Manolo for the Home

My grandmother decided recently to clean out her cupboards and gifted me with a great deal of vintage upholstery fabric. I took it all, fearing I’d miss something spectacular if I poked through it to find the good stuff when my ferry was set to leave in a mere half hour. A lot of it is rather thick and nubby, leading me to believe my sewing machine would balk if I tried to make curtains, but a few yards were utterly gorgeous. One swath in particular is white and orange and two shades of blue that just happen to match the two shades of blue in my living room.

How is it that I only recently learned that blue and orange can be combined to good effect?

No matter! Thus far I’ve pre-washed and ironed the fabric to prepare it for its eventual fate, which is to become a pair of throw pillow covers for the living room. Too bad my sewing machine is on the fritz. There is, however, one benefit to not being able to indulge my need to sew, sew sew, which is that I can spend all sorts of non-productive time looking at beautiful fabrics, contemplating what I’d make if I had all sorts of money to drop on the raw materials for dresses and shams and slipcovers.

I’m a huge fan of Amy Butler fabrics — in fact, it was she who taught me not to hate florals. Previously, I associated all floral prints with a certain high school math teacher who daily wore dresses that looked more like couches.

Lovely, no? The nice thing about sewing pillow covers is that they’re generally square or rectangular, which means you only have to sew on a straight line. Additionally, you’ve got a lot of freedom where fabric is concerned unless your pillows see a lot of ‘butt action’ on a regular basis. If you want to give this simple project a try a try, the easy, illustrated instructions found here and here are a great place to start.

Now I’m off to inspect my newly delivered wicker set!

I love wallpaper patterns, but I’m so not motivated enough to do the whole wallpaper thing. Right or wrong, I think of wallpapering a room as this tedious and complicated process involving lining up patterns and picking fights with The Beard. Why the fights? Tandem home improvement tends to bring out the worst in people. Consider my friend who installed a new bathroom sink with her live-in boyfriend. She said that she was close to killing him by the time the sink was in. Oy!

So, yeah, wallpaper. Do not want. Children’s book author and crafter Claire Louise Milne found a new and wonderful use for wallpaper, however, and I think I could pull it off without becoming a widow. I’d show you a snapshot of her handwork but she asks that people like yours truly not use her photos without permission, so you’ll have to go look for yourself.

For those who’d prefer to stay right here, I’ll describe Milne’s pet project. After falling in love with Neisha Crosland’s “anemone” paper, she decided to jump feet first into the world of wallpaper. Long story short, she backed the doors of a couple of secretaries with some gorgeous with the paper.

“I decided the best way to indulge the wallpaper fixation was to decorate a cabinet. And I found some lovely vintage paper on ebay. It has a lattice pattern (which I love) and flowers (which I love) and the colour scheme is fresh with light green and lots of white.”

This is DIY on a small scale — perfect for those of us with more ambition than time!

I could have bought an old, old, old home fraught with problems. When The Beard and I were house shopping, we saw one place we absolutely loved — it had three full floors with lots of rooms on each, high ceilings, wood floors, huge windows, and plenty of old school curb appeal. It also had a foundation so warped that the house itself was starting to lean to the left. Not good. We could afford the asking price, but not the necessary renovations.

So instead of buying an old, old, old home fraught with problems, we bought a fairly new cottage (circa 1950 or so) fraught with…well, ugliness. For example, we’ve been exploring the lovely wood shingles underneath the horrid off-yellow siding in preparation for the day we’ll tear it all off and paint. Then there is the vinyl flooring in the kitchen — it doesn’t quite reach the baseboards, leaving gaps where dust and dirt congregate.

The front door is actually quite new but, as it turns out, we are side door people. Growing up, I always wondered why some families used the front door exclusively while others gravitated toward the side door. We were driven to become the latter sort by practical concerns. Screen doors in the mud room effectively keep indoor cats from escaping, while it’s much easier for them to slip out the front. Plus, it’s nice to be sheltered when holding groceries in one hand while turning a key with the other during a rainstorm. It’s a place for dirty shoes, somewhere to stash a muddy trowel when one is too lazy to walk to the shed, and yet another way to let fresh spring breezes in.

The only problem? Said mud room was ugly, ugly, ugly.

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How’s this for a slick little set-up? A certain Leah and her husband Will created this chill kitchenside bar using a bunch of bits of shelving. That’s actually all I know — were the pieces meant to be used this way? Beats me!

Who cares? It works, and it’s replicable. You want to talk about an easy DIY project? Hit up Target, score some shelving, and line up your booze. Voila! Your liquor is conveniently out of the way, and you can brag to your peeps that you have built yourself a bar in your closet-sized apartment.

I tagged this post with “DIY” but I’ll have you know that I have absolutely no idea how to create a stencil or make wall panels. I can stretch a canvas, but I would need to consult an expert when it comes to printing something on one.

Too bad that the crafty gal who whipped up these wonderful Doctor Who wall panels didn’t post instructions! I’m crying tiny tears right now out of abject jealousy.

A certain taerowyn crafted these for a fellow crafter during some sort of Doctor Who/Torchwood maillove swapfest. In her own words:

Basically, it’s nine 6′x6′ canvases that can hang in any way. I envision this kind of 3×3 grid, but you could do it as a border near the ceiling, or hang in a pattern of less than nine and then swap them out depending on your mood etc.

I only wish I had intercepted the USPS package so these would be mine, all mine.

It’s not all that tough to sew a pillowcase, and with the right directions, almost anyone can reupholster a chair. No kidding! I know one moderately skilled needle pusher who redid her entire living room by carefully taking apart the fabric on her furniture and using that to create her own pattern. I’m not suggesting you do that if you’re not comfortable with your sewing machine, but why not try making a lap quilt? Or a quillow?

The best thing about sewing — as I’ve said in the past — is that there are oodles and oodles of totally sweet fabrics out there. I like to shop the sale cottons, of which there are usually many, and my favorite brand is Marcus Fabrics. If, like me, you have an unpracticed eye when it comes to matching colors and patterns, take heart! Many of the fabric designers and retailers create and list their wares in pre-matching sets so you know you’re going to get two or more fabrics that harmonize perfectly.

Have fun!

What with papercraft looking to be the next big thing — you know, now that knitting is mainstream cool again — why not try your hand at something a tad more useful than the average origami swan? Foldschool is a teeny collection of furniture for kids that parents can construct using the cardboard boxen everyone seems to keep stashed in the basement…just in case.

There’s even a manifesto:

Mass culture is run by superficiality and ecological absurdity. Foldschool supports craftsmanship as a face-to-face approach to design and brings together product and user the closest possible. The mindset of foldschool is to restore design to one of its original missions: to provide a product at an affordable price through a smart manufacturing process.

The downloadable patterns can be printed out with any printer, and you may already have the required tools: cutter, ruler, cutting mat, spray adhesive, needle, glue, masking tape, and folding tool. According to the site, the resultant furniture is stable enough to be used by an adult…though the pieces themselves are small, so consider scaling up. I can’t vouch for the scalability of the designs, but it’s worth a shot, right?

A great feature recently up at Telegraph.co.uk brings together experts like award-winning landscape designer Bunny Guinness and interior-designer-slash-author Paula Robinson to compile a list of fifty ways to spruce up your house, inside and out.

For the most part, the improvements they suggest will cost you. Replace all your radiators with an underfloor heating system? Knock out tatty tiles and replace them with slabs of marble? Um, right. I’ll be sure to do that when the economy bounces back, but for now I’m married…and not willingly…to the DIY ideology.

That being the case, I pulled five of the less expensive tips out of the piece. If you’re in the same boat as me, they may help you freshen up your home without spending a bundle.

1. First impressions count, so update your front door with paint:

Glossy black looks great on grand, stucco buildings, but rather forbidding next to red-brick or on a smaller house or cottage where soft greys work well. Blue was voted most appealing in a survey of buyers, but whatever the colour, a trick used by high-end decorators to achieve the best finish is to use several coats of paint thinned with white spirit.

2. Give your kitchen a mini-facelift with new knobs:

Standard sized, plain round knobs emphasise the mass-produced look of cupboards. Replacing them with unusual handles will add interest and character. Aim for texture, and avoid bright lacquered brass; it looks tacky and wears badly.

3. Enjoy regular seasonal refreshment without breaking the bank:

Replace cosy throws on sofas with light-coloured linen or ticking (for a classic New England beach house look, you might even invest in fitted linen-mix loose covers that are put on just for the summer and can be thrown in the washing machine when dirty). Even cushion covers can change: find pretty faded linen floral ones or make your own.

4. Learn to use that old sewing machine collecting dust in your basement:

With a little imagination, you can transform antique linens into unusual curtains, blinds, sofa and armchair slipcovers, cushion covers, upholstered seats or linen bags. Vintage white and cream linen is perfect for spring and summer soft furnishings.

5. Check your gutters…seriously, yucky gutters make a house look bad:

Most gutter problems are not caused by leaves, however, but by leaking joints. Plastic guttering has a high coefficient of thermal movement, and this constant expansion and contraction can push adjacent sections apart. Maneuver them back into place, and check that the supporting brackets are lined up correctly so that it doesn’t happen again.

It doesn’t get much simpler (or cheaper) than the DIY $10 hanging pot rack! I found this easy instructional on Wise Bread ages ago while searching for kitchen storage solutions. We weren’t sure how our landlord would take to us drilling onto the ceiling, so we planned to implement the idea in our home. Now that we have said home, we’ve discovered that our ceilings are just a tad short for hanging kitchen gear without risking black eyes and bumped heads

Materials necessary include:

• 1 piece of 4 foot re-bar
• 1 package of black chair tips
• 1 can of el cheapo black spray paint
• 1 package of eye hooks
• 2 packages of s-hooks
• Spray paint in whatever color you fancy
• A little bit of duct tape

Have you ever used surprising materials to create something fab in your home? Tell us about it in the comments!

I’ve been in a really crafty frame of mind lately since I mastered the basic functions of my hand-me-down sewing machine. Making one thing (let’s say a cute tote) puts me in the mood to make something else…usually something a thousand times more complicated, like a new sewing machine table. What it all boils down to is that I spent my entire morning looking at online tutorials instead of, um, working. Luckily, I can pass along the fruits of my not so laborious labors to you.

I found an especially simple DIY table tutorial in the pages of the WaPo Express, courtesy of Julia Beizer and her fiance, Tom. All you need is a table, a whole mess of beer caps, some wood bits for the trim, a little glue, and a tub of epoxy. Oh, and some time, because each 1/8″ epoxy layer takes two days or more to dry.

According to Julia, this rumpus room appropriate table is simple to put together — which is good for lazy DIYers like me. It can also be pretty inexpensive, depending on the beer you prefer and the table you choose. In fact, the priciest part of the whole works may just be the epoxy, which costs upwards of $20 per pint!