt lining in a similar shade.Here we are with the basic shape taking form. Adding a zip somewhere is a good idea so that you can turn it all inside out at the end without having to do a magic trick. Also good for washing it at some point.Here it is in situ, alongside all its other little cushion friends.The middle turquoise one was a pleasing find, its a vintage William Morris print for Sanderson. The blue floral ones are from a (more recent) Sanderson remnant, and the grey floral is an Ikea fabric. Sadly this pic highlights my wonky piping.

The window seat used about a quarter of the fabric, so i decided to motor on and make some bolster cushions too. I’ve made them before but obviously had forgotten how annoying they are to make. After one failed attempt, i worked out the basics. This time, to cut a corner (i love cutting corners, especially in sewing, which is overall quite a time-consuming pursuit), i cut off the edging to use as piping.Turned out quite well in the end!

Crafty gifts

Posted on January 4, 2013 by lucy

With the flat in turmoil owing to the kitchen refit during december, the elements weren’t conducive to a handmade christmas. So it was that for the first year in a long time, we had no tree, no wreath, no mark of christmas cheer in the flat. In fact, we were lucky to get a cup of tea at home for about 3 weeks. However it wouldn’t quite be christmas for me without a few crafty presents for family. Following the success of my recent hot water bottle covers, i couldn’t resist doing the same for the wider Calvert hot-water-bottle appreciation team. Helen and my mother-in-law were the recipients of these two new designs.

This one was a welcome opportunity to use some of my Liberty fabric, which is in short supply but getting a bit sad being as yet un-used in any project thus far. Its too good! The mustard velvet was picked up in a charity shop in York, which i then quilted. The labels are parcel tags printed with stampers from one of my favourite stationery companies, Cavalllini & Co. This one I gave to my mother-in-law. The fabric is from John Lewis, and finished off with a vintage button.
My niece (and namesake) Lucia loves to bake. I came up with this ridiculously easy apron design, involving the corner of a vintage embroidered tablecloth. Fast track to making one look amazing at embroidery, yet having no idea how to, or indeed inclination to, actually embroider.

I did do the text in freehand embroidery on the machine. Easy when you have the special attachment.
Pity Lucia left her apron at home on New year’s eve when we made homemade pizzas. She had to make do with mummy’s geniously improvised Tesco bag. I guess the ‘danger of suffocation’ issue was not so much of a problem with holes for little girl’s heads!

The blind leading the blind

Posted on November 28, 2012 by lucy

Over the years i have built up a reasonable sewing repertoire of quilts, bags, organisers and other handy household items. However when it comes to one simple aspect of sewing, namely doing so in a long, straight line, i wouldn’t say i am particularly accomplished. Its the tedium of measuring and marking out that doesn’t appeal. So where possible, i cut straight lines by using existing selvedges to roughly guide me, and other contraban methods for cutting perpendicularly, where squares or rectangles are required. So, if i had known how many straight lines would need cut and sewn, and how integral this would be to the functionality of the item, i might not have embarked upon my most recent project, a large roman blind for the guest room.

When doing an unfamiliar project, i try not to buy new material for it in case its a complete disaster. The only suitable material i had in terms of size, weight and stye had previously been made into a quilt. Not a very good quilt though, so i was happy to pull it apart again, although i did have to sew a few odds and ends together in order to have a large enough piece for the main body of the blind.

I dug out various bits of plain white cotton and stitched them all together to make the backing. I used this tutorial for the instructions, and was glad i did as it’s not a very intuitive project. Hurdle number one is making the basic blind fit the window. This occurred almost certainly by chance on this occasion – as stated this kind of thing is not my forte. Then, i made casings for the dowels. Next comes the tricky bit…marking out where the casings go. So not only does each casing need to be sewn on straight as a die, to accomodate the dowel, but also horizontal as [other suitable simile] so that the drawstring mechanism works. Marking chalk and a long piece of wood are essential here.

The next stage is attaching the fabric onto the top wood support. I used a staple gun but you could attach it with velcro too.I then realised i needed blind rings and decent string so there was a small interlude in proceedings whilst ebay was consulted. The rings need to be sewn by hand, at least 3 per dowel, which is a bit arduous (i hate hand sewing), then eye hooks are aligned with each row of rings and attached to the top wood piece. Buying individual wooden dowels tends to push the price up, so instead i used plastic-coated bamboo from Homebase at £5 for the lot. And then, the moment of truth….

.…and the bit where i realised how essential the measuring accuracy was. If you look closely, you will note that the bottom dowel is at an angle to the rest of them. This is because of my school-boy error whereby i measured each strip against the one above thus losing around 4 cm by the bottom end of the blind. So when pulled up it all looks a bit wonky.

Furthermore, though the fabric looked quite heavy, as you can see it definitely is a long way from black-out!

On the up side, when all bunched up it looks pretty good and the layering turns out to be quite forgiving of all my inaccuracies.

In hot water

Posted on November 25, 2012 by lucy

After a few months of living in our new place, we can definitely say that warmth is a slight issue. Being ground floor, with huge single-glazed windows, draughty doors and little else in the way of reasonable insulation, makes for a chilly environment. On the up-side, we have been embracing nostalgia and getting back into good old hot water bottles. According to a reliable source, usage in general is on the increase in Britain, with subsequent escalation of scalding incidents. However, apparently hot water bottles are still not very ‘fashionable’.

But someone at the Guardian makes an excellent case for the bottle: “With an adequate cover (and would you seriously consider a naked rubber bottle?), it keeps you warm into the small hours. And then there is the attendant ritual of decanting a boiled kettle; lightly burping the bottle, and screwing the cap reassuringly tight. To do this is to feel somehow parental, wise – as if providing for your inner child.”

In other trivia news, we once had a guest staying at Hailes Street who was in great need of a bottie. After an earnest moonlight search, she came across my expanded collection of antique ceramic ones and subsequently used one in her bed. I think it was an anguished night’s sleep, in fear of a sudden cracking or leakage drama. As i recall, none such event occurred, and many thanks to Bre for testing it out. I had always wondered…..

My sister-in-law Helen is a knitting extraordinaire, and made me this lovely cosy cover last year over the christmas holidays.

Meanwhile poor Malkie was having to make do with an inglorious naked bottle for the first few weeks of our hottie revival between the sheets. So i set about designing and making a suitably masculine cover.

The material was originally the reclaimed lining from a very ugly coat. This meant that supply was limited which i have decided was mostly to blame for the phase one error in production which resulted in the top section being too narrow to fit the ‘spout’ of the bottle. As stated before, sewing projects are generally made up as i go along, but this method can have it’s advantages, namely the opportunity for unexpected product improvement. (If you are not into this kind of ad-hoc seamstressing, LIsa Stickley does a nice tutorial here.)

I cut the initial faulty top section off and made a new wider piece complete with lid and fastener. I changed the alignment of the fabric and was able to sew on more binding (which i couldn’t do as planned around the main body edges as it was already a bit too neat-fitting).

I quilted along the lines of the fabric in the main body, and used leftover wadding from some recent patch-working to insulate. The toggle was also salvaged from the original coat, and definitively sets the cover apart as a Malkie item. (Loves a good toggle button, he does.)

So without any particular planning, this project, made entirely from salvaged or left-over materials, turns out to be of practical design, boyish, and surprisingly fit for purpose. Unlike most of my other sewing projects on all 3 counts….

Sink Skirt

Posted on November 3, 2012 by lucy

Two things i find difficult to look at – ugly pipes and untidy leads/cables. So this little sink in the WC wasn’t filling me with joy every time i sat down to do the necessary. (Not to mention the awful kitchen taps). Being right in front of the toilet, i was able to sit and study it in some detail since we moved in, in order to figure out the best way to hide the exposed plumbing.

Whilst the room itself was clearly decorated on a cheap and cheerful budget, i really like the white tiles and grey grout – kind of ‘subway’ style. Plus the black and white theme running throughout. I wanted to upgrade the look a bit and figured this would be an ideal place to introduce some Jouy de Toile fabric in similar colours. I found some lovely charcoal grey fabric on ebay and set about designing what i came to discover was called a ‘sink skirt’. With no frame to hang fabric on, i researched stick-on options and came up with this ‘heavy duty’ velcro, which i am told in good faith that once stuck on, it isn’t likely to come off.

All skirts need a bit of ruffle so i dug out some thick black elastic i had tucked away. Im not really sure about sewing elastic so like most of my sewing projects, i was making it up as i went along. Luckily I discovered in time the elastic zig zig setting on the machine which allows the elastic to return to its former state after it has been sewed fully stretched, thus resulting in a pretty row of even ruffle. I decided the black made a nice contrast edging so put it on the front rather than hidden away at the back.

Next i attached some velcro along the ruffle to attach to the sink.

The ‘heavy duty’ velcro goes onto the sink, and hey presto! A fancy sink skirt….
Not satisfied with one sink skirt, i decided to ditch the generic white cupboards and add another skirt in the main bathroom. This fabric off-cut was 50p in charity shop, its got a slight sheen so is nice and waterproof for our steamy bathroom. In time i’ll introduce the fresh green colour a bit more into the room.

Liberty

Posted on March 7, 2012 by lucy

Long before the salvage sisters got savvy about good design, our mama was dressing us in Liberty print baby dresses and fitting out our shared bedroom with Liberty wallpaper. Either its in the genes or its classical conditioning, but i am now a huge fan of liberty fabric (who isn’t!?), but rarely indulge in such luxuries. It was a great day last year when i came across 3 meters of retro Liberty fabric in a wee rural charity shop for a few pounds, but such events are of course rare so the occasional splashing out on stunning fabric is ok in my book. Just browsing the London shop itself is an experience, slowly unfurling swathes of soft fabric and dreaming about the most suitable project, or fantasising about a sofa stacked with mounds of Liberty cushions…

This year i was given a sewing book from my secret santa (thanks ryan), a collection of Liberty’s very own in-house sewing projects. Its full of lovely illustrations and uses a variety of prints and textures. It is little bit exacting for my style (i never usually measure anything) but i am hopeful i can learn a trick or two about the avantages of becoming more precise and learning how to use a simple pattern.

So here is completed project number one. Its a quilted wash bag. Whilst i managed to stick to the measurements and the pattern, i did take a liberty (ha ha) with some aspects including the quilting, also the style of fabric is cotton rather than a stiff canvas as was recommended. The fabric is in fact a vintage Laura Ashley print, salvaged from an enormous jumpsuit i found in some charity shop sale rail (you know its bad when you shop from charity shop sale rails).

When your splashing out on fabric, it is a good idea to make a project initially in more basic fabric so that you make the inevitable mistakes on that first, then move on to the real deal. So here is my chosen fabric for the next attempt, bought in january whilst we were in London for the weekend. Fingers crossed!

Salvage Sisters

Join us in our apparently inherited insatiability for resurrected relics and design on a shoestring…

Category Archives: sewing