no sheep were hurt…

Tags

chair, cushions, diy, sewing, sheepskin, thrifting

… I needed to get a yellow fever vaccination for Ghana, early morning appointment at the hospital, the route to the metro station to get to work afterwards almost passed by Berger fabrics, I decided I could make a quick detour…

… I was looking for fabric to cover my thrifted chair. I didn’t find anything, I did fall in love with some fake fur that had just come in, but decided that there was no way I could carry a bag of that discreetly into the office, so I picked up a piece of viscose for another Renfrew, and decided to come back at the weekend.

… a couple of weeks passed, I hadn’t made it back to Berger which is only open Saturday morning at the weekend, I had a few errands to run, so I took the afternoon off work. I was in the neighbourhood of Berger, I decided to have a quick look to see if they had anything new to cover my chair, before I went to the Stoffenspektakel fabric fair on the Sunday. I walked in to the shop, there was a small piece of the fur I had been dreaming of left, I picked that up and started looking for chair fabric, nothing in the decorating textiles caught my eye, there was nothing in the heavy weight cottons and canvases downstairs in the right colour, I was ready to give up…

… I decided to have a look at the fake furs. I have been wondering what I could make with the fake cows hide for years… then I spotted some fake sheepskin: fuzzy on one side and a cream “suede” on the other, it was soft, sturdy, pale and neutral – exactly what I was looking for.

… I sewed the cushion covers up a couple of weeks ago. I had bought the foam from the same shop I went to for T’s dog bed. I couldn’t find cream zips, so I went for lime green. Who would guess it was a 20€ chair!

early morning thrifting…

Tags

apartment, brocante, flea market, furniture, lights, thrifting

… soon after I moved to my new place I spotted signs for a “brocante”, a flea market, in my new neighbourhood one Sunday morning…

… I thought about booking a stall as I was trying to take advantage of the move to de-clutter, but decided I wasn’t going to be ready for that, and knew with the amount of work that needed doing in the apartment, sitting on the edge of the street all day watching people drift by eyeing my cast off possessions disdainfully was going to be more frustration than fun…

… the Sunday came and I was up early and off out dog walking. I remembered the flea market, so slipped some cash in my pocket along side my plastic bags…

… people were arriving, unloading cars, defining territory, not even thinking about selling as we walked by. I quickly spotted an orange pendant light fitting I liked. It didn’t belong to the girl guarding the pile of belongings, her friend was just looking for somewhere to park the car…

… as we waited I spotted a side lamp base I liked too… it was also his. We waited some more. Eventually car must have been parked and orange light owner arrived, told me his price, I offered him 40€ for the two pieces, he accepted, then I asked if I could come and pick them up on my way back from the forest…

… an hour or so later, walking back through the market, heading towards my lights, I noticed a wooden chair, cushion-less, in need of a little TLC, but with beautiful lines… 20€ later and it was mine. I asked the guy to look after it while I went and got my lights, left the dog at home and came back with 2 hands to pick it up!

… the lights had been packed into a box, they were taken home, then I rushed back out and went to pick up my chair, hoping he hadn’t sold it a second time to anyone else!

… a not bad haul for before breakfast!

and we are doing it again…

Tags

antwerp, belgium, bloggers, fashion museum, meet up, sewing

… after the great summer Belgian sewing bloggers‘ meet up, the lovely girls from Antwerp are organising a second edition. We will be spending Saturday 18th January drinking coffee, visiting shops, lunching, going to the fashion museum, swapping fabric and notions, and catching up on the past 6 months makes and adventures…

… if you would like to join us, give Anneke a shout, then jump on a train, in your car, on a boat and see you 10 am, Viggo’s coffeebar, in Antwerp in a few weeks! Everyone is welcome, as long as you sew, like to talk about sewing, or like to listen to people talking about sewing!

… I am certainly looking forward to it – and I am sure there will be more laughs than this serious bunch!

one bed is never enough…

Tags

bed, dog, fake fur, fur, sewing

… when I bought the sumptuous fur the woman in the shop thought I was mad when I told her I was going to use it for a dog bed cover…

… with hind sight, she may have been right, as I have no idea how I will wash it, but we’ll deal with that problem when we get there! In the mean time, T go another new bed cover yesterday, and I am quite jealous of him!

… the stripy ikea cover needed to be washed, and as seems to be my tradition, Christmas day is a day to enjoy working on projects, so after a long run in the morning, and after sorting out the final sockets that had been exposed metal with no cover since I moved in in September (better late than never!), decorating my electric switch box with Washi tape and hanging a mirror in my entrance hall, I got out my sewing machine, channelled all the information I had picked up online about sewing with fur, and made a new bed cover.

… I measured the bed insert, lay the fabric on the floor right-side down to measure and cut, T immediately decided that it looked comfortable and settled down on the fabric. He was most disgruntled when I had to move a paw as I cut. Everyone recommends cutting the backing with a x-acto knife or a roller cutter, rather than cutting through with scissors. I certainly found the amount of loose fluff was minimal using this approach. I used some brown synthetic suede type material for the bottom of the cover, I just made an envelope opening. To sew, again following recommendations, I pushed the bulk of the fur towards the inside of seam, this avoids fur getting caught in the workings of the sewing machine and also makes for a neat seam.

… the whole thing probably only took an hour or so to make, it has already been tried and tested and met with approval.

… my plan for the remaining fur was to make a cowl, I have seen such elegant options in the shops, and it really couldn’t be complicated… except clearly my fur is far too stiff and dense, my head disappeared into the tube I made, I didn’t get round to lining it, and I won’t, I will use my failed oeuvre as a cushion cover 🙂

let sleeping dogs lie…

Tags

dog, dog bed, foam, handmade, piping, sewing

… although I think my dog would really like to spend all his time sleeping on my bed or sofa, I make that difficult for him with obstacles, and try and encourage him to use his own bed…

… he is a reasonably large dog, and needs a pretty big bed… and he likes to be close to his humans, so his bed always ends up being a focal point in the apartment…

… there are few shop bought beds that I really want sitting in the middle of my living room, so many have hideous cartoon characters printed all over them, or the ubiquitous paw print… no thanks! I have almost always made his beds.

… last winter I decided the bean bag filler he had been using couldn’t possibly be comfortable: the polystyrene balls shuffled out his way so he ended up lying on the floor surrounded by a ring of stuffing. I decided to change his bed filling and set out in search of some good sturdy foam. I knew exactly where I would have been able to find what I was looking for in Lisbon, but that is 2000 km away, so I asked at a few places and eventually my favourite fabric shop told me about Anno….

… I cycled 3 times round the neighbourhood before I noticed the discreet plaque by the door of a nondescript town house. I rang the doorbell, was let into a scene from the 80s, velvet carpeting, plastic potted palms and a good layer of faded dust on everything. A gentlemen appeared from a back room, took my order, informed me they only accepted cash, so off I went to find a cash machine while he cut my foam.

… back home and despite having taken measurements, the foam didn’t really fit in the old bed cover…

… in ikea looking for something else, and some stripy denim weight fabric caught my eye. I bought a couple of meters, and when I got home decided it was time to launch myself into the world of piping, so off I set to go and find something that matched one of the stripes. A big heavy duty zip – possibly bought as option B for my unfinished Minoru, and I had everything I needed to make a new bed cover…

… rather that my usual envelope approach, this time I decided to go for a box style, piping around the top and bottom…

… I finished it before we moved, but waited until after the move, and after cleaning the apartment countless times before I decided the floor was in an OK shape to get out the new bed.

… I am very happy with it, it looks good, while white hairs do show up (as they do on almost everything!), it doesn’t show the dirt, of which a forest loving dog brings home a lot and T seems to approve…

 

Ghanaian gifts…

Tags

bags, ghana, gifts, sewing, soap, souvenirs, travel

… as I have already said, the last months have been a blur of building, plastering, painting, moving (into a building site), unpacking, DIY, cleaning, endless cleaning, new job, travel and visitors… I am not complaining, and I won’t apologise for having neglected this part of my world, but it is time to get creative again, and to share a few of my projects…

… a couple of weeks ago I was in Ghana for work, I spent most of the week being driven from hotel to meetings, to hotel, to dinner, to hotel… I really wanted to slip out from behind the walls of our oasis of comfort, into the streets, to get lost in the lanes, to browse all the roadside stalls, to watch craftsman weaving wicker sofas, to buy peanuts from old ladies, and of course to find fabric…

… I didn’t get a chance… until the final day. Meetings were over at lunch time, our flight was late evening. With a colleague we got driven to a handicraft market, full of sculptures, masks and clothes for tourists, priced for tourists… I barely looked at the fabric stalls. My colleague was looking for antiques, knew what he wanted, where he wanted to go, I followed… I did pick up a couple of beautiful Tuareg bowls…

… I had spent the week admiring the skills of the local seamstresses, scrutinising the colourful dresses around me, looking at what the local ladies wore to meetings, loving the dresses of the hotel staff. One day one of the people we were meeting joined us in the most incredible dress, with a bold geometric pattern around the bottom of the dress, large spider’s webs around her hips, the geometric pattern repeated on the bodice, and the neckline was cut out along the lines of the spider web. If the meeting had been going more smoothly I would have asked her for a photo.

… before leaving the hotel to go to the craft market I had asked the receptionist for hints on where to find fabric, she scribbled the names of the top brands to look for –  woodin, GTP, high target – on a piece of paper and she wrote down the name of a market where I could find them.

… after doing the tourist bit I showed the driver my piece of paper and he took us to Makola market. Finally we were away from the tourists, in a local shopping district. There were several shops selling fabric, we stopped at one, and then the toughest decisions of the week had to be made…

… the fabric was piled from floor to ceiling, endless piles of bright and beautiful designs, a few designs were hanging on display racks, one kept catching my eye, but I kept looking at others. The sales assistant directed me to the Ghanaian designs, showed me baskets of 2 yards and 3 yards, lengths of fabric cut, and either sold on their own, or as kits – 2 yards of pattern, 1 yard of matching solid, carefully folded into concertinas.

… finally I decided on 4 yards of an orange Ghanaian design and bought 2 yards of the first fabric I had fallen for with its wonderful fish-like design – I had no idea what a yard was (metric girl here!), but it seemed like it would be enough for most projects I was likely to use it for!

… we also managed to visit the Global Mamas shop one afternoon. This is a cooperative, helping women earn a living from sewing, jewellery and shea butter products. While I wasn’t overly inspired by the sewn items, I bought a selection of shea butter soap and cream for gifts, including a special soap for the dog…

… back home and I decided that I wanted to add a little something to the bars of soap I had brought back, make the gifts a little more special, so I cut a width of my new fabric, cut it into 4, and sewed it up into draw string bags. My parents were visiting that weekend, while I sewed, my mother trimmed lose threads and turned the bags right side out, we had a real production line going…

… 4 bags sewn up in an hour or so…

a long list…

Tags

apartment, diy, photos, sewing, update

… of things I have been up to, of things to share, of things I need to photograph, of things still in progress, of things I need to do…

… I have been keeping busy at home, out and about, at work, travelling…

… last week I drafted my first post in forever, but somehow I blinked and missed the daylight this weekend, so I didn’t get the photos to accompany it… it will have to wait until next weekend…

… in the meantime, here are a few fragments from instagram of some of the things I have been up to in the past months…