Recovered Lounge Chairs

This is a Chair that I had spent a long time thinking about. I was given this Mid-century chair by a family friend (along with the shorter one next to it). I love their style! They were in need of recovering when I got them. The original fabric was faded and had a few small holes in. But after a couple of months with the cats they were more hole than cover!

 This project had been a long time coming we were given the chairs not long after moving in (April 2011!). But eventually I have accomplished it. I had decided not to buy fabric specific for the job so I had to make the most of what I could find in my sewing room. I know the chair could look much better with a different selection of fabrics, yet I am still happy with what I had ended up with.
 

The fabrics are a mixture of upholstery weight cottons, faux suede, silk tweeds and there is a flocked polyester in there too.

IKEA Office Chair Re-cover

In my sewing room I've had this old black Ikea office chair since we moved in... I found it in the garage so it was a bit gross! I washed it before I brought it into my home but as you can see in the photo it still had weird stains on it.

So I was looking at tips to reupholster the two chairs in my living room (I want to do something a bit different with them but that's another story) when I stumbled on some photos of the same Ikea chair but in beautiful fabrics! What I thought was, that looks easy and at the same time I could put better padding on the seat as it needs it!



This is the last bit of that fabric I had, which is one of my most favourite. So now I'll have a few years of looking at this lovely fabric! The padding is recycled from one of my front room chairs and is so much better and comfy than before! I cleaned all of the chair as I had it dismantled. The whole thing was so easy to do, though I did get a pain in my hand from the staple gun. It was well worth the effort only took me two evenings and that is mostly because I run out of staples!

Wedding Gift

This is the wedding gift I made for my Boyfriend's Sister, who was married this July!

Holiday in Saône-et-Loire at my Parents House

I say holiday, but we spent most of it clearing rubble. I did a lot of gardening which I'm quite happy with if most of the plants take that I have planted then it should look quite good in a few years.
We went for a walk along the local randonnée path one day and met these horses, they walked over from the other side of their field to see us. When they got to us they were massive, so friendly though! There is always such interesting animals in France its the only place I have seen Red Squirrels. But the best wildlife we saw were otters in the Canal du Centre whilst we were cycling along the voie verte.

Let me show you the Little bit of France that I staked my claim on the day my parents brought this house. This is my ruin of a barn, it is a small building with three rooms that do not interconnect they all have there own outside doors. We have never know what it was originally built for, and it was never safe enough for use to go inside. So this holiday we decided to take the rest of the roof down and clean it up a bit. We found in one wall evidence that there was a bread oven inside the building.
You see on the floor a stone that has a very straight curve, well the big stone behind it is the same. These were found up high of the wall and next to where they were found is a smaller arched hole in the wall. The 'room' that appears to be a bread oven is filled with dirt or something which is making the walls bulge, so we will probably need to remove one of the wall to empty it out to make it safe.

This room has a stone floor under that dirt. I recon it was a barn for small animals? I hope that one day we will be able to find out what this building was originally for. Construction wise it looks like the bread oven room was first and the other rooms were added on to it. I'm hoping to be able to go back to France this Summer and do some more work towards getting this building habitable, its going to be my holiday home! - one day ;).

Cyclist Button Birthday Card

I'm really proud of this card! I got the button at a craft fair at Bluewater in their new events venue. I brought quite a few buttons, I spent ages picking them as there were so many and they all look so good. They have an online store which I haven't used yet but I think I will as they look really good on cards! Their web address is customlaser.co.uk. They even have a ukulele one which I had to get as my partner has 4 ukuleles, which he loves more than anything.

10m of Bunting for a Wedding

The bunting in the photograph wrapped around the summer house I made for the bride and bridegroom to use for there wedding day! The brides colour theme for the day was dark red and ivory, the fabric I used was a dark red fitted sheet that was given to me and I brought some bias binding (which was cream). It took ages to make the bunting I think there is about 10 meters of it, but I cant remember how many triangles I made but there were lots! Each triangle is two cut from fabric and sewn together, trimmed, turned right side out, and ironed... then I had to pin them all to the bias binding the same space apart and sew! Really a simple thing to make but time consuming, but it was much appreciated and thus well worth it!

The two photos above with the bunting in are taken by the wedding photographer, his photos are wonderful!

Cakes!!! These are the cakes me and another two bridesmaids made these for the wedding, I think we made around 50 cupcakes and 60 scones in one day! It took the longest to decorate all the cakes, in the end I didnt even get to eat one! Everyone said they were very tasty, and dont they look lovely? We were very proud of our cakes.

New curtains to break from the monotony of cream

I'm so proud of my new bedroom curtains made by me! Well I purchased them as curtains (in a sale) but as I wanted them lined with blackout lining I had to unpick them, which took ages!!! The new ones are the black ones the photo is to compare how they block out light compared with the old curtains, which is important as we practically live on a dual carriageway (not ideal) and totally littered with street lights. The blackout material said it would reduce noise from the window but I don't think it has made much, if any, difference.

They are tab top curtains but the tabs are hidden behind the curtain, I got the idea from here at 7LayerStudio where she has written a tutorial how to do it! It was very helpful I used her suggestions for the spacing between the tabs and instead of ribbon for the tabs I used some of the left over curtain sewn into a tube. I also sewed the tabs about an inch from the top of the curtain so that maybe they would block out more light?!

I have quite a bit of fabric left over as the curtains were two meters long when I purchased them and I needed about one and a half for the drop, then I used some to make the tabs. I have plans for the left overs already, I'm hoping to buy a cheap lampshade and cover it with the fabric and also I was thinking of making a canvas of the fabric that way my bedroom would be all coordinated! But as I'm always trying to do everything on the cheap I think I will need to wait to the spring/summer for the local bootfairs to start before I can find a cheap lampshade!