Scrap Happy

 The nights are drawing in and with festival season over, we concentrating our efforts on home improvement. While Jon's getting stuck into redecorating the utility room, I'm still tweaking the bedroom. 

Our corbielle bed was starting to show years of cat ownership and was in dire need of repair.

Not having any red velvet spare I decided to repurpose the fabric I'd used to recover the ottoman back in 2018. There wasn't enough to replace the whole area so I snipped off the tatty part, squeezed the replacement fabric inside and hand-stitched it place. I don't think the Repair Shop will be calling to offer me a job any time soon but it's a vast improvement (and its not like anyone but me, Jon and William are going to see it!)

We'd been scouring the chazzas for some decent fabric to recover the ottoman but with no success, the most suitable looking candidate, a mediocre duvet cover, was rather optimistically priced at £15 but, on the way home from swimming, I spotted this gorgeous Thistle upholstery fabric on the clearance table outside Walsall's legendary fabric emporium, Hole in the Wall and it was only £3!

Here I am standing outside it in 2015 (where the f*ck does the time go?) Back in the early 1980s most of this area was derelict and occupied by squatters. The coolest of the bunch was Boy George who lived with Walsall lad Martin Degville, later to become lead singer of Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Seeing him walking around town dressed in a silver spacesuit or an Elizabethan ruff with his dog dressed to match was a familiar sight. Nobody really batted an eyelid - or if they did they didn't dare say anything, he was built like a brick sh*thouse.  

I know some folk like mitchy-matchy stuff, I don't. This pleases my eyes a lot more!

There was some fabric left over which I repurposed into a reversible bolero using a 1971 Style pattern. (The orange checked fabric was a 1970s tablecloth from a charity shop). 

And the remnants became a makeup bag..always useful for taking down to the pool. 

And here it is in action....

@vixbrearley Waste not, want not!#handsewing #1970saesthetic #hippiestyle #vintagestyle #over50women ♬ original sound - Vintage_vix66

Thank for reading, see you soon!