#sewro

A very good friend of mine who runs a successful business down South sourcing, restoring and generally making quirky vintage finds beautiful once more, brought me a fantastic addition for my garden the other weekend which I’m so pleased with. A used cable reel! ...well I think it’s exciting!

Originally I’d asked Clive (of Hillfield Trading) for some old pallets to see if I could make a table out of them but when he swung the door open of his beast of a van, called Kimmy!, I was literally tripping over myself to get the reel out of the van, wheeled through the house and onto my decking!

Now I was pretty pleased with it as it was. After a little inspection and some wise words from Clive suggesting I give it a quick sand to smooth the edges, and some varnish treatment to ensure the wood doesn’t get damp and ruined too quickly, I figured it would sit nicely where it was and required minimal effort. Perfect.

This was, however, until a few days later when another fabulous friend of mine, Em, very nonchalantly handed me a bag of beautiful tile samples she had collected from her time on Skye and asked if I’d have any use for them. I was stupidly excited, much to Ems ammusement! I had an idea for them immediately. I am attempting a coastal theme for my garden (being as I love the sea but live a million miles from it, this is my way of bringing the sea to me) and these tiles are a beautiful mixed of aqua marine colours, some mirrored, some sparkly. So I am going to attempt to mosaic the top of the cable reel and hopefully create a completely unique table.

I’ve never tried mosaic before but I’ve had a quick read through my many many craft books and Kirsty Allsopp’s “Homemade Home” book came up trumps with a section on making a mosaic table. I have a busy old couple of months ahead but if I can get my materials, tools and grouting head on, and manage to steel a few hours here and there I think I can turn it around in time for the proper summer to arrive. Please let that be soon… :-)

Last weekend, I promised my Mum I would be on hand to rack off the Dandelion wine that has been gurgling away upstairs at Brewbakers (a very fitting name for my parents house and this particular task!).

We had consulted our home brew bible, “How to make your own drinks” by Suzy Atkin, which said it should be left to ferment for “several” weeks. This could really be for any number of weeks. So we had ear marked this weekend, 5 weeks after our mammoth Dandelion mission, to get it bottled. Plus the gurgling noises had stopped so we figured it had done its thing and the wine was ready. All very technical of course.

I hade previously prepared the wine bottles and sterilised them, and Mum brought down the huge brewing bucket from the top floor… and in the process, churned up quite a bit of the sediment which made it very cloudy. After an hour, it was still cloudy. Not good!

On a second check of Suzy’s instructions, it did mention that the wine might need to be racked off in order to clear maybe 2 or 3 times. So we decided on a change of plan. We would bottle the Elderberry wine that has been sitting in a demijohn in the corner of the kitchen for ages, sterilise the demijohn again and use it to rack off the Dandelion wine once more. All good fun, which involved me getting huge mouthfuls of not quite ready Dandelion wine, and very ready Elderberry wine, whist trying to siphon it off, and making a right old mess in the process.

So 6 bottles of Elderberry wine was not quite the result we’d had in mind but it was better than nothing, and our Dandelion wine is still in the process of hopefully turning from cloudy to clear.

I did a bit of a taste test on the Sunday night to see if the Elderberry wine really was drinkable. I can report that it most definitely is an acquired taste, and much more of a pudding wine than a quaffing wine, not to be drunk in too large a quantity!

Last Wednesday was my 4th and final class with Damian… And I’m sorry to report, that in the three hours I was there… I didn’t achieve an awful lot! I had to finish off inserting the hair into my loops, and I only had one more row to do, so I whizzed through that and was all ready, rather excitedly, for Damian to tell me how put my fabric on. I had previously dashed to Brown & Heels in Northampton to pick my fabric very late in the day (always last minute with me!). I chose something that first caught my eye a few weeks ago when I was picking up supplies. It's a beautiful fabric by St Jude's which met with the approval of my fellow upholsterers :-)

So on waiting patiently for my turn, and chatting away to Malcom, I spent the time teasing out the hair to make it as even as possible. When Damian arrived, I realised I was being a little too hasty, as he next taught me to fill in the holes. Now I couldn’t see any holes… But apparently, there were quite a few! This excercise is really one you do by touch and not sight. You find where there is a gap in the hair, make a small hole all the way down and then screw in a handful of new hair, a bit like twisting in a cork, and then tease around the outside to blend in. This all made perfect sense, so I got on with it… But I have to say, after an hour of this… I was pretty bored. But I kept finding more pesky holes!

When it came to the last half hour, Damian came and gave me instructions for finishing the chair off myself and, on seeing my concern that I might mess this up, reassured me that I was proficient enough to pull it off (lets hope so!).

My next task is a hair cutting one, but I need to invest in some decent upholstery scissors before I can start. This is quite a tough task and I’ve been warned it will hurt my hand quite a bit, so i’ll need lots of breaks. Then once my "Afro"chair seat has had its new do, I am ready to put on the wadding (2 layers of) and then my lovely fabric. How hard can it be…?!

I also made some decent progress with my chair frame last week too. After much debate and a lot of toing and froing about whether to keep the chair in its original wooden state or go for a complete transformation… I bit the bullet. I’ve gone for “juicy red”.

I figure that if I hadn’t of rescued the chair that it most probably would have ended up on the skip, so I felt a little more justified when, after sanding it down and giving it a good clean with sugar soap, that first brush of red went on. Anyone who has seen it says they quite like the “shabby chic” effect that just the first coat has made, but I’ve another coat still to do that should make it stand out, bold as brass! I just hope the fabric I chose matches the red…. Maybe should have checked that minor detail!

A friend of mine asked me an age ago if I would make something special as a gift for her friends wedding in June, which I of course said yes to immediately (I was secretly very flattered she trusted I'd come up with some thing worthy of a wedding gift!) This is actually the first project that someone has offered to give me a few pennies for, my first commission I guess, so it's a teeny bit of a milestone. We decided on a personalised tea cosy and some mug hugs. Apparently the couple are quite "hippy" (Vicki's words, not mine!) and this would go down well. I found a pattern in my tea cosy book which you can simply adapt with what ever initials you like, which was perfect.

I've been faffing around with all my other projects this last month that it was only this weekend that I realised I literally had weeks to come up with the goods! Luckily I was away for a long weekend with my family in the beautiful Leicestershire countryside where there was plenty of time to get cracking on it over a cider or two...

And even time to admire the view, feed the goats and explore the Bluebell woods....

And then the final finishing touches on the journey home. Tea cosy - done! Next is the mug hugs and its ready for the happy couple :-)

It took a little longer than anticipated, but my first lot of Tea Towel Bunting is complete! And I’m pretty pleased with the result, but only after a lot of huffing and puffing and scratching my head trying to bring Mums old Alfa sewing machine back to life.

This beast of a machine has been collecting dust for nearly my whole lifetime. I’m amazed I've not sought it out before now. It’s absolutely weighs a ton, and when you lift of the case, it even smells old! But it’s a lovely old thing, with a great retro instruction manual and an old school belt motor.

The rubber belt had corroded on first inspection, which meant it wasn't quite working the needle, so I ordered a new one (ebay really is a god send!) and my very clever Dad fixed it. He also gave it a good oiling ready for me to try out this weekend, which I did… But I didn't get on too well. I think it’s something to do with the tension. It took a bit of brain power to thread it all up, and work out the settings, but every time I went over a thicker bit of material, the thread kept snapping. Very frustrating and I think I might need a lesson with someone who really knows their sewing machine stuff, as in the end I gave up and finished the job on my other (slightly less cool!) Argos sewing machine.