DIY: Patchwork throw

I'm a dabbler in sewing, I can use a machine to do basic things, mainly I like to make things for our home.

I made a patchwork throw for our bedroom. I wanted something that would tie together the grey and yellow theme and this way I got to choose lots of lovely fabrics.
 

I designed it as a bed runner so the finished size is 193cm x 82cm (ish!)

You will need:
5-8 fat quarters of your chosen fabrics (this will be more or less depending on your final quilt size)
Backing fabric 195cm x 84cm (allowing for a 1cm seam allowance)
Wadding 195cm x 84cm
Border fabric (same as
Matching thread
Fabric scissors
Air dry fabric pen
Pencil
Paper
A metal ruler (long if you have one)
Pins
Sewing machine

1) Make a plan - just a rough sketch that gives you a guide. I decided to have a patchwork middle with a border around the edge.

2) Make a cardboard template the size of your square - I did mine 15cm (so they would be 14cm with a 0.5cm seam allowance).

3) Cut out your squares - I ended up with 65

 

3) Now for the fun bit - lay them out in the pattern you want - this is the point your can also assess size and add more if you want it bigger. Mine was 13 squares across and 5 down - this then fits across the foot of a king size bed.

 



 
4) Take a column at a time and take the first two squares. With right sides together sew along one edge with a 0.5cm seam allowance (make sure your squares will end up the right way up if it matters for the pattern, i.e. my birds!) Repeat down the column so you have a strip of squares - repeat for all the other columns.

 

5) Iron all the seams open at the back - this will make it easier to sew them together. 

 

6) Take the first two columns and with right sides together sew down one edge (0.5cm seam allowance) - repeat with all columns until your patchwork is complete.

 

7) Add your long side borders first and trim them so they are the same length as the patchwork, add the side borders (0.5cm seam allowance throughout)

 

8) Trim all the threads on the patchwork

 

9) Take the patchwork, wadding and backing fabric. Lay the patchwork first, right side up, put the wadding on top and then the backing fabric, right side down on top.

 

10) Sew all the way around, leaving a gap approx. 10-15cm wide

 

11) Turn the patchwork the right way and sew up the gap by hand.

 

12) Iron on a cool setting so as not to melt the wadding.

 

13) You can at this point 'quilt' by sewing along the lines between the patches - I didn't but because I just wanted it on my bed!

 

14) Display and enjoy!

 

 

 

 

Emily x

 

 

Mid Season Picnic

It’s that time of year where glimmers of summer are starting to appear. A slight smell in the air, the sound of the birds singing or a slight warm breeze on your skin and all of a sudden you have a sudden urge to go on a picnic, but as quickly as that the weather turns again, the temperatures drop and you feel like it’s never going to be summer. A mid season picnic is the perfect pick me up for those longing for summer blues.

Simply wrap up warm but with lots of layers, so if the sun does happen to make an appearance, you can shed your big winter coat and soak it up, pack up a scrumptious picnic of home made bread, a Thermos of warming soup, and a fiery ginger beer or two and off you go. Take blankets to lie across the ground and a ground sheet in case the ground is damp, spread your picnic and enjoy an afternoon dreaming of summer days to come... 

Hatty's Home Tour: Dining Room

Basically Mike and I love to cook... and eat! I would love a huge kitchen/dining room, however they are few and far between in two bedroom cottages in the UK, but I have made the space work for us. The kitchen and dining room flow nicely into each other and taking the door into the kitchen off helps make it feel more like one room. I decorated the kitchen (see Hatty's home tour: kitchen) and dinning room to match also helping to make the two rooms feel like one. 

Like the rest of the house and especially the kitchen, the floor, walls and main pieces of furniture were all painted a clean, bright, fresh white. 

I'm a big fan of the illustrator Emily Sutton and invested in one of her prints from her alphabet series. 'G for greenhouse' is a beautiful piece of art and I love having a print of it hanging in a place I can look at it all the time. I picked out some of the colours in the print and used these as highlights in the room, turquoise, orange and yellow. 

We also inherited Mikes parents wedding dinner set, the old 1970s Hornsea set which we use daily.

For Christmas I decided to hang a big branch above the dinning table with little birds sitting on it as a quirky decoration, it's now April and I still haven't taken them down, I don't find them to Christmassy (that's not a real word, I know) and love how they bring a little of the outside in.  

I pretty happy with this room, it's great to be able to cook and still chat to people at the table, it's bright and cheerful yet warm and cosy too, my only plans for it are more plants! 

Vintage Shopping

I love nothing more than an afternoon rummaging through vintage shops for that perfect star buy. For some reason I find vintage shopping so much more exhilarating  than normal high street shopping. Don't get me wrong I do like to top my wardrobe up with some high street staples, but there is something about thrill of finding that one dress that would look great and knowing that practically no one else will be wearing one the same, you just don't get that with the high street.

Obviously before any good vintage shop you need to be well fuelled. So we thought it would be appropriate to have lunch at this great little vintage tea room called 'the old young tea shop'. If your ever in the area you should check it out, they have millions of teas on offer and the décor is quirky. 

Middlesbrough is hardly known as the Mecca of vintage shops, however with recent input from Mary Portas schemes Baker St. has had a make over with the intention of making it like a mini Brick Lane like in London, although they have a long way to go they did have a few good vintage shops and we didn't leave empty handed. 

Lovely Lovely London

So the weekend just gone we took Millie to London for the first time. We were visiting our older sister and we've had the best time.... EVER! I thought London would be really stressful with a baba, nope, she was a treasure and I can't wait to take her back.

We tried to travel light (this is a downright lie, we drove so we took everything including the highchair, we'd have looked ridiculous on a train!) so I didn't take my proper camera. Therefore I took lots of photos on the trusty iPhone.

I thought I'd share some of the photos from the Natural History Museum. I've used my favourite app to collage them, A Beautiful Mess, it's a great post photo app, really easy to use and the blog that Emma and Elsie write is what inspired Hatty and I to start blogging too... (www.abeautifulmess.com).
 

 

This was the first time I'd been to this museum and I was overwhelmed. Not with the exhibitions, although they were great, but with the building. WOW! It's like a cathedral. Everywhere you look is amazing detail, architecture and design, it's incredible.

 

 

 

 

I could have spent days there even if there was nothing inside. We did however also look round the exhibitions and of course did some dino spotting...

 

 

I love visiting new places and if you have suggestions of museums, galleries or local hidden gems that you love to visit, let me know so I can try them out too!

 

Emily x



Hatty's Home Tour: Kitchen

One thing you will come to know about us is we love to design our homes. We like to do this in as much of a thrifty and DIY way as possible. I love spending Sunday mornings scouring the car boots sales and the afternoons in the bric-a-brac section of the charity shops. Most of the thing in my house are second hand with a few things here and there from IKEA, because come on, who doesn’t love a bit of IKEA?!

My other more recent obsession it with orange, you will notice a lot of orange as a take you through the various rooms. It is such a bright and cheerful colour but warm too.

I wanted the house to be bright, light but also cosy, as the months of winter are long here in Old Brighty.

I started by painting everything brilliant white, walls, ceilings, (floors where possible) doors, and main pieces of furniture.  I got the high eye browed look from a lot of people when I said I was doing this, people said it would feel cold and plain, but I think it does the opposite, it gave me a blank canvas to work.

The kitchen was and plain MDF fitted kitchen, a light tan colour, the floor a horrible, tatty lino and the whole house was magnolia. So I painted the walls white and all the cupboard doors. I also lined the backs of the cupboards with Julie Dodsworth wrapping paper which some may think was a little unnecessary but I love the pop of colour you get when you open the cupboards. I also changed the door knobs which a set of mix matched knobs from ebay.

We cook a lots so we splurged on huge white cooker (in a dream world this would be a Rangemaster or an Aga). I also have lots of spices and wanted them to be on show and easily accessible. I searched for random spice racks at car boots and painted them orange for another pop of colour.

In the future I would like to replace the backsplash with white brick tiles with a dark grey grout (see below), and either white or wooden worktops, what do you think?

Image source: athousandlaughingstarfish.blogspot.com 

DIY: Upcycled Ceiling Fan Light

We moved into our house about 18 months ago and although the house was lovely, it wasn't my taste and I pretty much wanted to change every room. We didn't (and still don't) have a huge decorating budget, so where we could we've used what was there to our advantage.

In our bedroom was a ceiling fan, wooden and brass and not to my taste at all. Light fittings can be expensive so I thought I'd have a go at upcycling what was there and I love the result. (Plus it was a huge bonus having a fan in the bedroom in the heat of last summer, whilst heavily pregnant!)

I stupidly forgot to take 'before' photos, but it was similar to these...

I removed the blades and the brackets holding the blades to the centre disc. I then painted the centre disc without removing it from the ceiling, this way I didn't have to get involved in scary electrics. I used white egg shell and it took a couple of coats.

I then spray painted the brackets white - preferably do this outside or somewhere with really good ventilation. It took about 4 coats to get a good finish. With spray paint, it's better to do lots of thin coats than drown it on the first go.

For the blades - I began by painting them white with eggshell paint. I did a couple of coats and didn't worry too much about the side that would face the ceiling. I made a rough template by drawing around the end of the blade so I could follow this shape down. Using a pencil I marked out the stripes using the template... I did this by eye so they aren't perfect. I have no patience for measuring, which sometimes fails me, but on this occasion you can't tell. I painted the grey stripes using a painters paintbrush and a tester pot of emulsion.

I think the end result is really striking and has turned something dated into something really cool...

And here it is in situ and a little peek at our bedroom...

 

More photos of the house coming soon!

Emily x