I Heart Wall Art: Make a Noticeboard With Scarves

Now then, if like me, you prefer to make your life difficult via the means of:
a) Trying to not ever buy things new, unless they're full-on proper eco-friendly produced
b) Always wanting very pretentiously to do something a little bit 'different' but not actually having any ideas jump into your head easily
c) getting a bit cross and bothered and wishing you were a really creative 'blank canvas' person who just goes "Ooh, ooh, how about we twist some twigs into a giant pepperpot shape, interthread tin-can shards in it and then invent a whole new peg system made from old cotton reels and make a noticeboard that way!"

Yes, sound like you?  Then what the heck, my love - just steal this idea.  Honestly, do.  It looks awful purrdee and is a proper good scavenging project.  Plus of course, it's got hearts in it, and like it or lump it my good people, hearts are a nice shape, aren't they.

Deely-boppers. Key to our business. Ahem.

Stuff and Things You'll Need

• Scarves from t'charity shop.  Also good - silky tops you've kept to re-use for something.  Best is silky things because they will not be bulky and will insinuate themselves nicely through rings and round nails etc
• Rings - I found a bedillion inch diameter or so metal curtain rings in a charity shop once, and I used those.  Failing that, use whatever rings you can lay your hands on.  Can't find any?  Don't worry - leave 'em out!
• Magnets if your rings are metal - ideally little craft magnets (strong ones), but you could just round up all the magnets yer kids have abandoned
• Paper clips, curtain cafe clips, bulldog clips - anything clippy or hangy or holdy or grabby.  And yes, they are the proper technical terms.
• Hammer and Nails
• Tape measure, Pencil, Rubber

   
Ready?  Hop to it!

We gave our workroom wall a good clean to rid it of dust and, ahem, pencil drawings, and removed bits of blu-tack and sellotape.  A nice clean blank canvas for you to whack your scarf art onto.

Poke through, bring round, poke through again.

1. Tie/sew your scarves and silky bits together, and measure how long it is.  You'll need this figure in your head to give you an idea of how big or small your outline is going to be in the next step
2. Put the curtain rings, if you are using them, at regular intervals.  Simply poke through once, bring round and poke through again, as you can see here, so that the rings are 'caught' on the scarf.
3. Next you need to sketch your heart-shape on the wall (or hey - any shape, it doesn't matter!  Go crazy you creative loons, you) using your pencil.  Start lightly - it took us a while to get the heart shape

   

   The mighty dustpan and brush

   right, let me tell you, and involved lots of standing back and viewing it askance and squinty-eyed before we got it right, which in turn involved a lot of drawing, rubbing out and re-drawing.  
4. When you're happy with the shape, start hammering the nails in to the wall.  Now listen here - you have to angle them slightly, and the angle will differ depending on the shape the scarves will make.  For example, the downward 'dip point' at the top ofthe heart needs a nail which is angled downwards so that the scarves don't just slip off, upwards....think tent pegs and guy ropes and you'll know what I mean!  If in doubt, just hammer them in a little, so that you can manoeuvre them once the scarves are tied on.  You'll soon see what we mean.
5. Next - begin placing your scarves round the nails - if you're on your own, you may need to tie the first bit to a nail, or it'll keep slidin' awff.   Amanda and I were doing this together so one was holding the first bit in place while the other looped and curled the scarves into place.  If you found the whole nail angling thing tricky, you can always 'loop the loop' the scarves round each nail.

   

   Get cafe clips from curtain hardware suppliers

6. Tie the two scarf-length ends together when you've created your shape, or if you prefer, tie them to a nail. Don't worry if you have too much - just let it hang down, or cut it, or wind it round some more.  Don't get hung up with measuring, no, no.
7. Now's where you get busy hanging things off your hearts!  Now, I'll leave this to your imagination - we had all sorts of funny bits and bobs - we've got some things stuck on with two magnets, some things jammed into paperclips just hanging off scarves; we've got cafe clips holding stuff, and of course we used the nails too - see the dustpan and brush there?!  Basically, use whatever you think might work!

A lot more interesting than a boring old noticeboard, eh?  We shove things we love, reminders, our sewing patterns all hole-punched and hanging on a nail, ready to whip down and use when we get orders; we stick receipts on nails, hang works in progress, even coat-hangers sometimes, with other things hanging off them.

Take part in some heart wall art!

What will you do?  Ooh, and what shapes are you thinking of using?  A cat? An owl?  Kisses?  Tell me!

Dabble in the Double

Double-sided fusible interfacing...

Don't you think that's the most terrifying string of words ever?  I found it very intimidating when I first read that in a sewing pattern somewhere.  I was all, what the devil is that, for heaven's sake?!  And where the blunkers do you get it from?!

Well, you can get the stuff in most haberdashers, to be honest.  It's quite hard to explain why this stuff is handy, because it's a bit like explaining the benefits of glue.
"Glue rocks.  Coz it's really sticky and sticks things together."
No kidding.

So, enough of that.  Here's a handy, or rather hearty, tutorial to get you off to a flying start with the wonders of Double-Sided Fusible Interfacing.  You don't need the stiff stuff, or even the light fabric stuff - you need the stuff that looks like paper. 



Right.  Gimme a list of stuff I need to forage for.
1m of lightweight Double-Sided Fusible Interfacing
Lots of pretty strips and scraps and scrippy scrappy bits of fabric, motifs from old clothes etc
Larger fabric triangles, approx 7" sided
Card Templates of hearts, or little birds, or whatever shape you'd like on your bunting
Pinking shears if you have them
Iron and Ironing Board
Sewing machine and threads, optional

1. Start by sorting through lots of lovely bits of fabric and iron them all.  Or even, don't bother ironing them.  My mum wouldn't.  She says she never irons anything before she sews it.  Shocking!
2. Cut a piece of dsfi, say 8"x14", although it doesn't really matter.  We wanted to make loooooooads of hearts for our bunting, but once you have a project in mind - you decide.

3. Now arrange and then iron the fabrics onto the dsfi with a cotton hot iron.  I'd advise laying some old bit of cloth on top, so that if any cheeky dsfi is exposed, your iron won't touch it and get goo on. 

4. Choose your template and draw round it on the reverse of your ironed fabric scraps.  Don't throw away any bits left over - keep every last bit; I'll show you what you can do with the tiny scraps later

5. Cut out, and carefully peel away the waxy paper.  This will be quite flimsy, so have your bunting triangles handy, ready to place your shape onto, the mesh-like sticky stuff facing down

6. Iron onto the bunting triangles
7. Now the fun part - find a really bright contrasting thread - or black, which looks amazingly effective with pastels and pretty cottons, and zigzag stitch along all the fabric joins, and round your shape.  Oh my word how great does that look?! But hey - if you don't have a sewing machine, look at the hearts above - they weren't stitched along the joins - you could just iron them onto your fabric triangles. 

8. Once you've done them all, stitch lots of torn scruffy strips of fabric about 1" wide together, and using zigzag stitch sew your bunting triangles to the wrong sides of the strip.

What I'm saying is, I suppose, be creative - it might be hearts on bunting, or these lovely birds, which I'm actually going to turn into little Bannister Birds - two stitched together with a ribbon out the top, and stuffed with old tiny scraps of fluff, and hung from my bannisters.
Or, and here's what you do with all those little leftover bits of ready-dfsi'd fabrics - make card art.  Give as cards, with a message inside telling the recipient to get a frame and stick it in!
Or even, do that yourself.
It's just that I was too lazy, so I made it into a birthday card for a dear friend, and told her she could find the bleedin' frame for herself.  Nice aren't I?
Ahem.
And on that note - I'm on holiday for a week!  We are going to sunny Devon, to frolic in waves and lick ice-creams and eat lashings of scones and cream and drink multiple cups of tea and then have fish and chips by the sea....
Save you some, I promise.

My Scruffy Hearts

Ok, ten points for everyone who can spot the name change. Bonney at the Mill was a mangling up of words, by throwing them into a pot and stirring ‘em up a bit; once we decided we were going to start up a business we realised we would need something that was URL-able, easy-to-type-able and easy-to-rememberable. Or memorable, as pedantic types like to say.

Wait, start a business did I say? Yes, I have long been thinking in this makey year of mine, that I love the things I make. And the people I give them to seem to quite like them too.

The real hook for me has been falling in love with recycled fabrics. I do mourn the fact that I cannot have some of the gorgeous new designers’ fabrics, but charity shops yield up some amazing finds, and of course second-hand clothes are often packed to the collars and cuffs with fabulous prints.

Okay, recycled is not the only way to be environmentally friendly - there is a pioneering movement towards eco-friendly fabrics, so hoorah and big rounds of applause to the likes of Ian Mankin, Cloud 9 Fabrics, Daisy Janie, Mod Green Pod, amongst I’m sure, many others. Their fabrics and designs are very on-trend, but eco-friendly cotton production isn’t just about keeping up with the green Joneses – it’s because the production of 100% cotton garments and fabrics is way up there with the worst environmental assaults taking place on this planet. You see a label boasting 100% cotton and you think quality, but you should actually be baulking at quantity - it takes 256.6 gallons of water to product one t-shirt. 2.5% of farmland worldwide is used to grow cotton, but you know how much of the world’s pesticides are used? 10%. And 22% of the insecticides. Eeeww. That’s not pretty maths. And pesticides ain’t good – read more here at my favourite eco clothes store, Peopletree.

The only problem with organic cotton fabric, is that it can be a little pricey. Now don’t be mistaken – organic fabrics are no more expensive than many of the furnishing fabrics from famous named fabric suppliers, so next time you want curtains made, have a think about getting eco-friendly fabrics.
But as far as OriginalStitch is concerned, parting with £45 for a pegbag may smart a little. Don’t misunderstand me, it would really be a very nice pegbag, with great finishing, quirky patchworkyness and you’d be the sole owner of a unique piece of British craft, but yes, that might be a rather high price tag. (Oh, you would pay £45? Darn it you say, you’ll pay £55? Oh well I take it back! For you, special price £50.)

So for now it's sticking with charity shops, and prowling around looking out for half used furnishing and dressmaking fabrics - it's astonishing what crops up. I have found vast quantities of top quality fabrics for literally a few pounds. Three metres of some delicious floral will make it's way in some form or another into loads of products, maybe as many as 25 - you can see when you flick through the things I've made - some fabrics crop up time and again.
So listen, next time you're in a charity shop, do me a favour could you? Have a little look to see if they've got any gorgeous fabric pieces hiding away in a box, and send to me, would you?! I'll reimburse you and give you money off coupons towards a nice doorstop or pegbag or some shoepockets or a bag or a handle heart or tissue holder or some oven gloves or a nice apron or.....

...And talking of hotwater bottle covers and breezebusters, I've only gone and signed myself up for a couple of Christmas Fayres haven't I? This way I can work on my prototypes, finalise the recipes, hone the house style, and get a feel for pricing and which products will sell well. And then, you know, like, have some to sell.
At the beginning of December.
Um. Only trouble is, do I have any stock to sell?
Er.
Not as such, exactly...
Like, not a sausage. Not even a knitted sausage. I've just been making one gift per birthday. And that, if you have been following my rants, has not always been at all easy to achieve.
When I asked the husb, who is a good businessman, how much he reckoned I needed, he said, take 12 big things like bags or shoe pockets, and 60 small and medium sized things, like pencil rolls, doorstops, pegbags, pencil cases, hearts and stuff. Something for Mum, somethings for the kids and something for Gran, he said.
So that, by my maths is 72 things.

In 2 months.

In 4 mornings a week free time. At a rate of, at best, 1 thing a morning.

Sensible aren't I?! My heart might be in it, but I'm wondering if my head is. Still, where my scruffy hearts lead, my head will just have to follow.

Cosy up

In all the excitement of the febrile virus-ridden daughter and her visit to hospital, I entirely forgot to photograph my latest fabric incarnation - a tea-cosy, for my sister, whose birthday was on Thursday. Her birthday did not go quite according to plan, because over she came to spend the day with us, going to musical singing groups and swanning round the garden drinking copious amounts of tea, and instead found herself babysitting Niece no.1 whilst Niece/Goddaughter was chucking her guts up in her mother's loving arms in A&E. However, they had a lovely afternoon making muffins, which greeted me on my return, and were most welcome. At least we'd managed to give her the tea-cosy before the hospital dash, and once home she betook herself to her camera for an on-site shoot, where she rummaged in her cupboards and found, of all things, Foxes Party Rings, which match the tea-cosy beautifully. This is not good, because now she will have to eat them every time she uses the tea-cosy, because they match so well, and she will become as fat as a biscuit barrel.
This was a very nice thing to make - from Sewing In No Time by Emma Hardy. It was my first time sewing through wadding, the stuff they put in a quilt, and it was a nice mushy, fluffy, experience. A bit like eating mashed potato.
You may notice the purple fabric is distinctly bonkers. Very slightly, and a little alarmingly 80's ish. Isn't it? Not quite sure I like it, but it's a good piece of thrift and re-use because it came from a charity shop, a great swathe of the stuff, looking for a home for a whopping great £2.50. So now bits of it will crop up in all sorts of future projects, hidden at the sides, or on the inside, or lurking round the back, like a fugitive.
If you'd like some, please ask me - I'll happily cut out some fat quarters to send to people!

Anyway, enough of that - on to the Gift Horse Competition Winners!

After much consideration we have decided that my first attempt at a hobby horse made from a sock is to be called...(drum roll please)....Duffin the Mule! I think I actually snorted out loud when I read it. Very funny...this was suggested by Gareth and Petra, so congratulations - you have won him!

And out of the hat for the pretty fabric hearts was, well, first my Dad, who is disqualified for being rude, secondly my sister, who had already been given one for her birthday anyway, and thirdly Sam! Hoorah! May a few lonely doorknobs in your home be heartened by them.

So Sam and Petra/Gareth Combo, your prizes will be on their way to you in a post van soon. Enjoy!

You Can Lead a Horse to Water...

...but what do I do to get them to drink?!

Only 3 Comments on the Gift Horse Giveaway. And many thanks to those lovely folks too, because they've very funny. Apart from my father, who is funny, but very rude to his daughter, so he's in detention and out of the running for the lovely fabric hearts prize. But the rest of you, well really. Where's your competitive edge, all of you, hm?!

So here it is, for one season only....an extension to the Gift Horse Giveaway!

I didn't get round to writing this up yesterday, because I had to spend the large part of yesterday with a rotavirus attacked two-and-a-half year old in hospital, so for sympathy for Hetty, will you all please make your Comments known! (She's rallied, by the way, but wear gas masks if you're in our neck of the woods, is my suggestion. What a bug.)

Don't be shy, look at the fabric gifts I've made specially for the winner of the competition to name the poor creature. Aren't they nice? Hang 'em on your door handles. Drop lavender oil on 'em and shove in with your knickers. Hang them on shabby chic hooks. Ah, the possibilities! There will be 3 of them in your prize.

So, trot over here and enter and the hobby horse or the hearts could be yours!

Heart of the Matter

Ok, so you've seen a million of these things before, but, well, isn't it nice? You might be interested to know that this is Vanessa Arbuthnott fabric; the heart is made from swatches I sent off for when trying to choose curtain fabric. Her fabrics are rustic and wholesome - I love them. In the end of course I baulked at the prices and went for my good old fabric favourite, the Fabric Warehouse in Uxbridge, which is one of those dribblingly good places full to the rafters with enormous rolls of material. My mother nearly became pinned under said rolls several times when we were pulling them out to have a look. Luckily I'm a pack-horse me, and was happily lumping great cylinders of fabric about all over the place, and causing havoc in the aisles unravelling them to check repeats.

Now, am I alone in feeling slightly guilty when I use sample swatches for a homemade thing? Is that a bit naughty? Perhaps if I sell this heart for, say £18.50 in a boutique in Marylebone High Street, that would be a little out of order, and so I shall promise to pay Vanessa fifty pee or something, in commission. No, hang on. I think I had to pay for the samples...

I take it back. I'll keep the fifty pee, thank you very much.

I made the heart as a prototype, with the vague idea of making ten of them as Christmas presents for Isla's preschool teachers. Two-year old Hetty sat next to me at the sewing machine playing with quilting safety pins (yes, I know - but she was right there; if she'd stabbed herself I was right on hand to administer first-aid. Stop fussing. I wasn't letting her play with scissors. Or pins. Although I did yesterday. How else am I going to get these things done? They don't want something safe to play with do they?). However, after an entire morning spent doing it, it became apparent that making ten was not exactly feasible, so this one sits prettily atop the mirror over the fireplace in the living-room.

It reeked of lavender, clary sage and peppermint essential oils, which I stupidly drenched the stuffing in before putting it in the heart, so that I got it all over my hands and gave myself a fragrance overdose. Then I had to sew up the heart and put the ribbon on, and so Hetty and I sat in a fug of stink for far longer than is, I am certain, advisable, although I don't have an aromatherapy qualification. We must have smelled like a Camden Market joss-stick stall going to collect Isla from preschool.

The preschool teachers all got a tin of chocolate eclairs each instead, in case you were wondering. Not remotely home-made, but probably a good deal tastier.