A Fiesta of Wallpaper

So I promised some pictures of the wallpaper. This is after all why I will be muttering about decorating and painting for the next few months.

The walls are solid enough in the bedrooms but the wallpaper is questionable to say the least.

In some instances one might say its "vintage" and worthy of protection. That is of course easy for those to say who do not have to live within these walls.

To give a flavour to some of the more extreme wallpapers I attach the following photos for giggle value.

I challenge you not to snort.

Tenugui fabrics

When I was up in Napier recently I lucked upon a funny wee shop called Raku that sold all things Japanese.

I got quite excited about a selection of Tenugui they had there, pieces of cotton with various designs on them. These were by no means cheap but once I'd laid eyes on them I had to have one … or two or three.

I bought this fish design because I loved the idea of this in a cool aquatic room. I also thought it would look excellent as a light fitting around a simply circular shade.

I picked up the utensil one at the last minute. The thought of this in the sewing room was a must. Of course, this will be after the sewing room has been redecorated but planning for the future.

The Purple Palace

So the house we bought is a doer-upper. It is a hodgepodge of 70s' style. It comes with outer walls painted lilac, veneer doors throughout, textured glass feature windows, stained carpets (some with paisley designs), wallpaper that to a certain extent you have to take your hat off to, aluminium sliding doors and conservatory, tile ceilings, nasty curtains, astro-turf balcony …. well I could go on but you get my drift. (I shall post some wallpaper shots in due course - its worth it for a giggle.)

Boy o boy - we may have bitten off more than we can chew on this one. Whilst I'm keen to tinker and learn about DIY, my other half would rather chew his arm off. And given the scale of this, we can see weekends for the rest of our lives taken up with painting. Was this a prudent purchase? Only time will tell.

The parts which are nice are (i) the kitchen, (ii) the warmth (insulation is something we have sorely missed of late), (iii) the bath, and (iv) portions of the garden.
Hopefully the kitchen may encourage me to get back into doing some cooking. At this point I am painting the pantry shelves (which were a tad icky and freaked me out) so we still have bags of groceries all over the floor, but hopefully should do a final coat tonight and can put it all away in weekend. Then the cooking can begin.

In the garden, whilst there is a hell of a lot of weeding to do - and lets face it, gardening is a mystery to us - there is an adventure course out there. I spent a few hours in the weekend weeding the vege patches. We have some lovely raised garden beds for veges with really nice soil. - Oh God, is this a new moment in my life.? Am I actually commenting on having nice dirt? (I did get freaked out by a portion that had white stones and a tile laid out in the garden - and so I opted to leave that section in case I weeded up some dear loved family pet from the previous owner.) Anyway, I planted some lettuces and spinach that we'd been given as a house warming gift. Will be totally excited if we actually get a lettuce out of it. Grow lettuce, grow!

I'm back - with (flexible) goals

Well, its been a busy wee while. Clearly its been a long time since I posted anything. This is due firstly to spending the majority of my time organising our house purchase and move, and then more recently to the fact we cannot get a working internet connection at the new 'residence' (makes it sound grand right?).

However, I have set myself a goal. One post a week and one new product a week. Perhaps optimistic given all that is going on but I feel like I haven't sat down with the sewing machine for a very long time.

I was up at a conference last week where we did a session on goal setting. Whilst others set goals about work or leaving work on time, I set goals about Threadbird and getting things back on track. I was comforted by the part of the session that recognised that people who set goals "relapse", that setting goals will not always mean that you never falter from that course, and that faltering is normal. So, I can falter in this goal but I may as well aim for it.

To that end - this is my post. No new product yet.

We bought it!

Well it wasn't too long ago that I was glum because a possible house purchase fell through. Well good news has been had - that sale is back up and running. There were a few issues with piling under the house but we have sorted those and the sale is back on. All going to plan we should be moving in 3 weeks. We will then be the proud owners of a lilac coloured seventies, brown carpet, floral wallpaper, naff curtained home in need of much love and affection. I suspect we will become overnight experts in wall treatments and weeding but it was bound to happen at some stage. The exciting part is we will have some space to move and some cupboards to store things. Giant leaps forwards.

My new cowl neck top

A few weeks ago a friend and I managed to wangle ourselves off to a Fashion Workshop lesson on copycat pattern making. Jen's Fashion Workshop does a number of workshops and lessons and does a great job of finding those subjects that those of us sitting at home quite want to know. I had been meaning to try and copy a grey top I bought in Paris years ago that is very plain but straddles casual, work and evening. I thought I might be able to manage it. This was a great impetus to finally get that top done. Jen teaches you in this how to copy tops and trousers from your existing favourite items. I sewed up this top using the pattern I made. Jen had taught us to measure the ajoining seams to make sure they match but I forgot once I got home and my only glitch was the sleeves - I didn't measure the arm hole compared to the top of the sleeves and the sleeves ended up being bigger. So I had to do a bit of emergency mid-sew gathering at the top of the sleeve but it looks ok. Plus I was quite fond of the length of the sleeves as is and didn't want them shorter so I just did a rolled hem on the sleeves and the neck rather than a proper turned up hem, which gives it a bit of a raw finish but I quite like it. Thanks Jen. I'd recommend Jen's courses to anyone and I hope to do another this term sometime.

New purse inners - so pretty........

Managed to squeeze in a trip last week to my favourite secret fabric stash shop. Lucked upon a range of fabric pieces that I thought were just gorgeous. So gorgeous in fact I simply couldn't decide which colour was best. I 'ummed' and 'ahhed' and ultimately did what any good woman would - bought the lot. So this is the basis for the next range of purses. These colours are so lovely and the material is slightly coated which makes it a durable inner for the purses.

I made a couple of the purses with this deep brown fabric I found for the outer and my new lovely fabric as inners. I haven't made the matching broaches yet but I really like the contrast of the woven outer with the slightly flashy metallic inner (the lushness doesn't come out in these photos at all). I'll try and get myself sorted to do the broaches this week and then pop them up on my Felt shop.

I also thought I might try a slightly bigger version of the purse. This was my first try which is a tiny bit wonky at the top fold over. Whislt a shame, the up-side is that it means I get to keep this one. I took it for a trial run over the weekend when we went out for dinner (ended up as drinks but was meant to be dinner). It fits nicely under your arm and holds a bit more than the other. I'm giving it the nod myself (but then I guess I am biased).