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….

Painting Blitz, Now & Then

Posted on April 6, 2013 by lucy

I’ve been awaiting the coming of spring with anticipation. Yes, to escape the Siberian trade-winds, and plant flowers, and drink tea outside, but mainly so I can re-paint my front door. It was black gloss originally and whilst this might look good at 10 Downing Street, I felt it wasn’t giving a warm enough welcome. Yesterday it was beautifully sunny on my route home from work and so by 6.45 i had the first layer of undercoat on the door. I was half tempted to re-consider my colour choice having seen how good the slate grey undercoat looked….

But I had my heart set on Country Green, and wasn’t disappointed when it came to the moment of truth the following day (ie the moment you first discover whether the paint therein looks remotely like the front label).

Ok, so we don’t live in the country, but that’s just semantics. A very delightful afternoon was thus spent painting the door and reminiscing about all the painting Gemma and I (and Ryan) used to do when we were kids. I was thinking how we have whitewashed the entire farmyard at least 3 times over the years. It was great fun (initially) as there’s no careful brushstrokes involved, you just get a big massive horsehair brick of a brush and slap the lime paint on, or near the stonework walls. Very messy and fulfilling. Then there was the time right before my wedding when we branched out and painted all the green tin roofs. I recall sitting on top of the green roof with Ryan drinking tea and talking about the best way to get efficient coverage with a paint gun. As an aside, writing about this has just made me go in search of the photos. Please indulge me…

Here we are in 2005, doing what people do just before a family wedding…

Not even visitors could escape.

Nor 96 year olds! Nanny wasn’t to be outdone by all the hard work going on in the yard.

When i was 15 i repainted my bedroom, choosing yellow for the floorboards, orange for the walls and purple for the skirting and woodwork. Let us return to the present and see if i have managed to garner any more taste since then….

Having finished the first coat on the front door, i felt so pleased with the whole affair that i got all paintbrush-happy and impulsively decided to neaten up all the surrounding paintwork. I found an ancient old tin of red doorstep paint (as one does); applying this glue-like substance didn’t even threaten to dampen my mood. I then undercoated all the door and fan-light frames, the first step on the journey to ridding the entire house of yellowing gloss-work, which sadly is everywhere.

My little helper Ruby make a cool sign for the postman.

Not satisfied with all that, i proceeded on to the next project, these little bedside cabinets for the guest room. I figured it would be good to see what all the fuss is about this Annie Sloan chalk paint, so I did them in ‘French Grey’. On reflection, i wish i had bought some slightly classier hardwood pieces than these chipboard items. Its probably true, in this case, that you can’t polish a turd.

I reckon its almost a rite of passage in furniture painting, having a towel rail in distressed grey. Walk into any vintage/gift/shabby chic shop and there you will see one, i guarantee it. Not to be left out in the cold, i did one for the guest room, again in Annie Sloan French Grey.

I’ll go down to Anthropologie tomorrow to get some fancy knobs, and at some point distress the cabinets. In the meantime, i’ve had a new distraction! See subsequent post for details…

After the blaze

Posted on March 16, 2013 by lucy

We have now finished redecorating our bedroom post-blaze, so thought i’d do a wee tour. In a deliberate attempt to move away from the usual vintage/floral/junky look, i decided on a blue/grey theme with some attention to texture and detail. The overall aim was a simple but indulgent, luxury look.

We painted it in two Farrow and Ball colours, the chimney breast and recessed press are ‘Oval Room Blue’ and the walls are ‘Light Blue’.

My husband is a tolerant guy but i reckon i might be pushing him to the limits with this undeniable cushion overdose. I wanted to introduce different textures and shades within the colour palate, so tweeds, velvets and natural linens are good contenders. As you can see, tweed cushions make great bedfellows, i made all the covers and the bedspread is from Tullyroan. Poor Malcolm makes the bed every morning and indulges me by placing them all as below! Putting 3 alongside make the bed appear bigger (common hotel trick).

I picked up the gold gilt mirror in a charity shop, which links in well with the traditional brass filial bed. The blue bowl is from Tullyroan, and is filled, usefully, with fairy lights. The picture was £1 from the salvage yard. Malcolm frequently says he doesn’t like it but i think the attraction for me is because it reminds me of walking the shores of Carlingford Lough at Rostrevor, where some of our family live. I’d love to paint the drawers a grey shade but its a bit of a moral dilemma proposing to cover over lovely stripped antique pine.

We invested in this traditional bed from Feather and Black a few years ago, and haven’t regretted it.

We have gathered up some great pictures in recent years. These two both came from the CCE Art Exhibition which i administrate. The first is by a friend Miriam McWilliam and suits the mood of the room perfectly. The next one we bought last year, its by local artists Alan Kay and is the exact scene where we got engaged, at St. Leonard’s Bank.

And a few vignettes. Not sure why i have 3 non-working pocket clocks but i like them grouped together. The press is full of knick-knacks picked up over time. My current favourite is the pair of wooden vintage shoe trees. Followed closely by the enamel shoe polish box, which i picked up beside a bin.

Onwards to the dressing room. This was a big seller for us when we viewed the flat. Basically, there is no denying that i have a lot of clothes, and to fit them all into a shared wardrobe would simply be a recipe for marital disaster. As well as physically impossible. I painted it in a Crown shade called “Rosy Cheeks’. I wanted a dusky pink and surprisingly, F&B didn’t have much in their pink palate.

Essentially the whole color scheme is based on this vintage Sanderson curtain fabric.

I re-upholstered the chair in the same fabric. The shelving was a bit inadequate so i added a few extra to house all 50 of my cardigans. I still need to paint the apple crates in grey, and they are stuffed with scarves (another of my excessive fetishes).

Vintage tins feature everywhere in this house, including here, where i keep my ‘daily’ make-up.

I blogged about this old type-drawer before, which i turned into a rather decadent earring display/hanger.

Just need my beautiful charcoal grey velvet curtains to arrive from the seamstress (not me this time thankfully) and we’re all set!

(With thanks to Heather McMurray for lending me a decent lens for this post!)

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!

Chair Lift

Posted on February 23, 2013 by lucy

There seems to be a revival happening in the world of painted furniture, but its not like the good old ‘changing rooms’ days of the early 90’s. I recall aged 13 painting my first two-tier table. By today’s standards it would be viewed as positively twee, but back then it was all about the pattern (stencils? everywhere, please), shine and colour. For this particular project, I stripped both the table tops, did a strawberry vine hand-painted decorative border on each, painted the legs gloss forest green, and finally varnished the whole thing. This gets 3 black marks by today’s standards. The ‘chalky paint’ look has come to dominate the scene, the more unfinished looking the better. When painting furniture, one must try their best to miss as many corners and edges as possible, if not achieiving this then attacking your carefully painted piece with a healthy dose of sandpaper and strategically positioned chips, the more the better. As my pal Ali said the other day, don’t forget to start off with a truly gawdy colour which you then allow to peek forth, reminiscent of some long-forgotten era where green gloss and strawberry vine might actually have been considered fashionable.

Painted furnitiure is quite handy for the thriftily minded like me; buy an ugly old thing cheaply and liberally apply some Annie Sloan paint and wax til it wouldn’t look a bit out of place at any French brocante. Of course, Farrow and Ball or indeed the recently discovered Craig and Rose 1829 range will do just as nicely but for the purist, the chalkier the paint finish the better. I haven’t done a huge amount of furniture painting within the current trend but i recently did this project and i think its given me the bug! Mainly because of the joy in working with the beautiful paint range and textures from Craig and Rose. I have prevously used Crown or other standard range eggshell finish but working with a more finely made paint makes a remarkable difference for both durability and overall look. Not to mention the simple pleasure of reading the paint charts (sounds almost as appealing as watching paint dry, but read on….). For example, choose Porcelain Blue and you will discover that it is ‘a colour inspired by an Adelaide Alsop Robineau 1865-1925 porcelain vase.’

This bentwood chair was a street find. This doesn’t happen often so when it does i get all a-flutter. Harking back to the good ol’ days again, we had a series of Bentwood chairs at home in Tullyroan, mum had painted them all white gloss (same mistake as me it seems) and i remember being less than fond of them. So here i am investing an afternoon’s work in doing just about the same, but 25 years later. The apple doesn’t fall far…

Firstly i applied a layer of standard undercoat, i have skipped this in the past but you end up wasting more of your actual paint by having to do additional layers, so best to do this when working with untreated wood. If you are impatient like me you can thin it down to make it more workable, but make sure to use a nice attractive tin of pomodorini cherry tomatoes for doing so in case you suddenly decide to take pictures of the whole operation.

Here we have the chair at stage one, drying in sub-zero temperatures outside.

I then applied lavishly in two coats this delightful colour given to me by Gemma called Moonstone Grey. (“Originally named after a semi-precious stone from Sri Lanka”). Its a classic ‘of the moment’ shade; grey and blue and green all wrapped up in one.

Now here’s the bit that i rarely get around to. Go over all the edges and corners with fine sandpaper to create a distressed look. I fought my anti-commercialist tendencies and bought some of this Annie Sloan soft wax, this protects the finish against proper wear and tear chips which annoyingly never look that good or intentional.

I am not a fan of distressing the hell out of the item so as you can see here it’s quite subtle. In fact, come to think of it, you can’t see it at all but we’ll just blame the photographer for that.

Not satisfied with just one chair, i decided to re-vamp a former project which didn’t quite stand up to the test of time and community living. Incidentally, i bought this chair for 50p at an auction so not much is lost if it all goes wrong. I followed the same procedure again and then replaced the seat cover. All you need for that is a staple gun and some nice fabric.

I love this material by Colefax & Fowler, I picked up a scrap in a charity shop and have been trying to make it last ever since.

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.

Whiskey Cabinetry

Posted on October 7, 2012 by lucy

My latest project was one of the first things i bought for this house. It was a few weeks before we moved and i promised Malcolm i would find a whiskey cabinet that appealed to us both. We were headed out to North Berwick beach and we stopped off at Sam Burns place in Prestonpans. I frequent it less now than i used to as it seems to have been ‘discovered’ by a wider group and more often now i come home empty-handed, which rarely happened in the good old days. But on this merry occasion, i happened upon this delightful vintage glass cabinet. We searched around for an old bottle to make sure it would accommodate said item. This is more than i would usually do but my pal Ali brought some essential pragmatism, as is often the case. We established that bottles fitted neatly on the top shelf.

Having no measurements for the new place, i took a chance on the cabinet in terms of the overall dimensions. I was certain it would fit beautifully to the left of the fireplace. I was eating my proverbial words when we discovered shortly after moving in that it was wide by about 6 inches. Alas it was merely an issue of height in that if 4 inches shorter, it would fit if tucked gracefully underneath the mantle. So it was that on day 4 when my bro came to stay for a night he found himself issued with a hacksaw and a tape measure, tasked with cutting the ornate claw feet off (the word ‘butchering’ was used but i chose to ignore such blatant overstatement).

The cabinet looks to be mahogany, with the most stunning vintage floral paper inside. Its quite weathered so i reckon it is the original decor.

Once slotted into place, it was immediately evident that the cabinet needed a little lift, something to help it stand out from the crowd (of other vintage friends in the room). And there’s nothing like a bit of moody lighting to raise the tone, add some class…..

A few Ikea spotlights later and the cabinet really does shine now. Here you can see my clumsy wiring lurking in the background (just like the Lord Calvert, but that’s another story), waiting to be tidied up. Plus evidence of further power-tool action. Poor little cabinet! So, anyone for a wee dram?

Salvage Sisters

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

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