Home-made music

I'm completely entranced by Cigar Box Nation. It's a site dedicated to home-made guitars - mostly out of really simple objects like (you guessed it) cigar boxes and random lengths of wood. 

It's amazing what you can do with only one string :)

Shopping bag

Mr Starling and I are trying to be as conscientious about recycling as we can - and I'm trying to see how few plastic bags I can collect when we go out shopping. I have a very useful but tatty old co-op cotton bag that I stuff into my handbag when we leave the flat, but I've been wanting to upgrade for a while. 

This linen skirt escaped the charity shop pile by a whisker, and I'm glad I kept it, as the individual panels I unpicked were the perfect size for the sides of my bag. I wanted to do a design that was simple and fun, and yes, I am afraid that I seem incapable of making anything that doesn't at some point involve a rose or a bird. I've also been dying to try out fabric transfers too.



And below is the final result, which I'm pretty happy with :) The handles were made from ribbons from my never-ending wedding ribbon bag, and I backed them with fabric from the skirt, as the one thing I hate is thin straps that cut into your hand when you're carrying heavy shopping home on the bus. I had a brief craving to sew sequins onto each polka dot and had to lie down until the urge passed. 

I'm looking forward to taking it out for a spin. It's pretty robust as I sewed everything twice (and broke 2 needles sewing the straps to the bag. I'm getting too used to the snapping sound when the tip of the needle loses its battle with recalcitrant layers of fabric), but I'll be interested to see how the transfer survives being crumpled up into my handbag next time I go shopping.

mmm...custard

If ever there was a place that embodied the adage 'don't judge a book by its cover', the Lisboa Patisserie in Golborne Road has to be it. 

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Mr. Starling and I went there yesterday on his lunch break on thegingerbiscuit's enthusiastic recommendation. It's one of those places that feels like it's for locals, not tourists - tiny and rather scruffy-looking at first appearance, but one glance at the array of Portuguese custard and sugar laced delicacies and you know you're in sweet-tooth heaven. 

All the reviews online warned about the lack of seating space - there are only four or five tables crammed into the small cafe - so we got there early, even though it was only a Tuesday. I'm so glad we did, as there was one table that had just been vacated when we walked in, but by the time we left there was a queue of people snaking out the door and into the street. I had what was probably the best custard danish ever in my life, plus an awesome cup of coffee - rich and intense but with absolutely no bitterness. Given an unlimited budget and enough time, I could quite happily have stayed there and worked my way through the heaped trays of freshly-baked pastries and tarts. Mmm.....

We cut our lunch break short to take pity on the crowds hovering like hungry vultures round our table, and took a walk down Golborne road back to Mr. Starling's office. He had to prise me away from the shop windows every now and then, as there are a host of quite funky little antique places down there and some lovely gift shops selling quirky accessories. Even though we can't afford to randomly go out and buy everything I fall in love with, it's still great seeing what other creative people are making, and getting some more ideas for things I want to make for our place.

street where the riches of ages are stowed...

So today I headed out for a jaunt to Portobello Road to meet Mr Starling for lunch. He's working near there until mid-April, so I'm trying to take advantage of his location while I can.

As it's a Thursday the streets are empty of all the traders' stalls that crowd the road on weekends. I'm looking forward to snuffling through the bric-a-brac again but that will have to wait until mom Starling comes to visit in May/June, as a Saturday morning trip to the chaos of Portobello Road would be Mr Starling's worst nightmare.

1. These little puppy boxes really puzzle me. They're in the window of an interesting Spanish produce supermarket. I'm kinda assuming they're dog treats, maybe, but they were displayed right in the middle of a group of (human) bakery treats - panettone-type breads and cakes. I'm quite happy to leave their provenance a mystery - it's more fun imagining explanations in my head :)

2. This is a cute garden-themed restaurant on a balcony above a funky reworked vintage clothing store. The hanging baskets looked freshly planted, and I think today was probably one of the first days this year that it would have been appealing to sit outside to have lunch.

3. This lovely vintage skirt caught my eye even though it wouldn't suit me at all. I'm obsessed with anything with to do with roses at the moment and I'd kill for some of that fabric.

4. Individually, I don't think I could find a single thing hanging outside this store that I would like to have in my home, but as a massive riot of colour I think it's pretty eyecatching.

Even though I can't afford to buy much at the moment, every trip I make out in London at the moment is giving me ideas of things to make and do at home. I'm looking forward to getting out the sewing machine again.

Rose cushions

The project that I think has been the most fun so far has been making the cushions for the lounge. I bought some lovely rose-patterned fabric from ebay, and have used that as the basic colour-scheme for the room. To make it go further I only made two cushions with just the fabric (which you can just see poking in at the corners of the pic). The rest was a mix and match with other fabrics I had. 

The cream stripey fabric is part of a (fantastically cheap) ex-bedspread from Ikea which I cut up (the rest is made into curtains for the kitchen - 3 sets of curtains for around 12 quid - how much do I love Ikea!). I used some of the offcuts from the rose fabric and zig-zagged them on the sewing machine so the edges wouldn't fray.

The Union Jack cushion has sentimental value for me, as I made it with some of the leftover ribbons which were a big part of the decor for my wedding in January. I still have a fair-sized collection of them to use up, and I'm sure they'll be featuring again in this blog :) The back is made from the rose fabric, and the front is part of an old blanket which I bought years ago and which had become stained. I love the contrast of textures between the matte rose fabric, the soft wool and the shiny and sequinned ribbons. 

Pillowcase Monograms

Right - my first project post. One of the main reasons I set up this blog was to chronicle the things that I'm doing around the house. I'm hoping that this will act as an incentive for me to be more creative, now that I have some time to indulge in the luxury of being domestic. 

Despite getting some lovely bed linen for our wedding, and having heaps of regular sized cases and covers when Mr Starling and I consolidated our separate piles when we moved in here together after the wedding, we didn't have any continental pillowcases for the large pillows on our bed. I had a lovely old pure cotton double bed sheet that I got from a bric-a-brac shop a few years ago, and I decided to sacrifice it in the name of thrift. It ended up making not only the pillowcases, but also a tablecloth that I'm working on at the moment, which I'll hopefully put up here in the not too distant future when it's done.

So, I knew I didn't just want a plain white pillowcase, and I thought it might be fun to monogram some initials. I'm not the world's most patient sewer, so I wanted something that would be quicker to accomplish than the traditional very fine white French-style embroidery. I'm also getting a little obsessed with designs involving flowers and/or birds. I found a handwriting style font I liked, and adapted some bird silhouettes from images I found on the net, and ended up with the designs above.

Luckily the dark lines from the printout showed through enough for me to trace the design onto the cloth with a fabric marker. The colours were chosen to match the other pillows we have on the bed. I'm really happy with the way they turned out - and they only took a few nights of sewing in front of the telly to finish.

For my first official post, I thought I'd start off with a picture of the beautiful tulips that I was given last weekend for my birthday. Living in a small second-floor flat in London means I'm surrounded by bricks and tar and concrete - I'm lucky enough to have a tree right outside my lounge window, but I still miss the greenery of the countryside that I'm more familiar with.  I've become a sucker for fresh-cut flowers, and am about to embark on my first attempt at growing anything by making window-boxes for the generous ledges outside.