Bedspread

If you can see the carpet at all on these photos then please ignore it! We did some major re-working in our house, added a corridor through the end of our bedroom, moved an en-suite loo into what was the old corridor, etc., etc, so the carpet was a real patchwork for a while until we finished all the building. We’ve now got a lovely heather grey carpet all through the upstairs which goes with just about anything.

Anyhow, I saw this Rennie Mackintosh style wallpaper and fell for it – well, I would with my surname wouldn’t I (actually, I don’t think it says anywhere that that is my surname!, well, now you know)? I realise wallpaper borders aren’t really fashionable anymore but I liked this one and the large expanse of wall needed something to break it up. The artwork in the photos below show the first set of canvasses I worked on, there are two other sets on this site which I’ve done since (Bathroom and Art Nouveau).

The canvasses were gessoed first and then the squiggles were done with pva glue sprinkled with powder and heat embossed (not my idea, I read it on the Internet!) before wide stripes of pink and gold acrylic paints were added.

Top Left

Top Right

I cut one each of the four patterns from the wallpaper and triple embossed them, they cracked when I mounted them onto the layers of wallpaper and card but I believe we call that ‘cracked glass’ and not a mistake!

The puzzle pieces were coloured with inks, stamped  with a Mackintosh stamp in red and then triple embossed. A couple of them had gold ‘bits’ stuck into them whilst still wet. I used alcohol inks on dominoes, wrapped them with wire and added a ladybird and a cat bead and a couple of crystal hearts.

The shrink plastic bits hanging from them are the same Mackintosh stamp I used on the puzzle pieces.

Bottom Left

Bottom Right

Now, as well as a paper crafter I am a bit of a sewist and an embroiderer, I used to do a lot of needlepoint and cross-stitch but love my embroidery machine and do a lot of things with that. I scanned-in the images off the wallpaper and then digitised them (converted them to stitches), made them applique designs mainly except for the leaves which have an embroidered fill pattern. I stitched them out once or twice (……or ten times!) to make sure they worked and then made blocks on a neutral textured fabric and with various applique fabrics.

Rose #2

First Rose Piece

I found a beautiful, heavy, burgundy coloured fabric at Abakhan (it’s not far from me) and made the bedspread out of it then played around with the layout of the blocks for ages!

These were then all stitched on with a decorative stitch – very heavy work but the machine I have (Husqvarna Designer1) is able to stitch in various directions so it will go around a square without having to turn the whole piece of material – a big help when working with a lot of fabric like this. Our bed is a superking size so it is a lot of material.

Just leaves

3rd Rose

Unfortunately, I can’t keep it in place whilst sleeping – it’s far too heavy and I can’t turn over with it on top of me – and it’s too hot as well!

Oh, I cut a bit of the dusky pink wallpaper to go on top of our bedside units, under the glass, just to draw it all together, and covered the headboards in the same fabric as the bedspread. The chaise longue at the bottom of the bed was given to me years ago by one of my sisters and I re-covered it. You can see a couple of the needlepoint pillows I made sitting on it too. The window that you can see through the double doors is no longer there, we had a wall built there and a doorway into a guest bedroom with an en-suite shower room. The whole place looks a lot nicer now and I’ve got to admit to not missing builders at all!

Wall arrangement

Bedroom view

Bedroom view

SweetPea

I’ve been card making for many years now, lately I’ve been more into papercrafts but I did used to embroider everything – including most of my cards.

The sweetpeas on this one were for one of my sisters who grows the most wonderful sweetpeas in her greenhouse every year. They smell wonderful and she has so many that she can colour co-ordinate them for each room!

The background fabric is one of a stack of quilting squares I bought years ago in a variety of colours. Never really got on with quilting but I think that I could actually show 4 or 5 on this blog if I set my mind to it…..Anyhow, this is stitched onto the cotton fabric and the paper stabiliser removed as much as possible after the embroidery has finished. I then add a little oval of wadding behind the design to give it depth and stitch it onto the cardstock itself. I keep my older sewing machine for doing this sewing mainly, it’s a Pfaff 1471 which my DH bought for me instead of a bunch of flowers after I’d had some oral surgery! Ever the practical Yorkshireman! Well, think about it – I wouldn’t have kept a flower for 20 years.

Lots of double-sided tape close the card (purchased aperture card) and I tend to insert a paper in the middle with a printed verse. Sometimes the dark cardstock makes it hard to see the words if you use regular pens so the insert gets around that. Plus, if you make a mistake (who me!!!) it’s devastating when you’ve put all that effort into something.