I’ve been a fan of Baileys for some time – simple, well-made, well-designed home products that aren’t fussy or over-complicated, and an intriguing mix of old, recycled pieces and new, sustainable pieces that don’t compromise on style.

I’d been lusting after their book, Recycled Home, for a while, so I could barely wait to get the wrapper off before I dived into it …

Visually, it’s gorgeous, with wonderful photos by Debi Treloar on every page …. the message, however, is less easy to absorb. I found it quite an extreme approach, the suggestion that we undecorate our home, stripping them back to their bones and concentrating on the underlying beauty in the materials used in construction of both the house itself, and the furnishings we use.

It’s an approach that is some degress north of ‘shabby chic’ – more extreme, less pretty, an almost wabi-sabi aesthetic in its insistence on allowing the materials used to speak for themselves, whilst insisting that they fulfil the function for which they were designed, with an emphasis on texture and tone.

The importance of balance in emphasised, and I can imagine that it’s a difficult look to pull off successfully – both in terms of liveability and aesthetics – it would be very easy to go too far, and feel as though you’re living in a building site, or not go far enough, and leave rooms looking half-finished and neither one thing nor another.

The insistence on leaving the materials used for construction unconcealed can make it look quite cold and industrial, I thought …. but the additional of recycled, upcycled textiles softens the look …

I liked the idea of avoiding new furnishings wherever possible – taking old, unwanted furniture, boxes, building materials and industrial fixings and re-purposing them for the home appealed to me – certainly flat-pack quick fixes are not an option with this look.

I wasn’t sure if this was a look that would work in every home. Sure, if you’ve got an old building with layers of character (and preferably soaring ceilings), revealing its history has a certain appeal and charm. Where I struggle to visualise it is in a modern home, where breezeblock and plasterboard are the underlying materials, or even in an early/mid-19th century home, where you don’t necessarily have the integrity in the materials or the desirable history to expose. Done badly, it could look harsh, minimalist and unfinished.

There is a place for the sleek and modern, juxtaposed against the worn and aged – again with the insistence on great design that fulfils function against the integrity and inherent beauty of the materials used.

It strikes me that it’s something worth thinking about …. it needn’t be a whole-house look, rather, an incorporation of elements.

Done well, it could be the the absence of flat-pack furniture, an insistence on natural materials left unpainted and unfinished, a reduction to only what was needed and loved, allowing the choices made in home decor to stand, unashamedly, as nothing more than what they are.

In my own home, a 1930′s cottage, there are places I can use the aesthetic, even though I wouldn’t want to live with a whole house like this. I could, for example, strip the paint from the mantle wall in the dining room and let the irregular, scarred plaster with the remnants of 80-odd years of paint speak for itself. Already, I’m planning on stripping back the stairs to reveal the wood underneath, and taking gloss off windowsills, doorframes and skirting boards as and when rooms need updating. And in terms of home furnishings and home accessories, I’m going to carry on with my mission of buying second-hand, vintage and antique and re-finishing and re-purposing as necessary rather than buying new.

It might make for a slower process, but I think that the slowing-down of the process will make it a more mindful one that links up naturally with my work.

It took a little while to move from the position of “oh my god, it’s all very well if you’ve got a character-laden 16th century farmhouse / georgian mansion” to “hmmm, I can see how elements of this might work in my house” that’s needed me to go back and re-read the book and actually absorb the words – rather than the pictures – to take in the message and understand it fully.

It’s not easy, and it’s not pretty, but it *is* beautiful.

Review : Recycled Home

I have been working quietly on my Sunday project for a while now, and my memory cloth is starting to take shape. This weekend I finished the hand-embroidery embellishment on the third block ….

This is the first of the children’s blocks …. and has pockets at the bottom for these little darlings ….

My grandmother knitted them for my daughter … and – especially now that she’s no longer with us – I dissolve into a sentimental puddle every time I see them.

I’ve kept to a relatively simple palette of stitches here … french knots, buttonhole, cross stitch, back stitch and lazy daisy for the most part, but I’ve thrown in a little satin stitch and some webs as well … keeping the colours neutral, too – white, the palest of baby pinks, and a soft stone colour … most of these are vintage perle threads I’ve acquired from here and there.

I’ve included lines from the W H Davies poem ‘Leisure’ onto the block …. I’m not going to use the whole poem, just lift little sections of it out into the different blocks as I go along (and don’t quibble over misquotes …. I reserve the right to change things up to suit myself). I’ve got her name and date of birth on the block, too …. all the important dates will be in the finished piece.

I love the layers of old linen and lace …. I’ve tried not to interfere with them too much, just to use the stitching to echo, emphasize and enhance the underlying patterns and textures ….

I think this is my favourite block so far …. and I love the way the three blocks hang together …. I’m planning on using rouleaux loops and chinese knots to hold them all together, maybe some mother-of-pearl buttons, if I can source them – when I get to that point.

It may be some time before all nine blocks are done, but the process itself is such a joy, that I’m in no rush to finish it.

Memory cloth … ’til death us do part, block 3

I went to Rome a couple of weekends ago, to celebrate a friend’s 40th …. the best part of four days of rambling the streets, stopping for coffee and long, long evening meals. It seems an age ago already … but I’m sure in part that’s due to the evil bug I picked up on the airplane that’s had me flat out on my back for the last week. Sigh. Such is the price of pleasure, I suppose.

Whilst we did tour the Vatican, and see most of the sights (lest you think me uncultured!), one of my highlights was a trip out to Borghetto Flaminio … a fleamarket on Piazza della Marina, just up from the Piazza del Popolo, on the Sunday.

You know how I like a fleamarket?

The sun was shining, it was busy, but not too noisy and overwhelming, and the treasure-to-tat ratio was pretty high. A lot of vintage and second-hand clothes, and a lot of other little delights ….

I was tempted by this Pucci plate … but it was expensive, and I didn’t want to be risking it in my baggage on the way home …. nor risk having to pay excess baggage!!

I think this is the *most* awesome telephone I have ever seen …. I still want it. But there was still that annoying baggage allowance thing.

Stunning orange oriental vanity set ….

A lot of beautiful inlaid boxes … I do love little boxes …. and knick-knacks and gewgaws. Somehow I think my minimalist intentions are doomed to fail from the very start – once a magpie, always a magpie?

Now, I love Indonesian shadow puppets as much as the next girl, but I wasn’t expecting to see any in a Roman fleamarket!

But I was … hoping …. for linen – and I found it. When it comes to old linen and lace, I have no self-control at all. None whatsoever. I know it’s a failing, and probably the sign of some kind of fatal character flaw, but there you have it.

That little dress was so beautiful …. and as for the crochet lace bedspread … big enough to smother a double bed? It took *every* *ounce* of willpower I had to haggle on that one, but I knocked the extremely very nice lady down from EUR85 to EUR45 and I’m calling *that* a BARGAIN.

The other thing I have a weakness for (OK, *one* of the other things I have a weakness for) is silk scarves. So imagine my delight when a good old rummage through a pile of the beauties yielded me this 4ft square of Valentino adorableness?

win, win and win again.

And the last great love of my life … big, impractical rings, the sort that make housework impossible ….. I’ll take two, thank you! The black one in the middle was a gift from my daughter, and two on the outside …. vintage fleamarket treasures from Rome.

Ahhhhh … I can still taste the espresso.

Fleamarket finds … in Rome!

Why yes, a cushion … patchworked, and quilted … and I think versatile enough to work in either a contemporary interior or a more traditional country home … I have a feeling that it might go down well in a home office – the pinstriping is quite masculine, and the flash of red brocade reminds me of regency waistcoats, somehow ….

Back towards the end of last year, I started in on a little project to work my way through Celia Eddy’s book  100 Traditional and Contemporary Quilt Blocks, and this is the latest … the chevron block.

I started with this:

Wool pinstripe and chinese brocade ...

Love those rich, rich fabrics. The pinstripe came from an old suit jacket I deconstructed, and I’ve been hoarding that brocade for a while now – it’s so lush.

foundation piecing for chevron block

Then happened a lot of foundation piecing … I probably made it more complicated for myself than I needed to by deciding that I wante the pinstripes to run in alternate directions on each block ….

foundation piecing ... chevron strips

Much coffee was drunk during the process ….. but eventually it was all put together and ready for quilting – there’s a good layer of wadding between the top and the cotton backing.

quilting ... stitching in the ditch

I managed to restrain myself and stick to just stitching in the ditch (along the seam lines) … the fabric needs to speak for itself.

quilted cloth

I always love that moment when the cloth is finished, and ready to be used ….

A little binding in the brocade along the edges and some vintage brass buttons that made me think of suit-sleeve cuffs.

And …. finished … and …. in my Etsy shop ….

Chevron Cushion – pinstripe & brocade

So … Pinterest?

Essentially, it’s an online pinboard. A place where you can collect images of things you love from all over the web via a handy little button you install on your toolbar. You can organise them into themed boards and share them with other Pinterest users … and the best thing about it, is that the ‘pinned’ image retains the link back to the url you pinned it from, so you can always go back to your favourite places to see what’s fresh and new there.

My Pinterest boards ....

You can ‘follow’ people or boards that you find interesting, and people can follow you and your boards … and you can repin their images to your boards, too.

You can use it for … collating reference material, creating inspiration or mood boards for home decorating or gardening, collecting all those craft projects into one place, organising your online recipe collection, making a list of awesome holiday destinations and and and …..

It’s a *lot* of fun … and offers such an easy way to collect and curate your own personal galleries of beautiful images, that it’s easy to get carried away ….

Ragebuilder ... Pin all the Things

(can you tell I’ve got myself into a pinning frenzy before )

BUT

There is one important thing you need to remember.

Behind every image, is a person.

The person who took the photo, the person who created the content, the person who designed the product you love or the art you admire. That image is the result of their hard work, talent, skill and inspiration, so it’s only right that you make sure they get the credit they deserve.

That means you need to observe a little etiquette! Before you pin, or re-pin, stop and think and make sure that you are pinning directly from the source url – that means from the specific post on the photographer’s website, not just from their homepage, and NOT from google, or Tumblr, ffffound, weheartit, piccsy, or any other place it has been featured.

The same applies if you are re-pinning an image from someone else’s boards – always check that the image links back to the original source. If you can’t trace the original source – and if the image has come from Tumblr, there’s a good chance you won’t – then DON’T PIN IT ON YOUR BOARDS.

If there’s an image you love and you want on your boards that’s not credited, you can try to hunt down the link:

• click on the image and it will take you to the page it was posted from … if you’re lucky, there will be an onward link to take you to the source url. But, sometimes, you will need to take the information you can find about the picture and google away until you find it.
• if you find the link, you can either pin direct from that url (best practice) OR you can ‘edit’ your pin in Pinterest and update the url with a little copy-and-paste.
• if it’s an image from google, you can ‘edit’ the pin, and then copy the url info into a new browser tab – that should take you to the source page, and from there you can copy+paste the url back into your pin and update it that way.

It all comes down to how much you love the image, and how obsessive you’re prepared to be to track down its rightful source!

I recommend that you do it! Not only does it let you open up a potential source of fabulous, inspiring images, it also allows you to give the photographer responsible for the work proper credit for their image, so that their work is recognised as their own. This is not onlythe right thing to do, but also because IT INFRINGES THEIR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS if you do not.

There’s a lot of discussion about the ethics underlying Pinterest at the moment, so it’s worth mentioning that when you sign up to Pinterest, you are certifying that you have the RIGHT to pin that image, and also that you agree to licence that image to Pinterest. So – if you don’t have the right, stop and think whether you *should* pin. This article by DDK Portraits about the legal implications of using Pinterest outlines the possible risks you are running. I don’t know if this is a storm in a teacup or not, but it’s definitely something to be aware of, particularly if you are posting images from a professional photographer.

The other thing you should not ever, never do, is pin someone else’s work to your boards with the intention of copying it. Again, the artist has put their time, talent, skill and inspiration into creating this piece. Not only are they capable of producing it to a much, much higher standard than you could ever hope to acheive, copying someone else’s design is tantamount to theft …and while I don’t imagine anyone reading this would consider ripping off someone’s else work on anything like this scale, just think how artist & designer Tatty Divine felt when she saw her designs in Claire’s? Is it any different for any other artist if you copy their work and claim it as you own? Steer clear, then, and don’t pin or re-pin any tutorials showing you how to do it, either.

If you want any more information, you can read about it in this article on Pinterest on lovelife’s blog or at linkwithlove.

And, of course, I am more than happy for you to pin any of the images of my work from this site or my Flickr account – as long as you play nicely and link me up

Or you can follow me on Pinterest …

a selection of my recent pins on Pinterest

So what’s this Pinterest thing, then?