Something fresh

You know that Belle & Sebastian song, Don't leave the light on baby? I feel like i have sung that first line to myself several times over the last year or so.

Not that anything is majorly wrong, but you know when you feel like things just haven't been going right? I find it can really kill your creativity.

I had a load of lovely crafty projects on the go, but i feel as though most of them have come to a grinding halt. And this has probably contributed to the 'not going right' malaise. It has also contributed to the lack of activity on here.

So today, i decided to start something new.
Something fresh.
Something simple, that doesn't require me to umm and ahh too much. I'm using a pattern* (so i don't have to think about it too much) and scrap fabrics (so i don't have mini periods of complete paralysis whilst trying to cut into a fresh batch of fabric).

And here are its beginnings.

Bright and pretty. Pieced from scraps.

I hope its a good omen for things to come. I shook hands with a chimney sweep today too, so that should help.

* the pattern i'm using is from Anna Maria Horner's (BEAUTIFUL) blog. Saw it, loved it, going to make the baby version so I'm not working on another massive quilt for the next 20 years. It is called the feather bed quilt. Here is what i hope it turns out like...only smaller.

Stitch-up and Colourful cushions

Well, it is December already. I know I feel this more and more every passing year, but where 2011 went, I really don’t know. 

Although saying that, one thing I have been waiting for very impatiently, that seemed to make the last few months drag, finally happened – the little sewing and haberdashery shop opened up around the corner yesterday and I was in there buying lots of lovely little bits and pieces. The shop name is Stitch-Up and yes, they are going to host sewing groups and classes so I am really excited! I had a pang of jealousy walking around the shop and hearing all the positive things the other eager patrons had to say, but ‘Shoulda, coulda, woulda’ as they say. 

The shop is called Stitch-up and they have a website at www.stitch-upinfo.co.uk that doesn’t actually appear to be up and running yet, but baby steps. Once it is, I think they will post information about the classes and groups they are running. So if you frequent the Wimbledon area in London, be sure to check it out. I made a suggestion for a little lesson on sewing in zippers because this is something I have attempted and pretty much failed at a few times now. 

In honour of this very sewey occasion, I thought I would share some cushion covers I made recently for a friend. 

I love the pom-pom trim - makes them much more fun!

Hopefully they bring some brightness to this otherwise very dull London Sunday.

Patchwork upholstery

Cath Kidston vintage find in the Brighton shop

Cath Kidston has been giving me ideas...again! I think i want to cover my little arm chair in a patchwork like this. I think it looks amazing.

I had better get sewing.

Apologies and novel retro

I have been a very bad blogger of late; no updates or any warning! But I am back again now, after a month (or two) off due to family visits and other general change in our household. But despite all that, and being a bad blogger, i have in fact been busily working away on a few projects.

And here is one...

I made this cushion a while ago now for a friend's birthday. We found the fabric in a cool fabric shop on Columbia Road called Beyond Fabrics. To me, the orange, lime and yellow combine to create a very retro looking cushion given a modern spin with clean cotton lines. I have photographed it with another design classic reworked - my Anglepoise Type1228.

You can pick up good quality cushion inserts at John Lewis. I learnt this quick and easy cushion cover pattern at the Make Lounge a few years ago now (i have raved about the Make Lounge on here several times before). Londoners (and just outside Londoners) can learn too here.

Novel retro indeed.

Quilting and instant gratification napkins

I have started a quilt - and i have probably bitten off a bit more than i can chew, but when has that ever stopped me?

I was shopping in Cath Kidston several months ago, when i spied the most beautiful quilt i have ever seen in my life! I don't know exactly what it was that made me love it SO much, but i think it might have been the use of white with the immense variety of pretty patterned colourful segments that pleased my eye. I am a pattern junky, and this quilt was overloaded with different types - all very retro, although i cant know its age, a lot of the fabrics remind me of my granny's linen cupboard, anything from 30's to 70's.

I think it is kind of a 'charm' quilt in that there were no obvious repeats in the fabric (there were a few though, it took me a good while to spot them), however i don't know that the white 'background' really fits with this. I wish i had some kind of quilt mentor who could answer my questions - in fact a quilt course at university would be brilliant, there is so much to know and learn! The other thing i especially loved was the 'floral' type arrangement of these patterned segments. I stood for ages trying to work out the pattern exactly and how it broke down into squares.

You might ask why i didn't just buy the quilt? Well at close to £500 it was a bit out of my budget, but i was determined to have something similar.

And so, after taking a few trips to fabric shops around London and to the Eternal Maker in Chichester, i have finally worked up the courage to try and make my own.

First of all, i needed to work out the pattern. I did this by using my finger and hand to measure the original pieces and then went from there - not an exact science, but i think i have got it right to the inch. I then got out my old school geometry set and employing both compass and protractor, started sketching away a plan. I had to remember all of the triangle rules and what angles i needed for each corner -  whoever said you never use maths again after school must have never tried to make up a quilt pattern before! Once i had this all sorted, i washed and ironed and folded about 12 different fabrics and began cutting.

I have managed to sew together the beginnings of my first square; I have at least 41 more to go! So, I am definitely in this for the long haul. I am pretty thrilled with it - and i hope one day i will have something that doesn't look too far off the original. As a complete novice i have struggled a little with sewing the curved edges together, but i am finding that hand sewing, is not only very relaxing, but also very forgiving. I hope that i will be able to employ my sewing machine at some point to try and speed the process up, but I'm not sure if i will be able to control how well all of the points meet. In any case, i am not in any hurry, aside from wanting to see it all finished and laid out on my new bed.

To sate my hunger for instant gratification, i whipped up these two napkins for the dinner table out of some left over Cath Kidston fabric i had left over from a table cloth.

Very satisfying.

Some more baby aprons

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you would have seen that i made a baby apron for a lovely little girl i know last summer. It was a hit and i have seen her wearing it on more than one occasion (in fact her mother told me she cried one day when it was in the wash because she wanted to wear it so much- bless). 

Another friend of mine, having read the blog post, and asked if i could make one for her niece for Christmas. Obviously i obliged and sewed up another for her little person. 

I made another that i then gave to yet another friend's little girl (Gosh, don't i sound popular?!).

I think they are so cute. The fabrics for all of them so far have been by Amy Butler with a corresponding or contrasting trim. I came up with the pattern myself as i couldn't find one that i liked on the internet (although it is nothing ground breaking). I think they are cute, but cool at the same time. Perfect for little misses and misters.

Some holiday upholstery

Sorry for the post drought. I have been on a month long holiday back home in sunny Sydney and found that after dealing with Jetlag, taking mini-breaks within the holiday, attending a good friend's wedding and visiting friends and family, i didnt have much time for posting! But never fear, because i was building up a nice little list of items that i must share.

First are these cute little dining chairs.

When i got home, my mum asked if i would mind recovering some little dining chairs she had picked up from the side of the road for our big Christmas dinner. My dad had already painted over the wood with white paint and i had come armed with some Cath Kidston oilcloth in Provence Rose blue and green from the UK. I only got half a metre of each so it came to £20 for the lot. We managed to cover 5 chairs too (with a little left over for some makeup bags perhaps?), so at £4 each plus the paint, the whole new look was a bargain!

Dad and i got out the staplegun and spent my first day home recovering the seats. They went from ugly black seats destined for the tip to gorgeous floral chairs with a new lease of life in no time.

Not bad for a bit of holiday upholstery!

Finished quilt

Its a few weeks ago now since I finished my second baby quilt. The gorgeous girl smiling in the photo is the friend I made it for and you can see the finished product in her hands. It was a race to the finish line in the end, with all the tidying up of threads, washing and drying and the last bit of binding that still needed to be completed that day. I spent a good half of the day stitching away while watching a film (The Shipping News - no where near as good as the book in my opinion, and oh how I love that book) before giving it a gentle hand wash in the tub and praying the little bit of sun shining through the clouds would do its thing in time. It did, and the quilt was a success.

I still wasn't entirely certain of my fabric choice a fair way into making it, but it really came together and the binding really finished it off perfectly to accentuate the fabric on both sides. Subconsciously though, I think I knew it would work all along, because in the end, I had a very Autumn shaded quilt for an Autumn baby, complete with trees that have dropped their leaves. Meant to be, hey?

I was very proud to present it to the lovely couple. It was so touching when the mother and father-to-be were looking at it and realised the time and effort I had put in. In fact, I think I remember the mother saying, "Are you sure you don't want to keep it?!". I was certain, it was made for them especially and I hope its something they and their soon to be born baby enjoy in the years to come. 

Lots of love
P xoxoxoxoxox

The green lounge

We have bought a GREEN lounge! Yes you heard it right, a GREEN lounge, and I'm not talking about it's eco friendly credentials either. It was only after we left the store that I started thinking... I haven't seen many green lounges around. 

 

Why is that?

Have I made a mistake?

 

I started to worry that my Mad Men fuelled obsession with all things retro had compelled me to turn our Edwardian, classically styled lounge room into a 50's den. That would kind of be ok, I guess, but the lounge itself isn't really 50's shaped. It was purchased purely with the aim of providing us with somewhere comfortable, cosy, and warm to sit. Its a big lounge. I want depth. I'm not interested in shallow sofas. If your seat doesn't meet the backs of my knees, or even better, the backs of my calves, I'm not interested. I feel strongly about this. You would too if you have been sitting on a park bench covered in leather trying to masquerade as a lounge for the last 4 London winters. No, I really didn't care about the look of the thing, but I did care about the colour, a contradiction? Maybe, but that's the way it was. I think I felt if the lounge was the right colour, it didn't really matter what it looked like, it would 'go'. So it needed to 'go' with  -

• A medium shade of brown leather - its nice and soft looking (very deceptive),
• Dark wooden furniture (bookshelf, chest of drawers, side tables, coffee table, old-fashioned-oval-framed-mirror, etc),
• And mid brown, wooden, parquet floor.

Basically, a lot of brown.

 

The naturalist in me, immediately thought of trees - GREEN! Green will go great. My husband agreed, coming up with grass and tree trunks - "Grass and tree's always look good don't they?" Yes, I agreed wholeheartedly, but at the same time wondered why he had thought of grass and not the leaves for the green component?

 

Green and brown... I started to wonder about green and brown. Weren't there a lot of brown and green kitchens in the 70s? You know the sort I mean? I keep getting flashes of the Brady Bunch. This could be bad. 

The colour wasn't the only decision, there was the grade of fabric, and the fabric type itself. Decisions my mum would take weeks over, with swatches all over the house, I was left to make in 20 minutes before rushing to my upholstery class (No, I'm not going to be upholstering myself a lounge anytime in the foreseeable future, I am still working on a bed frame, and the next project is a small armchair - baby steps, baby steps). And then there were the various shades of green, from zesty limes to dark, foresty shades. Ours is somewhere in the middle, closer to zest than forest.

I have another 24 hours to ruminate over this before my 'change-your-mind-period is up. If anyone reads this - tell me what you think. Reassurance will be most welcome!

My peg bag

Continuing on with the 'look what i made' thread, i thought i would show my ..... PEG BAG! Not exceptionally exciting, but i think its just as cute as the ones i have seen in Cath Kidston, even if the fabric is a tad more mod!

Live East, Die Young - East London

On Sunday, I visited a friend in the very hip, east end of London. We planned to wander the flower markets on Columbia Road, before a quick lunch at the Albion cafe, and then a look at the shops. It is a shame the weather wasn't better for my visit, indeed it felt like winter had finally arrived, but it still made for a wonderful day out. Here were three of my favourite spots of the day.
 

Quilter Street

As I walked up to Columbia Road from where I parked on Brick Lane (it seemed that 90% of the tube network was shut for the weekend...again), I came across Quilter Street a block from Columbia Road. It is a line of beautiful, workers-cottage style, Edwardian (?) terraces. Each seems to have been lovingly restored, with glossily painted front doors and neat brick work. As I wondered up the street, I imagined the women who must have worked behind these doors, quilting away. They say in London, that the street names derive from whatever use was made of the streets in the old days, generally, from what was sold there. Threadneedle Street and Petticoat Lane owe their names to the Huguenot weavers who settled there, and as Quilter Lane isn't too far from these, I assume it might have been named for the same group. My dad is very interested in our family history is always telling me his latest theories for where our family came from. I remember one of these was that we were descendent from the Huguenot's, so who know, maybe its were I get my love of all things textile from?

Beyond Fabric
http://www.beyond-fabrics.com/
What a super fabric shop, with a real emphasis on traditional looking, old fashion, 30's style fabrics, as well as some more vintage style 50's & 60's-esque children's fabric. You can buy online too, but personally, I love going in and looking at the different fabrics together, pulling them off the shelves, um-ing and ah-ing, driving the shop assistant mad, before finally making off with a nice little stash of fabrics. I got about 6 metres or so. The prices aren't cheap, probably average from what I have seen around London, with prices at the £12/metre mark.

Nelly Duff
http://www.nellyduff.com/
Across the road is Nelly Duff, a very cool gallery and shop selling very cool prints. Mainly silk screen printed, I have also seen some letterpress style posters in there and they have a VERY cool colourful print of some Mexican skulls. I am pretty desperate for them. They are so bright and beautiful I thought they would look great in a nursery, when I said this to my friend, she said "what kind of nightmares do you want to give your children?!". She has a point. I am eyeing off another one of their items for my husband's first anniversary gift. The first anniversary is paper and I think I have found something he would love - if you read this, don't freak out! Nothing I saw in that shop is over £100.

The name from this post is from a print in the Nelly Duff shop, not to be confused with the following piece of graffiti. The print in the shop looks like a wood cutting with an image of an east London street in the 1800's (I'm guessing). A play on words, and very true if you were living there 100 years ago. Unfortunately it seems to still be the case, I saw someone comment on that flickr post for the graffiti art, that the age expectancy of people living in East London dropped with each stop on the eastern extension of the Jubilee line. I don't have a source for this, only hearsay, and very sad if it's true.

A Children's Apron for Isla

I whipped up a quick little apron for my friends daughter the other week. I didn't make a pattern or anything, just drew the basic shape on half the fabric and cut it on the fold. I think the fabric was by Amy Butler from memory with some matching lime binding tape sewn around the edges to create the tie.

I left the ties around the neck and waist open so they can be adjusted as Isla grows.

Super cute!

My quilts

Following on from my Reading for Quilters post, i thought i would share some pictures from my first attempts at quilting. I went to a short course at The Make Lounge and had a brilliant time picking up the basics.  I'm sure i have raved on about The Make Lounge before, but it really is fantastic and i highly recommend courses there for anyone in London. I have been to a fair few of them so if anyone ever wants a review on any of the courses, just let me know.

The lighter one on the right was my first quilt, made at the Make Lounge, and the darker one on the left is my second. I am making the second as a baby quilt for a friend who is 7 months pregnant. By far the trickiest thing i have found about quilting is picking the right fabrics, and i wasn't sure i had got there with the 2nd quilt, but i think it all came together when i picked the backing fabric (in the last picture). Let me know what you think.

From my tiny bit of experience, i have found every aspect of quilting incredibly fulfilling, and creating something so beautiful, that have traditionally been passed down as family heirlooms gives such a sense of achievement. 

Both are still incomplete but i will post some more pictures once they are finished.

Upholstery update!

Here is my bed head!

It took me almost exactly a year to finish, although I did miss a term and I did spend most of my class time talking. Hopefully that will be cured as I have enrolled in a different class this semester (the wonders of part time work) so hopefully I wont be as tired as I was getting there after work at the end of the week.

I used all the traditional methods including using horsehair to build it up. I was pretty proud of my stitching, I created a very firm edge by keeping the string very tight and the horse hair nicely packed in. All this said, it wasn't the best stage for me in terms of allergies! Nothing sets off my nose and eyes like Hessian and horse hair.

I finished the bed head by using double-piping, which I made myself. It was fairly easy, the only trouble was when the sewing machine kept running over the cord inside the material (enter the dreaded unstitcher thingamajig) but otherwise I think it has come up a treat and I am pretty pleased considering it is the first piece I have ever upholstered. I posted the completed piece on my Facebook and was very flattered by the response it received - thanks guys!

I have already started on the foot board which should *hopefully* go much quicker. I am already much more confident which takes away a lot of the time wasted hesitating, asking 'is this right?'. Maybe we will be in the bed by the end of the year?! It has taken a bit longer than my initial 3 day estimate to be sure.

I am really looking forward to starting on this small armchair I found when we were clearing out the loft. I have already stripped it in preparation. Will need to get thinking about fabric soon.

Here are some pictures from along the way.