Finished Curtains

Here they are finally! And now another roll of fabric awaits me, 3 Roman blinds to make will post pictures soon.

Piped Tie-backs

It's the weekend and time to get the sewing machine out again, I'm always a bit lazy with tiebacks and end up buying ropes or tassle's, I decided to make a classic piped tie back, I always think piping looks so smart, hopefully the pole will be up tomorrow and I can hang the curtains and post the final pic!

Bank Holiday Monday Project

Well I've been nagged for months to make these curtains for my mother so I thought as the weather was so bad I'd get started. I had been wanting to make the Goblet heading with a gathered base as opposed to a pleated base for ages, but previous attempts had led to too much snapped cotton and muttered curses, I realised this time if I didn't carry the buckrum all the way down to the base of the pleat it would gather more easily, and it seems to have worked, not perfect but I think i'm getting the hang of it. I will post more pics in the next few days when they have been fitted.

Geffrye Museum

Well I am ashamed to say that I had never even heard of the Geffrye Museum, I only came across it's name on a blog I was reading of an American lady, to think I was born and bred in the UK with a love of Interior design and I had never even heard of the place! So with nothing else to do this morning we decided to have a look! Well it was much smaller than I had imagined, but what was there was very good, basically room settings dating from the 17th Century until the 21st, I took loads of pics, and have attached a few that feature window treatments as that is my main interest, I also bought a great book called 'The book of the Edwardian & Interwar House' great photography and some amazing looking rooms, in fact that's what I'm going to do now! I Hope you are all having a great easter!.

Lovely Room

I keep going back to this photo of a corner of a room, not sure where the image originated it was saved in my pictures folder, but I think the taupe walls and smoky blue velvet upholstery looks amazing.

Tesco's Finest?

Well I must admit to being a real snob when it come's to bedlinen, if it wasn't John Lewis Egyptian cotton at the very least it didn't appear on my bed!

But having decided that nearly all my duvet sets were either holed or had too many buttons missing to salvage, I realised that I didn't have the hundreds of pounds needed to replace them, so I decided to be brave one day and go to the home section of some local supermarkets!

Well shocked is not the word I found Egyptian cotton super king size sheets for a mere £16.00 and matching Oxford Pillowcases for £4.99, but the blue gingham king size duvet set for £5.33 astounded me, how is it possible to produce these for under £6?? Yes it's 50/50 polycotton, but made up with the brilliant white Egyptian cotton flat sheet and matching Oxford pillowcases who would know it was all achieved for under £32.00! I'm not fully converted there is nothing like a Frette sheet against the skin, but for a quick cheap new look you can't complain.

Curtains be gone

I'm always fascinated as to what made me so
interested in Interior design and more specifically
in curtains, I remember every time my mother
redecorated any of our 'downstairs' rooms it would
often consist of a mail order catalogue being
ordered from a company called Listers this would
include rows and rows of columns indicating the
cost of different sized curtains and a waterfall of
tiny colour samples of the actual velvet fabrics. I loved looking at these for hours and looking at all the different rich shades and planning in my head room scenes for the different colours, as I knew by all the rooms in our house my mother would fall in love with a blue shade and that is what would be ordered, she rarely deviated away from the colour blue! I can remember this room clearly it would have been in the early 80's and consisted of a blue/ivory damask style flocked wallpaper, a blue Dralon sofa with a matching tasseled trim, blue velvet curtains with cream tassle tiebacks on a teak pole and a very busy blue patterned axminster carpet which my mother often reminded us were very expensive! I even remember the five arm brass light fitting with matching blue silk tasselled shades, which my Aunt informed my mother looked as though it had been taken from draculas castle! Well once again I have waffled on the point being What had happened to Listers? as I couldn't believe anybody would still be ordering velvet curtains in 2008! Sadly I was right the mills had been abandoned in 1992 due to a change in trends and stiff foreign competition, sad to think that the company that had once made the velvet robes for King George v's coronation, and new drapes for the white house in the 70's was no more. The only good to come from such an amazing history is that the former mill building's have been converted to beautiful apartments, I do hope there is a museum or something on the site to tell of the buildings great heritage. LONG LIVE THE CURTAIN!

Sofa so good

I've been watching this Kingcome sofa for sale on Ebay for day's I absolutely adore sofa's and this one would be amazingly comfortable, I imagine recovering it in a beige faux suede piped in chocolate, but being the last week in december and allready having overspent I think I am going to have to resist, it amazes me to think what once cost thousands of pounds can cost a few quid years later, I love Ebay.

He Didn't turn up....

Yes you guessed it the chap who agreed to turn up and fit the flue liner didn't turn up! So determined to sit in front of it on christmas eve, I sat the burner in the stove fitted the 3' of rigid piping and lit it! so far so good i'm sure it's not burning as effeciently as it will when it has a proper flue but the flickering flames are doing it for me! Merry Christmas to one and all!

Is everything green?

I was getting to thinking that every room in my house was green! but luckily the hallway is a taupe colour and my bedroom is grey so not quite! I think my choice of green in so many rooms is a rebellion against my mother who absolutely hates anything green.

Nearly Finished!

Here is the nearly completed Breakfast room end of the Kitchen

hope to have the table and chairs back in the next couple of days, must try and find some nice handles for those doors!

Ralph and the log burner

This should have been my first post, whilst looking for inspiration for fitting a log burner I stumbled on a blog of somebody proudly showing pics of their gorgeous log burner! Well it's the night before christmas eve, and I am hoping at 7am tomorrow morning somebody is going to climb onto my roof and install a flue liner and connect up my burner! then a large scale clean up and a quick paint job on the new plaster saxon green from F&B seems to be the one, I seem to have inheriited a brown leather sofa, and most of the houses I see have this combination of paint colour and it looks amazing! Might mean i'll need new curtains but he ho! And then all I need to do is get the last tree in the garden centre and get a bit of christmas spirit going in the place, luckily nobody is dropping in till New years Eve, so hopefully it will start to look half decent by then! On top of that the kitchen is just receiving it's final coats of paint meaning i can get the table and chairs out of the shed finally! Ralph shown in the pic loves the log burner at my parents so I'm hoping it's going to be a favourite spot for him.

The American Dream

I am such an anorak it's scary! But I love my Kirby 'Ultimate G' I recently bought off Ebay, it really is the most complicated and heaviest thing you can imagine, but it does have good suction and I am liking it's robustness compared to the 3 dysons I owned previously. It also has every attachment known to man, it even has a wood sander and polisher attachment! It's going to keep me quite for hours! I have attached the picture from the actual Ebay advert, I understand all I need do now is book a Kirby service and it will be as good as new! This service also includes a buff and polish to the metalwork...... How sad!

Casement Cloth

Such a simple idea, cheap casement cloth from JL approx £5m with a chocolate brown linen central panel, I can't tell you how many windows I have dressed with this stuff, it looks amazing with suede, linen or checked borders.

Another Bedroom

I loved this bedroom this was 4 house's ago, I have re-used most of the things you see the suede headboard and cushions and the lamps they are all currently in different rooms in my current house. I have made everything you see in the room as I origanaly trained as an upholsterer and curtain maker.