A little piece of Britain

Ah, dear readers, the gentle and unspoken pressure of your expectation. Blank pages to fill for you! Thoughts to make into flesh!

Now that I am blogging again, I feel my sewing inspiration returning as well - because what is blogging without pictures? What is blogging without new projects to display? What, indeed?

And thus it was that this morning I put together a beautiful little cushion made from a 100% Irish linen vintage British tea towel.  I love the really vibrant colours and the bold illustrations of this beauty. I found it up the road at a local op shop, and it was just crying out to be turned into something wonderful. 

I know the tea towel in its original state was already both functional and beautiful, but I would have felt it a waste to just dry the dishes with it. Plus, My One True Love has this habit of wiping up coffee grains with the nearest tea towel to hand, and I couldn't bear to have this one stained. It's too pretty.

So now it's a gorgeous cushion cover; perfect for a boys' room or to remind you of that amazing year you had over there in The Old Country. My favourite bit is all the names of the stations in the London Underground.

I'm half-British, though I never spent a gap year there myself (actually, I never had a gap year at all), but somehow when I look at this one I just think of home.

Loving the loveseat

 Finally! At last!

I've had this job on my list of things to do for bloody ages. Had I done it, after .... nine months? ten months? No, I had not.

Now, though, I am a lady of leisure and I really have no excuse not to finish those things that have been on my list for, like, forever.

One hard-rubbish day long ago, My One True Love and I were driving through Box Hill. And there, as we rounded the crest of a hill, to our complete astonishment, we saw that some crazy household had dumped their teak loveseat on the curb, ready for collection.

Did we collect it? You bet we did!!

It was practically perfect. The only reason we could see that someone might have chucked it were the teeth gouges all over one of the curved arms. Not human teeth - I don't think so at any rate, but mind you it was Box Hill, and living there might be enough to send anyone a little beserk sometimes - no, to me it looked like dog teeth. Which means this lovely teak loveseat was chucked out because the dog had chewed on it a bit.

Well, we fixed that quickly. A bit of sanding and you'd never know it had happened. And then this adorable seat sat wanly on our back verandah, wearing its crappy old dirty and torn seat covers ... until now.

I tore apart the old ones on the weekend, and used the pieces to draw up a rough (and I mean REALLY rough) pattern.

Then I cut out some of this material, which from memory is an outdoor fabric called "Regenerate" that I picked up here at Calico Corners.
Isn't it gorgeous? All botanical and leafy, but colourful at the same time.

Amazingly enough, when I sewed the pieces together - I even put in a zip in case I need to wash or change the cover at some indeterminate point in the future - they fitted. Total suprise bonus! I only had to use one tiny scrap from my crafternoon buddy The Nutty Professor, to fill up a spot where the edges didn't quite meet.

And if that weren't enough, then I made two bolsters in the leftover bits of fabric, and stuffed them with futon cotton to give them a nice firm shape.

So now I'm loving my loveseat. It looks beautiful, and I can just picture us out there in the warm summer afternoons, lolling about on the gorgeous cushions I snaffled from Babushka Baby, drinking a glass of white wine, admiring the flowers in the garden, sniffing the delightful scent of star jasmine wafting on the breeze, and thanking heaven I finally got off my arse to fix the poor thing up.