catherine buca’s photography has a certain something. an atmosphere and aesthetic that draws me in totally, i could stare at them for hours. and now i do

as soon as i found out that catherine sells prints through her etsy shop i knew resistance was futile. maybe it’s her ttv work that inspired me to put the prints in thick perspex block frames, effectively placing another lens between the viewer and the image. i’m sooo happy with both the prints and the presentation.

more acquisition than creation going on around here lately, so here’s here’s the lowdown on my latest scores. (lots of pictures + not much text is prolly a recipe for disaster layout-wise, but what the hell.

i struck lucky at a local fabric shop. it mostly stocks decor fabrics so i rarely venture in, but it does have a well stocked end of lines clearance section. i picked up a couple of these sample books for discontinued ranges. i wouldn’t have known what to do with them before i started thinking about quilting, but now i couldn’t resist. i also picked up a couple of curtain samples for 50p each. they remind me of this amy butler fabric, and i really like the colourway, it’s fresh and very different from my usual inclinations. i’m still rockin the vintage bedding - all these pillowcases from ebay. this purchase was pure blind paper-lust-at-first-sight when i discovered emmarose papery. these notecards are letterpressed and have a crisp weighty, tactile impression that oozes quality. apparently they’re opening a london office any moment. yay! and finally, i got superbuzzy. it was the russian doll fabric that lured me in - i’d been pining for it ever since i saw alex use it - but i appear to be in an unexpected yellow phase at the moment cos this is the one that i love best right now.

it seems to me that, when it comes to design, the victorian era is often overlooked. perhaps because it’s so ubiquitous - in the uk at least. huge swathes of our towns and cities were built in the 19th century, a quarter of us live in houses built before 1919. and if we don’t live in a victorian house, we’ve been accustomed to using victorian buildings all our lives, so much of our infrastructure - schools, hospitals, police stations, doctors’ surgeries, etc. - is housed in victorian buildings. victorian flourishes and flounces surround us; mouldings, coving, glorious decorative tiling that often survives on hallway floors or fireplaces; all are commonplace. and familiarity breeds contempt.

we only did away with the last of the surviving victorian interior aesthetic after the second world war, and not effectively like they did in the states. that dark wood furniture, those velvet curtains, those panelled doors, they lurked gloomily on for a long time. it’s stuffy, it’s fussy, it’s the antithesis of modern, and we all know how much we love modern. even those who dig old stuff tend to go for the atomic, the mid century, or simpler, rustic, country style. everyone (except perhaps the crazy quilter) neatly sidesteps victorian, it just isn’t cool.

i can’t say i’m any exception to the rule, but i do recognise that the more celebrated movements that grew out of the end of the victorian era - arts and crafts, art nouveau - had their roots well and truly in the victorian age. the modern was born out of the heart of the old fashioned. and i have a huge fondness for ceramic tiles, particularly victorian and islamic designs, which share a combination of botanical and geometric motifs, brought together with some kind of magic that must be specific to the medium (but to a degree is often echoed in textile design).

and i’ve already shared my love of browsing for original sources. so when i found a copy of f edward hulme’s suggestions in floral design (1878), a book that is apparently seminal in the development of art nouveau - most astonishingly - at a price that i could theoretically afford, how on earth could i resist?

i haven’t yet had a chance to read the text, i’ve been too distracted by the illustrations - crisp chromolithographs, many highlighted in gold. all astonishingly beautiful, and often surprisingly “modern”. sadly i don’t think i can afford to hold on to the book - i sank a chunk of my digital camera fund into the purchase, and i’m really aching to move on with that. so its stay with me will be temporary, but i’ve taken the chance to record all 52 plates while i have them, and put them into an inspirational flickr set. i’ll try to annotate the pics as i work my way through the text.

while it’s not the same as the stunning originals, the good news is that the illustrations at least are available in reprint under the title victorian floral designs in full color, although i don’t know whether the text is reproduced alongside them.

such beautiful designs couldn’t have been developed without a thorough understanding of the subject matter, and f edward hulme is probably best known today for his series of volumes illustrating familiar wild flowers, pages from which are readily available as prints. if you’re digging these as much as i am (heh, can you tell how much i dig them?) you might also be interested in christopher dresser’s studies in design, from the same era, available in reproduction.

deer are the new birds, don’t you think? the animal of choice for the discerning crafter.

fabric from gp & j baker’s gatsby collection, 92% linen 8% nylon.

after my recent whinging i decided to take myself in hand and set out to try to find affordable sources of fabric. old bedding seems to sell fairly cheaply here and you get a useable amount of fabric (as opposed to clothing, which usually has way too many seams and awkward shaped pieces to make it worthwhile dismantling). if you can stomach some poly with your cotton you can get your hands on some cracking vintage prints.

the above aren’t all vintage; the far left is current stock ikea but display damaged so a bargain, i got a single duvet cover plus pillowcases and the print is a smaller sale on the cover, which i love. some of these are simple stash building, others already have destinies. M and i are both keen to experiment with pillowcase dresses for the summer. she really wants a dress out of the balloon fabric (a duvet cover with a rather fetching reverse) which i think i’m going to find quite a challenge

a parcel arrived this morning. i was expecting it, but i certainly wasn’t expecting it to be so very beautifully presented. you should have seen my face

this is part of the reason why i love to shop indie, the time and effort that goes into every aspect of the work is tangible. it’s as though the creativity and aesthetic sense bubbles through whether you like it or not.

but you might be forgiven for missing the whole point of the package from the previous pic. what i was expecting were these:

fabulously original coral and silver earrings from boldsimple @etsy. the first earrings i’ve bought for about 7 or 8 years after i’d pretty much decided i don’t do earrings any more. how much do they rock?

ps how are the pix looking? i made my little light tent, but i think my lamp just isn’t bright enough. they’re also disappointingly grainy - although i guess that could be from being set to 400 iso, is digi the same as film in that respect? happy with the white balance though, had forgotten i had settings for that.

one of my earliest memories is being at my childminder’s house and playing with her tin of buttons. it was a huge round biscuit tin that must have held at least a thousand buttons. i could sort through them for hours at a time, matching them into sets, arranging them by colour, examining each one in minute detail. my favourites were the tiny faceted clear glass ones, victorian, i guess.

almost as soon as i had a baby i knew i had to get a button tin - for sorting, not sewing purposes - but it’s taken me until now to get round to it.

as soon as i saw this tin i knew it was the one. this isn’t the first of this design that i saw - that went for more than i was prepared to pay - but there are loads of them knocking about on ebay, although this one seems to be in unusually good nick. it’s marked CWS biscuits - co-op wholesale society. i can’t date it stylistically, i initially thought it may be 1930s but this page reckons it’s c.1910.

i have a pitifully small collection of buttons that i’ve carried around for the last 15 years, and even though it’s a small tin i thought they needed some company. so i bought buttons too.

1940s plastic buttons…

buttons on cards…

buttons by the bagful.

i’m not sure i can bring myself to let M loose with them - let alone actually split them up and permanently attach any of them to anything. perhaps i should have a few happy hours sorting them tomorrow, to get it out of my system

(that’s post in the mail sense, rather than the blog sense)

to make amends for yesterday’s whingey post and to cheer me up on a dingy stormy day i bring you new fabrics

this is the one that started it all. when i saw it on sale at equilter i knew there would be no going back. all of these fabrics are destined for a quilt for M and the huge scale of this tropical volcanic island print only works in a large expanse so it will be the backing, perhaps pieced with white depending on finished quilt size. i got 2 yards for the princely sum of £5 (including shipping which worked out at £1/yd).

tropical/mod prints to complement the theme. this is where you see my fabric dazzle - these are prints that i simply couldn’t resist, though i’ve no idea how they’ll work together in the whole of a quilt. i’m thinking tentatively of using a star design, with the showier prints at the centres, and the smaller pieces for the points out of the “supporting” fabrics. i’m also planning to group each star colourwise, to make a little order in the chaos.

M asked for orange and pink, the purple and green came from the backing fabric, i hope i can get that many colours to work together. my usual instinct would have limited the palette a little, but then there’s no such thing as too colourful for a 3 year old is there?

i was really nervous about getting an import charge on this order - i’ve had it before on fabric and it’s not so much the VAT and duty that grates, it’s that this can be doubled by an “administration” fee from the carrier. as it goes equilter split the shipment into 2 flat rate envelopes each with a value below the threshold, so even though i ended up picking mostly fabricsw that weren’t on sale, i still got a huge bargain. yay!

the quilt is part of a bedroom revamp that we hope will help a) soften the blow of having to give up space in her room for new baby stuff (room sharing isn’t immediate, but we have nowhere else to keep attendant stuff) and b) encourage her to spend more time playing up in her room. i’ve found when visiting friends how delightfully calm it is when they disappear upstairs for a while, and realised that M spends almost all her time downstairs, even when she has friends round. we’re hoping that encouraging her to want to spend more time in her room (which is the biggest in the house, although you’d never guess with the amount of stuff crammed in there for lack of anywhere else to put it) will help us all to continue living happily in our little house when there are four of us.

and here for no good reason other than i love them are some lovely presents M just received from spain.

from left: coat, top, trousers.

skirt, shirt. see, my love of prints is genetic, i can’t help it

apols for not-so-great artificially lit pics, may as well be living in a submarine for all the natural light we have today.

yum

the colours are a little washed out here. the first batch will be the lengthwise-striped wrap, there’s enough in the second for a striped jumper, i think. these last ones don’t appeal so much to me, although the sparkly black is kinda cute. i think i will end up with a lot of orange swatches.

and i’m waiting with baited breath for the postman. kid silk haze and colourmart cashmere. in lots of colours

i’ve only knitted once with a circular needle, and it was a truly horrific experience. the tips were plastic (shudder - and nasty plastic at that) and the stitches snagged every time on the join (ouch). but i hear of so many people who only knit with circs, especially in the states, i figured it must be worth eventually giving it another go, with a decent set of needles.

i have visions of the kidsilk scarf in lengthwise stripes (as well as thinking baby blankets lately too) and i think it may take some experimentation to get the right needle size. yeah, so i can swatch on straights but i’m intrigued by the knitpicks interchangeables i’ve heard such good things about and i’m currently flush

so there’s me totally psyched up to treat myself and then i find they don’t ship internationally how stone age is that?

not fair (pouts and stamps feet)

jumper yarn arrived. six days after i ordered it. hats off to quality fibers it’s wonderfully soft and the swatches are fairly true although the colours are slightly more intense.

the working title for knit and tonic’s drive-thru jumper/cardi appealed to me immensely, can’t imagine why…

these look fabby, but i’m left bemoaning the lack of resonably cheap wool yarn available over here. there seems to be naff all between overpriced “designer” and flippin plastic. actually, texere have a rather lush looking aran weight bfl which i’m waiting on as i type. it’s still nearly £3/50g i figured i only have a small project to do, so why not give it a try.

anyway, as soon as the pattern comes up (waiting with baited breath) i’m going to check the yarn requirements and prolly put in an order with elann, since even though the shipping doubles the price, it’s still cheaper than anything i can find here. depressing, eh?

oh and i don’t plan to knit these but i’ve miserably failed to spin any (well, enough) knitting wool for nanny so i thought she might like these while she’s waiting.

i am so much in love with my new chair. if i had a lappie there’d be no removing me from it ever. i’d have to be turned at regular intervals to prevent my skin from fusing with it. ewwwww.

it’s an original 70’s stressless recliner by ekornes, a norwegian company that appears to be the ultimate when it comes to reclining chairs. i’m a bit of a newcomer to “mid century modern” design, although i have unwittingly been filling the house with cheap repros from ikea

i found the chair on ebay (natch) it’s in near perfect nick except the tips of the arms are rather discoloured and cracked. i think i paid a good price for a 70’s model (and a fraction of the current new price) mostly because it wasn’t listed as leather, let alone ekornes (although the name and patents are on the label). it’s obviously a high quality piece of furniture, and immensely comfy, swivels all the way round and you just lean back to recline it. we’ve yet to figure out how to twizzle the knobs to get it to stay put in a particular position - it stays just where you want it while you’re in it, but returns to upright as you sit up - but if it turns out we can’t it’s no biggie.

most importantly there’s room for one and a half, so it’s the perfect story time chair, which is exactly what i wanted it for. well, that and swivelling round whilst stroking the cat on my knee, saying “so, mr bond…” in a cod eastern european accent, a fair amount of which has also been going on.

it takes up less space than i expected, both physically and visually. it’s replacing a large 3-seater sofa that only got occasional sitting-on use, but constant stacking-big-piles-of-crap-on-instead-of-putting-them-away-properly use. as soon as we’d decided to get rid of the sofa it opened up the opportunity to make a decent sized play space for madam if we could find a comfy chair to replace the occasional sitting function but thwart the piles-of-crap function. i think i hit the jackpot here, it’s perfect. so perfect in fact i’m considering fashioning some form of antimacassar for it (lol, now that’s proper mid-century) to protect the leather from my pink hair dye that transfers scarily easily when it’s fresh. in fact i’ve just noticed that my keyboard is going pink from the tips of my fingers which are always rather pinky for a week or so after i first do it - it is very pink

i guess this is as good a place as any to drop my restoring leather furniture links:
leather repair and restoration
leathercare renovations
caring for leather furniture
uktv style ask the expert
diy help

on the same slightly o/t theme piccies of the newly done rooms are still pending. i took a few shots earlier but a) i need to get out of my usual “details” frame of mind (engendered by too many years living in a house that desperately needed plaster and paint, perhaps?) so you can actually see the overall effect and b) i need to get my tripod out cos there’s not quite enough light to get decent handheld shots.

and finally, today i’ve had a throughly enjoyable time browsing the apartment therapy smallest coolest apartment contest for some extra pointers. although we’re blessed with rather more square footage than the 650 contest limit* and i’ve yet to see an entry that has to accommodate children full-time, i think there’s still a lot we could learn from here. i love our little house and dearly want to make it work for us as a family for as long as possible, so learning how to maximise the space and pull it all together visually is important to me.

i’m pleasantly surprised to see how “on trend” my decorating instincts (grey walls, aforementioned mid-century modern, mixing different woods etc) appear to be, especially considering that it’s all picked up by osmosis. i don’t read or watch any interior design stuff, the closest i’ve got to that is my recent bauhaus reading and the book on scandinavian design i picked up recently (more of which anon). otherwise furniture-wise i just tend to drool over stuff in habitat and then pick things i can actually afford from ikea and usually there’s not much choice it’s whatever they happen to have that fits…

*edit: out of curiosity i searched out our original agent’s details, and it turns out we have around 600 square feet. it feels like so much more space than most of the apartments i’ve seen in the contest, perhaps it’s just a visual trick of viewing everything in photographs, or maybe because we have 7 rooms over 2 floors rather than one large space, i dunno. i am half tempted to enter next year’s contest though, if only to enjoy the snidey comments about my bland and derivative taste and oh god not more ikea but then i’d have to tidy up the whole house for the pictures, which aint ever going to happen.

oooh my fabrics arrived from cia’s palette. it’s exactly the wrong time for me to appreciate them properly since we’re in the middle of turning the house upside down for decorating so they had to be stashed quickly away, but i couldn’t help stopping to admire how beautifully they were packaged.

i can find out very little about peter hall, except that he designed textiles in the late 60’s for places like heals, was a contemporary of barbara brown, and that his work is held in the v&a. he seems to have been quite a revivalist, clearly drawing inspiration from nouveau and deco styles, which i’m all in favour of.

i once briefly owned these curtains:

petrus, as seen in the v&a but a rather more palatable colour scheme unfortunately the fabric itself wasn’t the loveliest, a dull heavy crepe cotton. i was rather scandalised by the price i was prepared to pay for them and was shocked to say the least when i managed to sell them on at a profit - i realised that since i was intent on cutting them up i probably wasn’t a responsible enough owner.

so you can imagine my heart skipped a beat when i saw this fabric on ebay:

the design is candida, for moygashel. very art & craftsy, on a much more manageable scale than the petrus curtains. i’d assumed the fabric was cotton, i’d never heard of moygashel, but having read up on them i guess it’s more likely to be linen or a linen blend, though how to distinguish linen from cotton i don’t know - the burn test info sounds pretty similar.

brand new, never used, crisp and bright, slightly musty.

but that’s not the best bit - this is the best bit: i got it in four colourways! count em!

four :happy dance: and there’s serious yardage too. the vintage fabric appreciation squad must have been asleep when it was up cos including the shipping i got it for just over £2/m.

squeeeeeeee!

any plans i have never really got past the “own it” stage, so i’ll enjoy letting it mellow in my stash a little while while the ideas form.

edit: i found a tag! it’s 75% cotton 25% modal (”modal is a modified viscose fibre, made exclusively from beach wood pulp” in case anyone was wondering). the label is on the green and gives the colour as 006, raising the tantalising possibility of at least 2 more to collect…

time to show off some recent purchases again.

whipup got me thinking merimekko a little while ago. and since i seem to shop nowhere else nowadays (and given that marimekko fabrics retail at £30+/m) i hotfooted it off to ebay.

i turned up a set of napkins in sarafan print from crate & barrell that were still bargainous even with shipping from the states:

and these fabulous limited edition marimekko-inspired screen prints by jane foster:

unfortunately what with all the recent shopping i can’t actually afford to frame them at the moment. but i’m hoping i might be able to wrangle that out of the budget for redecorating our downstairs rooms.

oh and before you ask, yes, if whipup told me to jump off a cliff i probably would if i believed there was some kind of artistic merit in it

and then i made an unexpected charity shop score. there was a whole set of 70s part-work knitting binders (the knitting collection by hamlyn), now whilst i fully appreciate the comedy value of reams of unredeemably awful knitting patterns, i just don’t have the shelf space (or the budget at £2.50 a volume - i think there were 8 in all). so i committed a cardinal sin (for a one-time-would-be-librarian) and split the set. i took just the first 2, useful, volumes:

vol 1:

• techniques
• knitting know-how
• finishings and trims
• children’s knitting cards
• adapting and designing

vol 2:

• folk knitting
• stitch and pattern library

good stuff

ebay is a dangerous place to be. i just came across this seller, who has a wonderful collection of antique textiles. in particular the embroderies catch my eye:

i’ve started an inspirational textiles set as a way of keeping these beautiful things for ever, without actually having to shell out money or find somewhere to store/display them.

i’ve just started a wishlist at yes asia. i haven’t much more than a vague clue about the content of each book, but i’m willing to take a chance for inspiration. i started with a random craft book isbn from someone’s blog entered into amazon.co.jp and then clicked randomly from item to item until i got stopped in my tracks by something that appealed. scroll down the page till you spot the isbn then enter into yes asia which is all in english, lists prices in £ and ships international for free. bingo

filling up that list will be an enjoyable way to pass the time but right now i should be houseworking.

edit: lol, my subconcious has a lot to answer for, how come i managed to utterly miss the whipup article on this subject? my interest came from the amigurumi thing via a wee wonderfuls post which came up top google. ah well, i catch up eventually

unless i can think of any way of getting my hands on these that doesn’t involve a wedding list at heals.